Midterm: U.S. Censorship of LGBT Characters in Sailor Moon

Reading Summary: What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?

In “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?” Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner believe queer theory may be misunderstood and misdirected by an overzealous public that expects all theory to be practical and pragmatic. Berlant and Warner suggest queer theory may not actually be a thing yet, and they notion toward an idea of queer commentary instead. They argue that understanding research, criticism and experimentation in this field as queer commentary, rather than theory, more accurately describes ‘things linked by the rubric’. More importantly, Berlant and Warner argue that queer theory is more than academic and cannot be assimilated to a single discourse or propositional program.

Berlant and Warner want to foster queer theory into an, “intellectually generous critical culture”(344) without reducing it to a specialty or metatheory. They don’t want to summarize a movement or discourse that is still in the process of being. Berlant and Warner believe a problem with the label of queer theory is that it can ignore its unpredictability and wrongly suggest that queer theory has a stable referential content, which summons premature demands of anatomization. People want queer theory to explain queer life. They expect theory to produce programs that explain or solve their problems, but as a developing theory/field, queer commentary is not able to produce such practical solutions. Berlant and Warner don’t think queer theory is a theory of anything in particular, but takes on varied shapes, ambitions and ambivalences.

Queer commentary involves experimenting on the academic stage. Berlant and Warner state that queer theory’s experimentation, “… seeks to remind people that there is an academic stage and that its protocols and properties have maintained an invisible heternormativity, one that infiltrates our profession, our knowledge, and this editorial”(348). This article, and specifically this quote, reminded me of Barbara Christian’s “The Race For Theory” which criticizes the use of literary theory, but is also applicable to Berlant and Warners’ argument. Christian argues that Western theory has become a commodity that determines who is actually heard. Western theorists have the power to influence and determine the ideas that are deemed valuable, resulting in all theorists (especially those of the Third World) being forced to write and theorize in the hegemonic Western form of abstract logic, which can be alien and unnatural. Christian also suggests moving away from theory that teaches how one ought to read (in queer theory’s case how one ought to think or solve problems) but rather to continue to read works of writers in various ways and remain open to the intersection of language, class, race and gender. I believe Berlant and Warner would understand Christian’s fear that when theory is not rooted in practice, it becomes prescriptive, exclusive and elitist. They all reject the narrowing of intellectual criticism and analysis and promote the question of culture building.

What do Berlant and Warner mean when they say, “…the question of what queer theory teaches us about x is not about politics in the usual sense but about personal survival”(348). Why do you think it is important for them to make this distinction?

This article was written twenty years ago, do you believe it is still relevant? How would you say queer theory as a whole (not just academically) has changed? Is queer still hot?

Bitch Media

Hey, Everyone!

Last class I mentioned how the Gayle S. Rubin reading Thinking Sex reminded me of an article “Blowing the Budget: Feminist porn start-ups are getting spanked when it comes to finances” published in Bitch. I tried searching for the article online, but I don’t think it’s available. However, I found a podcast on Bitch Media (Bitch Magazine’s sound cloud): that discusses the article.

I was interested in the way feminist activists might actually be reinforcing sexism in the porn industry by taking on anti-porn positions and creating obstacles that inhibit porn start-ups that wish to transform the industry.

Also, here is a link to Bitch Media if you’re interested in podcasts: