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Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism
"Intellectual and political project." Signs
Globalization has a taste for queer cultures. Whether in advertising, film, performance art, the internet, or in the political discourses of human rights in emerging democracies, queerness sells and the transnational circulation of peoples, identities and social movements that we call "globalization" can be liberating to the extent that it incorporates queer lives and cultures. From this perspective, globalization is seen as allowing the emergence of queer identities and cultures on a global scale.
The essays in Queer Globalizations bring together scholars of postcolonial and lesbian and gay studies in order to examine from multiple perspectives the narratives that have sought to define globalization. In examining the tales that have been spun about globalization, these scholars have tried not only to assess the validity of the claims made for globalization, they have also attempted to identify the tactics and rhetorical strategies through which these claims and through which global circulation are constructed and operate.
Contributors include Joseba Gabilondo, Gayatri Gopinath, Janet Ann Jakobsen, Miranda Joseph, Katie King, William Leap, Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Bill Maurer, Cindy Patton, Chela Sandoval, Ann Pellegrini, Silviano Santiago, and Roberto Strongman.
Globalization has a taste for queer cultures. Whether in advertising, film, performance art, the internet, or in the political discourses of human rights in emerging democracies, queerness sells and the transnational circulation of peoples, identities and social movements that we call "globalization" can be liberating to the extent that it incorporates queer lives and cultures. From this perspective, globalization is seen as allowing the emergence of queer identities and cultures on a global scale.
The essays in Queer Globalizations bring together scholars of postcolonial and lesbian and gay studies in order to examine from multiple perspectives the narratives that have sought to define globalization. In examining the tales that have been spun about globalization, these scholars have tried not only to assess the validity of the claims made for globalization, they have also attempted to identify the tactics and rhetorical strategies through which these claims and through which global circulation are constructed and operate.
Contributors include Joseba Gabilondo, Gayatri Gopinath, Janet Ann Jakobsen, Miranda Joseph, Katie King, William Leap, Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Bill Maurer, Cindy Patton, Chela Sandoval, Ann Pellegrini, Silviano Santiago, and Roberto Strongman.
281 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 8, 2022
Being 'queer' is to always inhabit contradictory spaces, to always be at the point of intersection of different hierarchical structures that reinforce each other, to continuously strive for a coherent identity despite knowing it cannot exist within the heteronormative matrix that is augmented within the constant struggle between the global and the local. Although spread over a range of topics, this collection of essays mainly focuses on the effect of globalization on queer discourse.
To what purpose do we strive for local queer identities when the very terms of the narrative like "gay", "lesbian", and "queer" have been manufactured elsewhere? How do we even establish local queer movements within a world dictated by Capital that has always worked globally? Discourses of sexual dissidence seem to be migrating through different but related mechanisms of globalization at the risk of suppressing and even destroying local cultural queer identities.
Globalization has turned queerness into an object of consumption and locus of identity in an increasingly commodified and marketed world. A good consumer is a good citizen and only a good citizen gets rights. (Just look at all those corporations jumping on the 'make profit off of pride month' bandwagon and pretending to care about the lgbtq+ community.)
On the surface of it, increased global visibility of queer sexualities seems to be related to coalitional queer political interventions, and it sometimes is. But we have to question the extent to which critical queer perspectives are products and promulgators of neoliberal visions of freedom, desire, value and profit. While encouraging the readers to do that, this collection of essays also tries to dispel the notion that the 'first world' is the place that has the most to offer in terms of sexual orientation.
I'll be honest, I got very bored while reading this book because the essays all seem disconnected and quite arbitrary. But I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to queer theory, so my boredom was probably due to my own inability to identify prominent unifying structures.
To what purpose do we strive for local queer identities when the very terms of the narrative like "gay", "lesbian", and "queer" have been manufactured elsewhere? How do we even establish local queer movements within a world dictated by Capital that has always worked globally? Discourses of sexual dissidence seem to be migrating through different but related mechanisms of globalization at the risk of suppressing and even destroying local cultural queer identities.
Globalization has turned queerness into an object of consumption and locus of identity in an increasingly commodified and marketed world. A good consumer is a good citizen and only a good citizen gets rights. (Just look at all those corporations jumping on the 'make profit off of pride month' bandwagon and pretending to care about the lgbtq+ community.)
On the surface of it, increased global visibility of queer sexualities seems to be related to coalitional queer political interventions, and it sometimes is. But we have to question the extent to which critical queer perspectives are products and promulgators of neoliberal visions of freedom, desire, value and profit. While encouraging the readers to do that, this collection of essays also tries to dispel the notion that the 'first world' is the place that has the most to offer in terms of sexual orientation.
I'll be honest, I got very bored while reading this book because the essays all seem disconnected and quite arbitrary. But I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to queer theory, so my boredom was probably due to my own inability to identify prominent unifying structures.
December 14, 2017
Overall this anthology is fantastic, and it presents queer theory in an easily accessible way that can be useful to those who are first thinking about queer theory in a globalization setting or are well acquainted with the subfield already. Largely this is because the book reads like a collection of well-done conference presentations- except for two essays. Both of these more difficult essays are more heavily invested in economics than the others, and as a result, their presence here, while related, seems borderline anomalous. The “Keynes” essay, for example, was so densely focused on Keynes’s various economic ideas, that I, as someone who incorporates queer theory into my academic work, that I found nothing worth noting for my own research- something that is rare with me. (However, I could see this essay being useful for other contexts.) These two essays are enough for me not rate the collection as a whole as five stars, but without them, I would easily rate it as such.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews