Ralph R. Smith

Department of Communication Missouri State University

Springfield, MO 65804-0095

As a professor of communication at a Midwestern state university (whose Administration adamantly resists adopting a sexual orientation nondiscrimination clause), I write and teach courses about gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender politics. I am also active in campus and community progay campaigns. From both professorial and activist perspectives, I am convinced that queer theory should be interrogated to reveal the contributions it can make to understanding political communication relating to legal and civic issues affecting sexual minorities. Such understanding is critical to public advocacy advancing protection of homosexual individuals and groups, both in private behavior and in associational relations and expression, thus helping to make possible our full citizenship.

"Queer theory" raises difficult definitional problems which I will address by saying that I am not concerned with "queer" as fashionable shorthand for the infelicitous expression "gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender." Nor am I interested here in queer politics as a congregation of now defunct movements that briefly defended identities marginalized by mainstream gay politics. In this essay, moreover, I am not involved in "queer" as a label for the specific political stance that holds that mainstream gay politics normalizes and de-sexualizes a movement originally begun in defense of sexual freedom, outlaw sexualities, and erotic behavior of all kinds.

I am concerned with queer theory as a set of ideas loosely labeled postmodern or post-structuralist, originally applied in particular ways to gender and, more recently, to sexuality. The core tenets of queer theory are that: (1) all categories are falsifications, especially if they are binary and descriptive of sexuality; (2) all assertions about reality are socially constructed;

(3) all human behavior can be read as textual signification; (4) texts form discourses that are exercises in power/knowledge and which, properly analyzed, reveal relations of dominance within historically-situated systems of regulation; (5) deconstruction of all categories of normality and deviance can best be accomplished by queer readings of performative texts ranging from literature (fictional, professional, popular) to other cultural expressions (geographic distribution, body piercing, sit-coms, sadomasochistic paraphernalia).

In general, queer theorists propose to destabilize hegemonic cultural ideals of normality. In the process of executing this project, they have brought to dominance in the humanities (and in some groves of the social sciences) a constructionist view of social thought which denaturalizes all human experience, achieves wide assent to an indeterminacy which rejects all assertions of identity, encourages emphasis on far-ranging cultural experiences at the expense of political analysis and action, and promotes an historicism which relativizes all thought and culture.

Before examining current critique of queer theory and suggesting how this theory might be enhanced in order to increase its value to political thought and action, I will enumerate important benefits to gay politics which have accrued as a result of queer theory. Queer theory reminds us to attend assiduously to diversity among sexual minorities, as well as to recognize discontinuity of experience through time and across cultures. In its attempt to build and represent a unifying collective subject, gay politics tends to ignore sociocultural differences, historical change, and multiple identities. Queer theory provides a corrective to these evasions, thus reinforcing the central idea of political practice that "all politics is local" and encouraging rhetorical sensitivity to a wide variety of audiences in the gay "community." Additionally, queer theory amplifies a central message of all rhetorical theorists which should be remembered by activists: Verbal expression is persuasive and behavior modifying. Queer theory echoes that "ideas are weapons." Finally, queer theory reinforces the valuable concept that human beings, as "interactive kinds," should be empowered autonomously to re-create and fully realize themselves, if for no other reason than people cannot be prevented from reacting to classification systems through self-reinvention. After all, a purpose of politics is to channel and to take credit for the inevitable.

Because of its recent academic high profile, queer theory has been subjected to extensive criticism. Included in these criticisms is that queer theorists, in their radical nominalism, ignore the material world of actual persons and relationships, preferring instead to focus on grammatical and semantic analysis of texts and on conditions of reception-consumption, thereby drawing attention away from economic inequity and actual relations of exploitation. Critics charge, moreover, that, despite or because of its historicism, queer theory transforms changes in fashion into major shifts in epistemology, thereby obscuring continuity in human experience across time and cultures, thus denying gay men and lesbians the benefit of a history and a universality arguably well grounded in reality. Further, by ignoring politics for other aspects of culture, queer theorists may elevate cross-dressing heavy metal performances, for example, to the same importance as Supreme Court decisions. Queer theory is also criticized for avoiding the reality of core identities by transforming them into mere subjectivities, thereby departing from human experience and intuition.

Presentation of queer theory, so another indictment runs, is incestuous in citation, dogmatic in thought, and impenetrable in style and vocabulary. Canonical texts of queer studies by Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Butler, and Sedgwick are repetitively redescribed with increasing obscurity not required for works already remarkably obscure. Major lacunae in thought are papered over by repetitive assertion of formulary phrases advanced as dogma. Incredibly convoluted sentences are often studded with recondite words, neologisms, and familiar words used unfamiliarly.

In the view of some critics, queer theory has produced a series of adverse effects on gay politics, redirecting attention from the materiality of actual social conditions to language, from the disruption of bodies through violence to the disruption of homophobic performance. The claim is made that interest is drawn away from perennial questions in gay politics which truly matter, e.g., assimilation v. minority group, insider politics v. confrontation, and contention over issue selection, to questions which have only rarely been asked. More specifically, queer theory erases gay identity, thereby weakening social justice and civil rights movements, creating a sense of futility about achieving amelioration of conditions for sexual minorities and strengthening the sense of division already endemic among gay advocates. In the view of some critics, queer theory enhances misunderstanding between the ivory tower and the street, between academics, who should be among the spokespersons for gay interests, and gay activists and their constituencies. Queer theory is also faulted for failing to recognize that politics is a part of culture, even popular culture, just as much as performance art and sit-coms. Finally, by its emphasis on individualism and on the creation of self through consumption practices, queer theory drains the pool of those who might become committed to achieving a common good.

Among the ways in which queer theory could be amended and extended to make it more useful for communication of political issues and programs is greater concern with the material world and with a politics which entails real causes and risks. This would involve recognition that diversity includes uneven progress ( by geographical location and local culture) in consciousnesses, audiences, and issues. Such a move would emphasize the necessity for adapting messages to individuals who are barely modern, let alone postmodern. More attention might be paid to close scrutiny of an historical record which, in its specifics, could reveal an empowering historical and cultural continuity in gay/lesbian communities.

Modification of approach should also include attending to gay political identity as a counterpart to attacking homophobic regimes of regulation, concentrating on building project identities no less than identities of resistance. Because of the work of queer theorists, such an identity may well be more inclusive, i.e., less well patrolled in order to maintain impermeable boundaries. Queer politics, at its best, would be intersectional in the sense that it organizes around multiple identities.

There is strong need to translate central ideas of queer theory into a language which can be understood by intelligent and experienced people outside the academy who have not enjoyed years of leisure to study Lacan and Foucault. Such translative efforts might well be useful substitutes for yet more obscure expositions of works already impenetrable. Underlying such efforts to reach beyond the characteristic subject matter and style of queer theory might be a reduction of the high level of dogmatism which now characterizes all sides in the debate over queer theory.

We may be moving inescapably toward a post-gay, post-human, and post-post future. In the meantime, we must continue to develop queer theories which mobilize political support for people who love and/or have sexual relations with persons of the same sex, or who have "gender-discrepant" minds/bodies and behaviors, or who are, for whatever reasons, frequently minoritized and marginalized. We deserve the protection of Enlightenment ideals of justice, even if they are only constructs. We must strive to extend to sexual minorities the benefits of rational thought processes, no matter how regulative, that should be used to protect all persons who are victims of oppression, coercion, and deprivation.