John Waiblinger: John Waiblinger is a former librarian at the University of Southern California Libraries.
Fear of a Queer Planet is one of the important collection of papers in the new academic field of Queer Theory. The introduction by editor Michael Warner, itself, provides an excellent overview of Queer Theory and its basic areas of inquiry, controversy, and future directions of study and debate. I often recommend this 28 page introduction as a good starting place for students desiring a basic introduction to Queer Theory.
The book has 13 different papers, primarily by academics in the areas of English and Cultural Studies. While most of the papers are good, a few suffer (and provide examples) the worst aspects of jargon ladden, academic discourse that would be of little interest to most readers. However, most of the papers do not fall into this category.
In my opinion, among the best are:
“Queer Nationality” by Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman. This is one of the best discussions of the history of Queer Nation I have read. It provides an excellent historical overview and is invigorating to read. Also superb is, “How to Bring Your Kids up Gay” by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the most recognized scholars in Queer Theory. Unlike many of Sedgwick's works, this paper is extremely accessible and a very moving and important work on the plight of queer youth. “Identity and Politics in a Postmodern Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes” by Steven Seidman provides an exciting discussion on how identity politics impacts the gay/lesbian rights movements and provides an excellent discussion on how differences in class, gender, race, etc. impact the movement. “Tremble Hetero Swine” by Cindy Patton, provides some excellent and frightening analysis on how the New Right is defining white, heterosexual males as an endangered minority, and expropriating some of our own language within their own political actions. Some of the New Right's texts quoted in the article provide a truly scary look at their view of us. I also recommend The Construction of Heterosexuality by Janet E. Halley as a good, accessible analysis of the Bowers v. Hardwick and other court decisions. Ms Halley is an associate professor of Law at Stanford, and provides a good discussion on how these court decisions might influence development of new strategies for our political movement.
In summary, I find this book to be an excellent intoduction to Queer Theory. The book is clearly “academic” in its language and does contain all the current academic jargon used in postmodernist discussion of identity and politics. It is, however, an important work for those interested in becoming acquainted with this area of study and political analysis.
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