This is a short and accessible introduction to the complex and evolving debates around queer theories, advocating for their critical role in academia and society. The book traces the roots of queer theories and argues that Foucault owed important debt to other European authors including the feminist and homosexual liberation movement of the 1960-70s and the anticolonial movement of the 1950s--
This book is an attempt to save “the sexual” from the oblivion to which certain strands in queer theory tend to condemn it, and at the same time to limit the risks of anti-politics and solipsism contained in what has been termed antisocial queer theory. It takes a journey from Sigmund Freud to Mario Mieli and Guy Hocquenghem, from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to Teresa de Lauretis, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Tim Dean, and from all of these thinkers back to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes. At the end, through readings of Bruce LaBruce’s movies on gay zombies, the elitism of antisocial queer theory is brought into contact with popular culture. The living dead come to represent a dispossessed form of subjectivity, whose monstrous drives are counterposed to predatory desires of liberal individuals. The reader is thus lead into the interstitial spaces of the Queer Apocalypses, where the past and the future collapse onto the present, and sexual minorities resurrect to the chanceof a non-heroic political agency.
Focusing on queer theories within a European and Italian framework, this book presents compelling arguments advocating for LGBTQI+ rights, the freedom of teaching and research, and a radical conception of democracy. It aims to deepen the understanding of these theories while emphasizing their relevance to contemporary social and political issues.
Engaging with contemporary political issues surrounding sexuality, this book explores a range of influences including modern philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and 20th-century political thought, alongside recent queer philosophies. It offers a critical examination of how these frameworks intersect with current debates on sexuality, providing a comprehensive analysis of the political dimensions of sexual identity and expression.