Foreword

Ideas about same-sex sexuality would seem to be a part of all societies. However, it was only in the 19th century in Europe and the United States that specific ideas about homosexuality first appeared. At least, scholars seem to agree that the idea of the homosexual as a personage or human type appears to date from the late nineteenth to the early 20th century. Through World War II, the discussion around of homosexuality was confined to small sectors of the medical-psychiatric-scientific community, and was overwhelmingly dominated by a biological or psychological model. Homosexuality was seen as an illness or abnormality and the questions researchers asked were about its origin, essential meaning [gender inversion or sexual perversion], and its cause. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that homosexuality was understood as a fundamentally social phenomenon. It was only when scholars were able to imagine that homosexuality as a behavior may very well be natural or universal, while homosexuality as an identity or social status is historical, that the idea of the social study of homosexuality was made possible. New questions were asked: How and under what sociohistorical conditions did this desire become an identity? What social factors shaped the meaning and social role of this desire or identity? What explains the subordinate social status of homosexuality in different societies? This breakthrough to a social constructionist or sociological view of homosexuality occurred in the 1970s and 1980s among scholars, many of whom were connected to the rise of a lesbian and gay movement in America and in Europe. In other words, the intellectual challenge to the notion of the natural (and inferior) status of homosexuality
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: Foreword. Seidman, Steven. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Homosexuality (Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 52, No. 1/2, 2006, pp. xxxv-xxxviii; and: LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain (ed: Karen E. Lovaas, John P. Elia, and Gust A. Yep) Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2006, pp. xxvii-xxx. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: docdelivery@ haworthpress.com].

Available online at http://jh.haworthpress.com 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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was in part made possible by, and connected to, a social movement challenging the inferior social status of homosexuality. By the 1980s, an impressive body of research and scholarship accumulated that took shape around the theme of the origins of the homosexual and the making of a homosexual minority. Historians, social scientists and other scholars researched the origin and development of lesbian and gay identities, dynamics of coming out, community building, the formation of lesbian and gay cultures, and so on. By the 1990s, lesbian and gay studies were recognized as a legitimate scholarly field and were integrated into colleges and universities. However, just as the lesbian and gay movement, and lesbian and gay studies, was beginning to be mainstreamed, intellectual and political challenges emerged from friendly critics. In particular, the core assumption of lesbian and gay studies came under scrutiny and criticism: The idea of a common homosexual identity. Critics argued that it was misleading to speak in general terms, without considerable qualification, of the homosexual self or identity. Individuals experience being gay or lesbian, and having gender, race, and class in specific ways. In short, there is no gay self in general but only multiple lesbian and gay identities. The idea of multiple, intersecting identities proved enormously fruitful in terms of opening up new lines of research and social thinking. However, for some thinkers the very plasticity or fluidness of the idea of homosexuality, the very idea that homosexual experiences could be multiplied virtually endlessly, posed a bigger challenge to the tradition of lesbian and gay studies. Does the idea of a lesbian and gay identity have any common reference and is it intellectually coherent? If gay identities or experiences can be multiplied ad infinitum because the combination of factors shaping such experiences are without limit, what sense does it make to speak of a gay self or identity? While a notion of a lesbian self might prove effective and necessary as a political strategy, it would seem to lack a defensible epistemological rationale. While many scholars were reluctant to follow the logic of this critique of identity to this epistemological conclusion, a new type of thinking stepped forward, so-called queer theory, which embraced this logic as both a critique of lesbian and gay studies and as potentially opening up the field of sexuality studies. Queer theory broke from the tradition of lesbian and gay studies by framing identity in consistently relational terms. The meaning of homosexuality is to be grasped within a discourse that positions homosexuality and heterosexuality as contrasting ideas. The key point is that sexual meanings are not fixed or deter-

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mined by the nature of desire or behavior but by understanding such concepts in a network of texts and discourses. And, to the extent that societies are composed of multiple discursive networks, sexual meanings will be varied, somewhat fluid, and the subject of social conflict. Queer theory shifted the focus of the scholarly gaze from the making of the homosexual self and community to the relationship between heterosexuality and homosexuality and to the broader culture of sexuality. Instead of centering inquiry on the making of a homosexual self, queer theorists would broaden inquiry to the making of a culture of sexuality, a culture that creates sexual selves, that establishes sexual identities, and that sets up a sexual hierarchy around notions of sexual normality and abnormality. Although the idea of multiple and intersecting identities is now conventional wisdom, many students and scholars of lesbian and gay studies continue to question the intellectual and political value of queer theory. In the last decade this field of scholarship has been divided between a lesbian and gay studies approach and queer theory. This division is often a disciplinary division, as queer theory has been concentrated in the humanities, especially among English or comparative literature departments, whereas lesbian and gay studies has been concentrated in the social sciences and history. Of course, this disciplinary division also means that these two approaches tend to operate with different analytical languages and intellectual conventions. Through the 1990s, the discussion between gay and lesbian studies and queer theory has occurred in highly theoretical terms and often removed from the disciplinary cultures that many of us work within. This has begun to change, in part because queer theory is itself being incorporated into the social sciences and history. Accordingly, this is a particularly fruitful time to address this discussion. LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain, a collection of original essays, addresses the challenge that queer theory presents to the study and the politics of gay and lesbian studies. What is especially noteworthy and useful is that these essays aim to take up this discussion less as an abstract theoretical debate than as an empirical and political issue. The reader will find essays that attempt to understand queer theory by situating it socially and historically, for example, by linking queer theory to the development of capitalism and to the evolution of the lesbian and gay movement. There are essays that critically examine queer theory in relation to the study and politics of bisexuality and gender. In particular, this volume contributes a series of original essays that examines what queer theory has

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to offer to the existing academic disciplines. Students and scholars from different disciplines will learn much from essays that explore the implications of queer theory for social psychology, religious studies, film studies, and womens studies. Steven Seidman University at Albany