6 * Queer Theory

Abstract

Are we happy yet? Are queer people, whoever they are, feeling brighter about the changing prospects for strange sexualities in world contexts? Or is happiness (still) a dirty word? And should we remind ourselves, we who read what is called ‘queer theory’, that the common linking of ‘queer’ to ‘sex’ is a sinking ship? Is the sex-vessel for carrying queerness really just one among many vessels now? Speaking of now, what time is it? Queer theory still wants to trouble your answer. It might be time for failure. Or becomings. Or maybe time for coming—surely there must be time for that—and thus for ‘sex’ to come up again. Orgasm, singleness, and even the erotic life of racism are on tap right now. As are objects of various kinds: new bad objects (think of ‘chick lit’) and object lessons (about and around identity knowledges). Finally, there are animated states of being that are not conventionally living or alive. ‘Animacies’, they are being called. All this is part of the lay of the land, as the following chapter details in books published in 2011–12, including some books from adjacent years. The chapter is divided into five sections: 1. Happiness is Unqueer? 2. Listening Queerly to a Kind of Dying, Seeing Queerly towards a Kind of Doing; 3. Getting Back to ‘Sex’? 4. What Time Is It Now? 5. Bad Objects, Object Lessons, and Animated (?) Objects (?). (Authors engaged include, among others, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Elizabeth Povinelli, Chandan Reddy, Ann Cvetkovich, Judith (Jack) Halberstam, Annamarie Jagose, Michael Cobb, Sharon Patricia Holland, Carolyn Dinshaw, Stephanie Harzewski, Robyn Wiegman and Mel Y. Chen.)