• Queer Theory: Interacting
between Realities and
Fantasies
• （酷儿理论: 现实与想象的相互作用）
Yuan Honggeng
July 24，2009
报告人学术背景
• 袁洪庚，博士（香港大学），现任外国语学院三级教授；主要研究方向
为英语文学；在《文艺研究》、 《外国文学评论》、 《外国文学研
究》、 《外语教学与研究》、《外国文学》、《文艺报》、《国外文
学》、《当代外国文学》、《外国语》、《译林》、China Today、
等文学界、外语界的权威、核心刊物（CSSCI）上发表《转折与流变：
中国当代玄学侦探小说发生论》等论文几十篇，其中有多篇收入中国人
大书报资料中心《外国文学研究》集刊；译有《北回归线》等英语文学
作品8部，另在《世界文学》等刊物上发表译文几十篇，共约160万字；
近年来主要从事后现代主义文学研究，是中国大陆系统研究玄学侦探小
说第一人。
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Main Contents
• 1. Queer theory
• 2. Marching towards democracy?
• 3. Sociological realities vs. literary
fantasies
4. Where are we and where are we
heading to?
Introduction: Queer theory grew
out of homosexual [gay/lesbian]
studies
• Queer theory is a
branch of study or
theoretical
speculation.
• Teresa de Lauretis
the feminist first
used the term in
1990. Gay/lesbian
studies, in turn,
grew out of
feminist studies
and feminist theory.
The word "queer“ is originally a derogatory
term, now used by gays and lesbians to refer
to themselves.
• The word "queer"
is originally an
offensive term for
an openly
homosexual person,
odd,
unconventional, or
eccentric, as in
behavior and
speech, hence its
alignment with
ideas about
homosexuality.
How the term “queer”
came into being
• The term queer
eventually came into
being because both
gays, who preferred
regarding themselves
as males, and lesbians,
who, aligning
themselves with the
feminist movement,
condemned the gay
movement as sharing
the anti-female
attitudes of reigning
patriarchal culture
agreed upon the notion
of queer.
To describe oneself as a queer is to resist
all that are considered “straight” .
1. Queer theory
• Queer theory is basically deconstructive
and a trend with the broader conception of
postmodernism, as shown in its
dismantling of the key binary oppositions
of Western culture, such as, in the aspect
of human sexuality, sex/gender,
male/female, heterosexual/homosexual,
natural/unnatural, etc.
• As a new subculture, queer theory is a new
way of expressing one’s desire. It subverts
not only the hegemony of heterosexual,
but also bygone homosexual theories.
Queer theory is meant to reexamine human
sexuality and to enlighten those who are
still ignorant
巴西圣保罗，四十万人参加同性恋大游行
an interdisciplinary and
combined trend
• Queer theory is not
a particular or
concrete theory
like feminist theory
or some –isms like
Romanticism; it is
an interdisciplinary
and combined
trend or hypothesis,
relating to
sociology, history,
anthropology, fine
arts and literature.
Homosexuals are born
or made?
• Debates between biological essentialists [本质论者]
and social constructivists 【建构论者】
• Either “I am homosexual because of my genes.”
• Or “I am homosexual because of my brain.”
• Foucault, as one of the first constructivists,
claiming that sexuality and sexual conduct is not a
natural category, having a foundation in reality.
Instead, it is a question of social constructions,
categories only having an existence in a society,
and that probably are not applicable to other
societies than our own.
Feminist theory insists that gender is
not something "essential" to an
individual's identity.
• Feminist theory separates the
social from the biological, and
the constructed and the innate,
insisting that we see a difference
between what is the product of
human ideas, hence something
mutable and changeable, and
what is the product of biology,
hence something (relatively)
stable and unchangeable.
2. Marching towards democracy?
Michel Foucault (1926 1984) and his History of
Sexuality
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Has impact on areas such
as -Sociology, Historiography,
Gay and Lesbian Studies,
Marxism, Cultural Studies
and Literary Studies (&
New Historicism)
Two Major Claims:
-- Man is a product of
modernity;
-- Knowledge is not Truth,
but power.
Foucault’s views on
sexuality and human body
1. Sexuality – not
something hidden but
“a great surface
network in which the
stimulation of bodies,
the intensification of
pleasures, the
incitement to
discourse, the
formation of
knowledge, the
strengthening of
controls and
resistances, are linked
to one another.
Foucault’s views on
sexuality and human body
2. [Modified] body
as an interface
between
internal forces
(psychic,
physiological)
and the
external social
forces.
Foucault’s tolerance
• He argues that human relations are in fact
monotonously boring and so-called “varieties
of abnormal sex” should be permitted, such
as homosexual, bisexual, S&M （Sadism and
Masochism）, orgy,
• He advocates taboos, divisions and restrains
on sexuality should be abolished.
• He regards homosexual as a stance of being
and an art of life, instead of a sexual identity
or a sexual orientation
3. Sociological realities vs.
literary reflections
• “Territory”
• The story: Mrs.
Campbell brought her
only son Neil up, only to
find he is a queer. She
hides her
disappointment and
tries to help him and
pretends selfdeceptively that as
long as her son is
happy she will be
contented. But she
finds it hard sometimes
to bear her son, his
lover, and the lifestyle
of homosexuals.
David Leavitt, 1961-
One episode from “Territory”
• Neil holds his lover Wayne’s hand while
seeing a movie, his mother is annoyed.
• “I know what you were doing.”
• …
• “I remember when you were a little boy,
and I have to stop remembering. I wanted
you to grow up happy. And I’m very tolerant,
very understanding. But I can only take so
much.”
•
Oedipus complex: the
undercurrent
• The boy was
on guard of
being affected
by Oedipus
complex. That
is one more
example of
life mimicking
art.
Queer theory and literature:
Interrelations
• 1. Literature, as a mock
reference frame of human life,
illustrates queer theory, as in
“Territory”
• 2. Queer theory anticipates or
brings about related literature,
as in “A Place I’ve Never Been”
4. Where are we and
where are we heading to?
• Power as Foucault
understands, is
closely-related to
sex in any regime
and in any age. Sex
is a means,
through which
power is ruthlessly
exercised.
• It is often that sex is described as
a sexual desire for the procession
of power confrontation with a
stubborn impulse. Although the
power makes every effort to
conquer sexual desire, but sexual
desire cannot be fully controlled.
• Foucault believes that the
situation was exactly the
opposite， i. e. sex betrays its
nature through power。
Taboos in sex are anthropologically,
ethnographically [民族学地】, economically,
politically, demographically【人口统计学地】or
otherwise oriented
• Some modern myths about
homosexuals:
• Incest ethnographically degenerates
a nation
• Homosexuals do not give birth to
babies, henceforth they help to
reduce the population of a nation;
• Bisexuals transfer horrible diseases
like AIDS (never proved);
• …
Sex: serving what
purposes?
• From time immemorial
to the present day, sex
has been serving three
purposes, i.e.
• to reproduce
[biological instinct of
all animals, as Mencius
expressed “There are
three things that are
unfilial, and to have no
posterity is the
greatest of them” [不孝
有三, 无后为大”],
Sex: serving what
purposes?
•
•
to establish or maintain
interpersonal relations
[as in the case of Wang
Zhaojun and countless
marriages at all levels of
society],
And, lastly, for sensual
pleasure, which is indeed
the fundamental or
ontological purpose.
Christianity also insists
that sex should serve the
sole purpose of
reproduction, not for
sensual pleasure
• Radicals like Foucault
and the Chinese
sexpert Li Yinhe argue
that various forms of
sexual behavior should
be allowed, as 200
years ago in Europe,
then sex was not
regarded as anything
else or as an
attachment to politics,
religion, economy…nor
was it a reflection of
man’s nature, nor
character.
•
Recent scientific research shows human
beings can have as many as 17 different
sexual types
Bibliography [English]
• Freud, Sigmund 1920, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud, vol. 18, ed. James Strachey, London: Hogarth
•
•
•
•
Press and Institute of Psycho-A.
Freud, Sigmund 1924 (1961), "The Dissolution of the Oedipus
Complex," in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIX, ed. James
Strachey, London: Hagarth.
Leavitt, David, Collected Stories, Bloomsbury, 2003。
Peckham, Morse, Art and Pornography, Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1971.
Sex Dictionary:
http://www.thesexdictionary.com/alphabet/c.shtml.
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Thank you!