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Queer Theory

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Queer theory originated during the 1980s AIDS crisis and functioned first as a socially and politically mobilizing phrase to fight intensifying homophobia as well as government and medical inaction regarding the disease (Jagose 1996, p. 93–94). For Leo Bersani (1995, p. 72), “queer” incorporated “the inextricability of the sexual and the political.” The very concept of “queer,” then, has embedded within it, as Ann Cvetkovich (2003, p. 174) notes, “histories of suffering and resistance,” including the “crucial presence of lesbian activists, so many of whom came to ACT UP with previous political experience and contributed organizing skills.” The theorizing of “queer” has for some threatened to erase that founding lesbian presence, replacing women with a generic abstraction (“queer”), despite the fact “many” of the most prominent queer theorists were “undoubtedly feminist”: queer theory itself was “an interdisciplinary formation … developed out of – and continues to be understandable in...

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Correspondence to William F. Pinar .

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Pinar, W.F. (2016). Queer Theory. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_86-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_86-1

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