Illustration by Sonia Pulido.
Not so long ago, there seemed to be something radical in rejecting the future. Looking back, it’s easy to see why. In the 1990s, history was over; the United States and capitalism had won. Strutting conservative televangelists and smug liberal technocrats took turns running the world. Globalization promised more of everything: more productivity, more innovation, more wealth. Economic prosperity and regressive moralism went hand in hand. The nuclear family was once again sacred, and non-normative sexuality remained stigmatized: Don’t ask, but also don’t tell. Conservatives as well as some liberals supported any policy that promised to protect children, born and unborn, so they might take advantage of the bright future that awaited them. Meritocracy was supposedly thriving, even as inequality prevailed everywhere.
Can queer theory be
erotophobic? This book proceeds from the perplexing observation that for all of its political agita, rhetorical virtuosity, and intellectual restlessness, queer theory conforms to a model of erotic life that is psychologically conservative and narrow. Even after several decades of combative, dazzling, irreverent queer critical thought, the field remains far from grasping that sexuality’s radical potential lies in its being understood as “exogenous, intersubjective and intrusive” (Laplanche). In particular, and despite the pervasiveness and popularity of recent calls to deconstruct the ideological foundations of contemporary queer thought, no study has as yet considered or in any way investigated the singular role of psychology in shaping the field’s conceptual impasses and politico-ethical limitations.
Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas longreads.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from longreads.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
INTRODUCTION
During the many intense upheavals that occurred in British politics in 2016, accusations were levelled at two prominent female politicians: British newspaper the Independent reported the assertion made by a parliamentary colleague that Liz Kendall, a prospective candidate for British Labour Party leadership ‘would not make a good leader because she does not have children.’ [1] The same argument was advanced, in different form, in respect of Theresa May, British Prime Minister between 2016 – 2019, who was accused by fellow parliamentarian Andrea Leadsom of being unfit for office as leader of the Conservative Party, and by extension, future Prime Minister, because she did not have children. The