Queer theory, a body of academic writings that has since the early 1990s attempted to redefine and de‐stabilize categories of sexuality in the light of post‐structuralist theory, and especially under the influence of Michel Foucault's La Volonté de savoir (1976). Rooted in the lesbian and gay activism of the 1970s but now more sceptical about inherited conceptions of ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ as simple or given ‘identities’, certain gay and lesbian intellectuals and activists adopted the more controversial but also more inclusive label ‘queer’ to cover a range of sexual orientations and sub‐cultures. Queer theory stresses the historical variability, fluidity, and provisional or ‘performed’ nature of sexualities (see performative), notably in the writings of Judith Butler, whose book Gender Trouble (1990) is a key text of this school. The pursuit of these concerns in the reading of literary texts is more often associated with the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whose Between Men (1985) and Epistemology of the Closet (1990) investigate the paradoxes of ‘homosocial’ male bonding and homophobia in English fiction. For a fuller account, consult Annamarie Jogose, Queer Theory (1996).

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved.