Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies

Author(s): Adam Isaiah Green

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 26-45
Published by: American Sociological Association
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 Queer Theory and Sociology:
Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies*

ADAM ISAIAHGREEN
University of Toronto

INTRODUCTION
If David Halperin was correct when he suggested that a proper reading of Foucault
required first "forgetting Foucault" (Halperin 2002), perhaps the same claim could
be made of queer theory.Queer theory represents a theoretical vanguard to which
many scholars of sexuality, perhaps younger North American scholars in particular,
seek to attach themselves.1This became strikingly evident to me in a recent gradu
ate seminar on contemporary sexuality theory,wherein graduate students proclaimed
passionate allegiance to the tenets of queer theory, against which the vagaries of
sociology were put in high relief.Queer theory, itwas held, "troubles" the heterosex
ist, patriarchal, and race-blind assumptions built into sociological renderings of the
subject and provides a farmore nimble understanding of the complexity of subject
position. Whereas canonical, "old school" sociological approaches to sexuality and
gender are hopelessly mired in the antiquated Enlightenment subject, queer theory
promises a more rigorous excavation of subjectivities-a paradigm shift, of sorts,
ignored by contemporary scholars of sexuality at their peril. Thus, when a young
woman in the course suggested that shemight use a symbolic interactionist perspec
tive in her final paper, she was greeted with muted gasps and one very audible jeer.
In this article, I revisit the relationship of queer theory and sociology in order to
address some critical issues around conceiving the subject and "the self' in sexual
ities research.My intention is neither to advocate for a particular framework nor
to advance a methodological orthodoxy that precludes an application of multiple
theoretical perspectives. Rather, I suggest that doing scholarly work on the sexual
subject requires that we engage queer theory and sociology with more careful atten
tion to the possibilities and limitations of these respective approaches. Accordingly,
two dual points follow. First, I suggest that while sociology and queer theory are
not reducible to each other, sociology has its own deconstructionist impulse built
into pragmatist and symbolic interactionist analyses of identity and subjectivity. In
this latter body of work, self and identity are treated as complex, shifting formations
constituted in language and interaction. In fact, with regard to gender and sexuality,
this old school of sociology has been doing a kind of queer theory long before the

*
Address correspondence to: Adam Green, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spad
ina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2J4. Tel: +416 978 8261; Fax: +416 978 3963; E-mail:
Adamisaiah.green@utoronto.ca.
1
Barry Adam (2005) suggests that queer theory is largely a North American product with far less
significance for European scholarship in sexuality.

Sociological Theory 25:1 March 2007

C) American Sociological Association. 1307 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 27

first queer theorist set pen to paper. Hence, the recognition that identities are "mul
tiple" and "fluid" does not by itself justify the use of queer theory as a means to
theorize the sexual subject. But second, conversely, queer theory has a very specific
deconstructionist raisond'etre in relation to conceiving the sexual subject thatmarks
its key departure from Foucault and sociology more generally.This deconstructionist
mandate, by definition, moves queer theory away from the analysis of self and sub
ject position including those accruing from race, class, and gender and toward a
conception of the self radicallydisarticulated from the social. This "anti-identitarian"
position has been a source of criticism among some sociologists, who find in queer
theory an indefensible "refusal to name a subject" (Seidman 1993:132). But this
criticism, I suggest, stems from a misplaced effort to synthesize queer theory and so
ciology, when in fact, the two approaches to the subject represent incommensurable
positions that cannot be collapsed into a single framework.On the contrary, I argue
that the precise theoretical promise of queer theory requires a sustained commitment
to deconstruction that operates in tensionwith, not as an extension of, sociological
approaches to the subject.
In what follows, I draw out critical commonalities and points of departure be
tween queer theoretical, Foucauldian, and pragmatist/interactionist approaches to
the sexual subject. I argue that while each of these approaches begins with a de
constructionist gesture, queer theory is uniquely committed to the dissolution of the
subject,with profound implications for the kinds of questions, methods, and theory
building thatmay follow from its epistemological premises. Having established this
key distinction and reflected on its analytic and methodological implications, I then
revisit queer theoretical literatures to consider some theoretical problems attendant
to a mixed treatment of the subject that dismantles social contingency in some cases
(e.g., homosexual subject positions) while recuperating social contingency in others
(e.g., racialized subject positions). A conclusion section revisits the question of the
subject and self in sexuality studies and suggests how scholars of sexualitymay use
queer theory, interpretivist, and constructionist sociology more productively in their
research programs.

THEORIZING THE SEXUAL SUBJECT: QUEER THEORETICAL

AND FOUCAULDIAN APPROACHES
Queer theory emerged in the late 1980s (Seidman 1993, 1996) at a time inWestern
scholarshipwhen debates around the ontology of sexual orientation and gender had
reached a tired impasse. For themost part, in sociology and the humanities, social
constructionists could declare intellectual victory insofar as these fields churned out
scholarship premised on a decidedly anti-essentialist conception of the sexual sub
ject. In contrast to late 19th- and 20th-century writings-most notably work in the
psychiatric and sociobiological traditions2 this vein of scholarship conceived of the
sexual subject as a culturally dependent, historically specific product (D'Emilio 1983;
Fitzgerald 1986; Duberman et al. 1990; Halperin 1990; Faderman 1991; Kennedy
and Davis 1993; Chauncey 1994; Bech 1997). For instance, Chauncey (1994) found
in turn-of-the-centuryNew York a highly developed urban subculture wherein the
reigning sexual epistemology of the period oriented around sexual aim as opposed
to object-choice produced a segment of homosexual working-class "fairies"engaged

2For instance, see Cesare Lombrosso (1895) for an essentialist sociobiological approach.
28 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

in sexual relations with "rough trade." Thus, a historically specific system of sexual
classification came to define possibilities for sexual subjectivity that were rendered
unintelligible only a generation laterwhen European psychoanalytic and sexological
discourse gained a foothold in the popular American imagination.
As a totality, this social constructionist literatures gelled into a corpus of what
became "Lesbian and Gay Studies," with lesbian and gay subjects, identities, and
communities as objects of research. And yet, even as this body of work sought to
embed the lesbian and gay "self' in particular historical or social structural condi
tions, it nevertheless treated its object of study as a fait accompli.3 That is, this body
of work took as its focus a kind of "shored up" sexual subject position that could
be captured by research and recourse to language. Indeed, the lesbian and gay sub
ject of this period was knowable through observation, recoverable through archival
investigation, and anxious to emerge from the historical closet and speak for itself.
It was against the backdrop of a growing, increasingly institutionalized Lesbian
and Gay Studies, that queer theory arose (Seidman 1993, 1996;Warner 1993;Epstein
1996). Drawing heavily on thework of Foucault and feminist poststructural currents
more generally, queer theorists advanced an expressly critical approach to the subject
of Lesbian and Gay Studies and those institutional forces that conspired to produce
themodern homosexual (Jagose 1996). Rather than taking comfort in the "recovery"
of lesbian and gay subjects in history and society, queer theorists were alarmed by
the epistemological congruency between the regulatorymedical discourse of 19th
and 20th-century sexology and psychiatry, and the scholarship of Lesbian and Gay
Studies (Fuss 1991; Butler 1993;Warner 1993).Whereas scholars of Lesbian and
Gay Studies believed theywere liberating the lesbian and gay subject/history from its
homophobic erasure, queer theorists saw in this "liberation" a reiterationof the terms
of social control, and a consolidation of their regulator powers (de Lauretis 1991;
Fuss 1991; Butler 1993). Thus, the study of the lesbian and gay subject amounted
less to the recovery of "silenced" voices than a moment of their interpellation into
a discursive field of symbolic domination.
While it is important to note the many different kinds of approaches that fall
under the title of "queer theory," it is possible, nonetheless, to draw out a set of the
oretical "hallmarks" (Stein and Plummer 1996) that distinguish the tenets of queer
theory from prior constructionist approaches. Synthesizing Stein's and Plummer's
formulation of these hallmarks, I have noted elsewhere two predominant strains of
queer theory (Green 2002). In the first strain, "radical deconstructionism," queer
theory interrogates categories of sexual orientation, most often from the standpoint
of the text (Epstein 1996; Seidman 1996; Edwards 1998;Gamson 2000). Radical de
constructionism, then, "queers" and dismantles otherwise intelligible renderings of
sexual orientation (Fuss 1991;Warner 1993; Edelman 2004). And in a second strain,
"radical subversion," queer theory seeks to disrupt the normalizing tendencies of
the sexual order, locating nonheteronormative practices and subjects as crucial sites
of resistance (Butler 1993;Warner 1993; Eng et al. 2005). Their different analytic
emphases aside, these two strains are united by a deconstructive raison d'etre that
aims to "denaturalize" dominant social classifications and, in turn, destabilize the
social order. Indeed, the task of denaturalization through deconstruction is paradig
matic of a "queer epistemology" and reflected in the theoretical and methodological

3 an see Mclntosh as a critical

For important early exception, (1968), whose work has been regarded
precursor to current queer theory.
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 29

imperatives of its leading theorists from its inception (Fuss 1991;Warner 1993) to
itsmost recent formulations (Edelman 2004; Eng et al. 2005).
It is precisely at this conceptual juncture that queer theory draws and departs
from Foucault a figure whose significance to queer theory cannot be overstated
(Halperin 1995). Rather thanweigh in on the issue of the ontological basis of sexual
orientation, Foucault pursued a different kind of question: How has "sexuality,"
broadly conceived, been used in the service of the formation of the modern self?
As in his study of madness, Foucault (1980) found in sexuality a process of human
subjectificationwhereby expert discourses came to constitute the sexual subject and
his and her desires. In modernity, Foucault argued, these expert discourses serve as
an insidious form of social control, as consequential, or more, for shaping human
experience than any invading battalion under the charge of the premodern "Old
Regime." In this sense, "knowledge" and "power" are inseparable,argued Foucault,
as the identities, practices, and desires of themodern subject are constituted through
discourse.4 Indeed, if homosexual practices in theMiddle Ages represented the sinful
behavior of sodomy, the same practices inmodern times constituted a homosexual
"personage" a new kind of "species" requiring its own taxonomic formulation and
attendant judicial and medical intervention (Foucault 1980).
But if Foucault had captured a form of human subjectification crystallized in the
creation of the modern sexual subject, queer theory would take this analysis as the
cornerstone of a politicotheoretical enterprise, and then work decisively against the
insight. Coupling a strong deconstructionism with a radical, anti-identity politics,
queer theory rejects a stable, knowable subject most notably, the lesbian and gay
subject of Lesbian and Gay Studies.Whereas Foucault observed an insidious, dis
ciplining social order rifewith dominated subjects, queer theory finds in this same
social order fluid and destabilized subjectswho "exceed" or side step the regulatory
capacities of normalizing regimes.Keen to disrupt the intelligibility of themodern
sexual subject, queer theorists confront normalizing regimes and their subject ob
jects as sites prime for deconstruction. Thence the queer critique of Lesbian and
Gay Studies, with its seeming lock, stock, and barrel appropriation of a knowable
sexual subject via sexological classifications and their attendant identity politics. This
is themoment of the "queer turn" (Jagose 1996; Seidman 1996;Gamson 2000).
Paradoxically, then, queer theory inherits but disavows the Foucauldian analysis
of themodern sexual subject-on the one hand, embracing the history of sexuality
in The History of Sexuality, and on the other, working sharply against the grain of
its thesis to unearth rowdy, "undercoded" "bodies and pleasures" that lie beyond
the social order. Standing in vigilant defiance of epistemological and methodologi
cal approaches designed for discovering the "truth" of the sexual self, queer theory
"empties" social categories of their contents, thereby interrupting (in theory) their
regulatory capacities. In thisway, queer theory enters social theory as a torch bearer
of Foucault's utopian aspirations for desubjectification,5 but does so by rejecting

4For an alternative reading of Foucault, however, see Halperin (2002), who argues that Foucault's
analysis of sexuality in The History of Sexuality, Volume I, was never intended to address the question
of subjectivity. While beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that Halperin's defensive reading
of Foucault has the ironic consequence of greatly diminishing Foucault's contribution to sociology, not
the least because it would short-circuit critical insights attributed to him regarding the constitution of the
modern self.
5
Foucault envisioned the possibility of using homosexual identity as a potential point of departure for
an emancipatory project by means of "homosexual ascesis"?a kind of "transformative practice of the self
?that would inspire new forms of intimate relations divested of their coding within the current modern
sexual regime. Indeed, the queer theoretical invocation of "bodies and pleasures" is a direct reference to
30 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

the very processes of modern subjectification that comprise the core of Foucault's
analysis of themodern subject.
Having set forth a preliminary outline of the relationship of Foucauldian and queer
theoretical approaches to the sexual subject, I turn below to analyze the relationship
of interpretivist sociology most notably pragmatist and symbolic interactionist ap
proaches, broadly conceived to the work of a preeminent queer theorist, Judith
Butler. I argue that this latter relationship bears important resemblances to the for
mer, with critical implications for theorizing the sexual subject.

PRAGMATISM, INTERACTIONISM, AND QUEER THEORY: SIBLINGS

IN DECONSTRUCTION
Among some academic and activist circles, queer theory represents a theoretical van
guard that promises to right the wrongs of old school sociology in the study of
sexuality. Steeped in positivism and the false certainty of a knowable subjectwith a
stable sexual orientation, sociology may appear hopelessly outdated an antique of
sorts, with all the charm and irrelevance of the "ol vitrolla" (Maines 1996; Dunn
1997). And indeed, queer theory has reinvigorated the study of sexuality, pushing
scholars to think of social categories more critically, and to be mindful of the ways
inwhich such categories may obfuscate the very subjects they are intended to name
(Gamson andMoon 2004). Situated as a counterpoint to Lesbian and Gay Studies,
for instance, queer theory has brought to bear fresh questions regarding the relation
ship of power and knowledge to the field of sexuality studies and in the arena of
AIDS activism (Halperin 1995;Harper et al. 1997; Halberstam 2005). Nonetheless,
pragmatist, symbolic interactionist and queer theoretical approaches to the subject
are siblings, of a sort, with roots in a parallel deconstructionist conception of iden
tity. In fact, despite important differences that distinguish interpretivist sociological
frameworks (including pragmatism, ethnomethodology, phenomenology, labeling in
teractionism, symbolic interactionism, structural symbolic interactionism, and the
post-World War II study of deviance more generally) these share with queer the
ory the rejection of a presocial, prelinguistic self, and a subsequent elaboration of
the "problem" of identity. In these formulations, the act of making sense of the self
is simultaneously a moment of its constitution.
The implications of this ontological premise have been developed in a formidable
pragmatist and, later, interactionist literature that now spans over a century of re
search. Inspired by Cooley's "looking glass self' (1902), Dewey's (1922) pragmatism,
Mead's "I and me" (1934), and Goffman's analysis of the social self (1959), research
in the pragmatist and interactionist traditions has included analyses of self and iden
tity that run eerily parallel to the more rhetorically complex formulations of the
subject found in queer theory (Dunn 1997). Thus, many decades ago, this old school
sociology posited a social self thatwas in flux, comprised multiple identities, and, in
some strains, without any semblance of a "core" identity or personality. As Turner
notes of Goffman:

this potential (for an excellent discussion of homosexual ascesis, see Halperin 1995). Nevertheless, while the
queer theoretical and Foucauldian projects regarding emancipation are in certain respects commensurable,
homosexual ascesis occupies only a very small and preliminary place within Foucault's broader thesis
concerning the modern subjectification of the "criminally insane," the "mad," and the "homosexual." In
fact, as I argue at greater length below, with regard to the conception of the modern subject, queer theory
hinges on a rejection of subjectification processes in the performative interval, whereas Foucault's thesis
hinges on their elaboration.
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 31

Goffman's view of self is highly situational and contingent on the responses of

others. Although one of themain activities of actors in a situation is to present
themselves in a certain way, Goffman was highly skeptical about a "core" or
"trans-situational" self-conception that is part of an individual's "personality".
In almost all his works he took care to emphasize that individuals do not have an
underlying "personality" or "identity" that is carried from situation to situation.
(2003:405).

Moreover, while symbolic interactionism, on thewhole, has not charged discourse

with the singularly constitutive powers now freighted on language in poststructural
approaches, pragmatism and labeling interactionism, nonetheless, have postulated a
central role for language in constituting subjectivities and practices. Thus, in the de
viance literature,Tannenbaum writes of a "tagging process" wherein soon-to-become
criminals obtain their criminal identities through applying the discursive schema of
criminality to themselves:

The process of making the criminal, therefore, is a process of tagging, defin

ing, identifying, segregating, describing, emphasizing,making conscious and self
conscious; it becomes a way of stimulating, suggesting, emphasizing and evoking
the very traits that are complained of ... (1938:19)

And building on Tannenbaum, Lemert's (1951) classic concept of "secondary de

viance" signaled that deviant careers arose through a "process of identification"
wherein subjects developed identitieswithin a discursive field of "societal reaction"
that labeled their behaviors deviant.

When a person begins to employ his deviant behavior or role based upon it as a
means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the overt and covert problems created
by the consequent societal reaction to him, his deviation is secondary. ... If the
deviant acts are repetitive and have a high visibility, and if there is a severe
societal reaction, which, through a process of identification is incorporated as
part of the self image of the individual, the probability is greatly increased that
the integration of existing roleswill be disrupted and that reorganization based
on a new and deviant rolewill occur. (Lemert 1951:54-55)

More structurally inclined symbolic interactionistswould build on the insights of

labeling interactionism, linking the labeling process to social stratification. Thus, en
franchised professional classes undertook "moral entrepreneurship" (Becker 1963),
targeting those less advantaged for social control via new forms of institutionalized
deviance (Conrad and Schneider 1980; Schur 1984). Indeed, in this latter strain of la
beling interactionism, knowledge and power were conceived as pivotal co-conspirators
in the formation of marginal selves.
Yet, perhaps nowhere is the similarity between recent poststructural/queer formu
lations and interpretivist sociological approaches more striking than in the study
of gender. In the 1970s, for instance,Kessler and McKenna (1978) drew from eth
nomethodology in a now classicwork that renderedgender an outcome of attribution
processes, rather than an ontological property of the self,Gender did not precede its
construction; rather, it was constituted inmeaning-making procedures that assigned
the schema of one gender or another to persons in the course of social interaction.
And in a slightly different formulation,West and Zimmerman (1987) argued that
 32 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

gender was not a stable property of the self but, rathei, arose through an iterative
process of "doing" masculinity and femininity. This process represented a contin
ual social accomplishment that permeated microlevel interaction down to its most
subtle detail. In fact, long before queer theorists had located gender in performativ
ity and representation, symbolic interactionists had deconstructed gender into mo
ments of attribution and iteration, driving a stake into the heart of prior essentialist
accounts.
In sum, the discussion above is intended to demonstrate the ways in which streams
of canonical interpretivist sociology and newer queer theoretical currents are in many
respects similar.Both begin with a deconstructionist impulse suspicious of a prelin
guistic or presocial self; both view identity as an ongoing social process marked by
multiplicity, instability, and flux; and both take a critical approach to the reigning
social categories of their respective eras. Nonetheless, despite these important and,
perhaps, too often overlooked points of convergence, pragmatist, interactionist, and
queer theoretical approaches to the subject permit very different kinds of research
potentials, and are in the last analysis incommensurable positions. Below, I run both
interpretivist sociological approaches and queer theory through the "performative
interval" in order to identify the basis of this incommensurability and, later, its im
plications for doing sexuality research.

QUEER THEORY AND INTERPRETIVIST SOCIOLOGY: REVISITING THE

"PERFORMATIVE INTERVAL"
Common to both interpretivist sociological and queer theoretical approaches is an
implicit concern with what might be termed the "performative interval." I refer to the
performative interval as a unit of analysis in the interaction order wherein an actor
"acts toward," or is "called forth" into a symbolic formation such as a particular
role (e.g., juvenile delinquent). The interval in the performance marks the distance
between doing and identity whereby the doing (e.g., doing woman) represents practice
and identity (e.g., female) an interior semblance of self. The concept of the perfor
mative interval is useful as an heuristic device that underscores the irreducibility of
the subject to a presocial or prelinguistic self in pragmatist, symbolic interactionist,
and queer theoretical frameworks. That is, in these frameworks, doing and identity
are rendered nonidentical. In Goffman (1959), the dramaturgical approach is itself
a focused meditation on the performative interval, as individual actors work strate
gically through presentation to "manage the self." And in Mead: the performative
interval can be related to the "I" and the "me" wherein the former represents a
moment of reflexivity to be incorporated into the "me" in the next iteration of the
self. Thus, Mead writes:

and I remember what I said and perhaps the emotional

I talk to myself, content
that went with "I" of this moment
it. The is present in the "me" of the next
moment. There again I cannot turn around quick enough to catch myself....
As given, it is a "me," but it is a "me" which was the "I" at the earlier time.
If you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the "I" comes in, the
answer is that it comes in as a historical figure. (1934:174)

Embedding the performative interval in the context of history and "community,"

Mead's "I/me" is an iteration of self invested in but not fully captured by social
determinants.
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 33

We are individuals born into a certain nationality, located at a certain spot

geographically,with such and such family relations, and such and such political
relations.All of these represent a certain situation which constitutes the "me";
but this necessarily involves a continued action of the organism toward the
"me." Men are born into social structures they did not create, they live in an
institutional and social order they nevermade, and they are constrained by the
limitations of languages, codes, customs and laws.All of these enter into the
"me"~as constituent elements, yet the "I" always re-acts to preformed situations
in a unique manner. (1934:182)

In her analysis of the performative interval, Butler, too, is concerned to demon

strate the irreducibility of the subject to a core ontological self. Here, in a rather
striking parallel to Lemert's labeling-interactionism,Butler's subject arises in the con
stitutive gesture of "striving" toward a norm:

The ethical subject is not presumed, but is itself cultivated by the norm which
summons the subject to recognize itself according to the norm. The norm thus
makes the subject possible, and it is also themeans by which the subject comes
to recognize itself. ... It is in other words both that toward which I strive and
thatwhich gives my striving the particular form that it has. (2000:25)

These commonalities aside, it is precisely in the analysis of the performative

moment in the interval between what a subject "does" (role-taking/performing a
norm) and what a subject "is" (the self) that interpretivist sociology and queer the
ory part company. For,whereas pragmatism and symbolic interactionism focus on the
processes and techniqueswhereby individuals attempt to "shore up" the gap between
doing (I act like a woman) and the identity toward which that doing is directed (I
am a woman), queer theory focuses on the performative failure that is, the inability
of the individual to fully realize the concept and lay claim to ontological status.
This distinction in analytic emphasis is critical not only because it leads to different
kinds of questions, but because it is underwritten by quite disparate epistemological
positions regarding the status of "the self."Whereas pragmatists and symbolic in
teractionists conceive of the performative interval as a point of arrival for the social
accomplishment of the self, Butler, and queer theoristsmore generally, find in the
performative interval a point of departure in which the self is exposed as an artifact
of discourse, absent a stable interior. Thus, in Mead's formulation, the self arises in
an emergent process whereby the subjectmoves back and forth between role-taking
(e.g., the doing of gender or race) and reflexive consideration of that performance
via intersubjective feedback from important others (Dunn 1997).6 Over time, these
iterations of "I" and "me" come to constitute an interior that,while in no way fixed,
establishes the groundwork for the emergence of self.7 By contrast, in Butler, the
subject is an ever-failing iteration in a process of signification, and the self, a hollow
effect of repetition. Accordingly, whereas the old school focuses on the conditions

6As Dunn (1997) has observed, while Mead never posited an "essential" self, he nonetheless understood
the self as an interiority structured by the subject-object relation, affording human reflexivity "ontological
primacy."
7Interactionism, as a whole, has made the possibility of a "self?as a more or less stable interiority?a
central focal point. For instance, on this point, compare Mead with a very different approach to the "self
seen in Stryker's (1980) identity salience theory.
34 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

and forces thatmake a self possible, queer theory focuses on social dissolution and
a self evacuated into discourse.
Extending this epistemological distinction to sexuality studies, whereas Plummer
(1975), an interactionist, views a modern lesbian or gay identity as an ongoing ac
complishment founded on many prior moments of interaction, situational negoti
ation, conflict management and cultural commitments, Butler (1993; 2000) sees in
this same identity a fictitious effect whereby an actor "does" homosexuality in a
repetition of acts and gestures that create the illusion of sexual orientation. Hence,
Plummer studies "homosexual" subjects and identities;Butler studies "nonidentity"
and its subversive potentialities (the latterwhich are representedby the term "queer"
in queer theory proper).
Butler's conception of the performative interval also departs from Foucault's thesis
in The History of Sexuality, but here the distinction is a function of analytic empha
sis rather than opposing epistemological premises. For even as Foucault highlights
the irreducibility of the subject to an ontological self, there is the implication that
the forces of modern subjectification produce shored-up subjects that effect a closure
in the performative interval. In Foucault (1980), after all, the modern homosexual
is not just a creation in discourse, but more, a creation that exceeds the text once
constituted that is, a type of "personage" that walks and talks and articulates with
the social world as a power effect of discourse. This is the realm of the truly dom
inated modern subject wherein "docile bodies" (and their psyches) are compliant
automatons whose domination, ironically, is never more realized than in the struggle
for "lesbian and gay" civil rights. By contrast, as I have argued above, queer theory
builds on the notion of a discursively constituted sexual "personage," but then seeks
to undo this "closure" in the performative interval that is, to demonstrate the ways
inwhich the sexual subject defies taxonomic representation. Thus, Butler states:

[T]he performative, the call by the law which seeks to produce a lawful subject,
produces a set of consequences that exceeds and confound what appears to be
the disciplining intention motivating the law. ... It is this constitutive failure of
the performative, this slippage between discursive command and its appropri
ated effect, which provides the linguistic occasion and index for a consequential
disobedience. ... If one comes into discursive life thought being called or hailed
in injurious terms, how might one occupy the interpellation by which one is
already occupied to direct the possibilities of resignification against the aims of
its violation? (1993:122-23)

And Jagose, building on Butler, takes the failure of the performative and the
possibility of a "consequential disobedience" to be the centerpiece of queer theory:

Given the extent of

its commitment to denaturalization, queer itself can have
neither a foundational logic nor a consistent set of characteristics. ... [Q]ueer
opts for denaturalization as its primary strategy. ... By refusing to crystallize in
any specific form, queer maintains a relation of resistance to whatever constitutes
the normal. (1996:96, 99)

From the vantage point of this decisive difference in theorizing the self, at least four
methodological considerations follow when reflecting on the relationship of sociology
and queer theory. First, to the extent that queer theory aims to specify the disjunct
in the performative interval to explicate the ways in which the iteration of doing
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 35

falls short of or exceeds identification so the subject of queer theoretical research

can only be conceived in terms of an ever dissolving, failing iteration. This is the
"subjectless critique" of queer studies (Eng et al. 2005). Thus Gamson writes:

If "gay" and "lesbian" are provisional, discursively produced, unstable, perfor

mative, and decidedly partial identities-if they are forever in quotationmarks
how does one go about studying sexuality and sexually identified populations?
(2000:367)

But second, conversely, even if itwere possible to locate a queer subject or collec
tivity as a "failing iteration," it is unclear how one might pursue a sustained analysis
of this failing selfwithout, in turn, reifying it-that is, creating a new stable category
and, in turn, a new normalizing regime, as that seen in the oft used term queer.
Indeed, in the queer analysis of the self, the deconstructionist moment would seem
unsustainable.
Third, in a related vein, there is themethodological implication in queer theory
that by studying subjects from their own self-described subject positions, scholars of
sexuality end up reiterating and consolidating social categories, and thereby extend,
if even unwittingly, normalizing regimes (Seidman 1996;Gamson 2000). Thus, Butler
states:

If the identity we say we are cannot possibly capture us, and marks immediately
an excess and opacity which falls outside the terms of identity itself, then any
effort we make "to give an account of oneself' will fail in order to approach
being true. And as we ask to know the other, or ask that the other say, finally,
who he or she is, it will be important that we do not expect an answer that will
ever satisfy. And by not pursuing we let the other live, offering a recognition
that is not based on knowledge, but on its limits. (2000:10)

Taken together, these threemethodological implications introduce a formidable

impasse for a sociological research program in the study of sexuality, not the least
being the problem of identifying a subject, let alone a sexual community or collective
politic. For whereas pragmatist and interactionist approaches typically "bracket" the
question of the "truth" of social categories, privileging instead the lived experience
of subjects, queer theory takes the instability of social categories as its starting point,
privileging instead the deconstructionist moment. One important implication of this
is that even as the doing of gender and sexuality in Butler anchors queer theory to
the empirical world, it in fact does so in only a very narrow sense that is, its target
of interest is defined in a highly specifiedway within a poststructural framework that
aims toward desubjectification.
Yet, from epistemological differences in conceiving the self, a fourth consequence
emergeswith particular importance for considering the relationship of queer theory
and sociology: to the extent that queer theorymoves to account for an actual subject
or a subject position for example, a "raced" or "classed" or "gendered" person
so itmust, by necessity, fall back on the principles of an interpretivist epistemology,
including the formulation of a subject with a more-or-less knowable interiority
that is, a self. For what is a "raced" or "gendered" or "classed" subject position
but an intra-pyschic experience of self marked by a specific location within a strat
ified social system?Moreover, how does one proceed to identify the specificity of
what a raced or classed or gendered person perceives in the interaction order that
36 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

is, the phenomenology of race, class and gender if not by recourse to sociologi
cal empirical methods and principles? In short, if queer theory is charged with the
task of accounting for subject positions, as seen in certain queer theoretical cur
rents that aspire to "recuperate"non-European identities (Halberstam 2005; Jagose
1996) or racialized subject positions (Barnard 1999; Perez 2005), so itmust forfeit its
deconstructionist epistemological position, dissolving back into a sociology trained
on social contingency and, in turn, a self. Indeed, regarding the study of sexual
identity and subjectivity, there is no queer theory that is, there is nothing in this
approach beyond an interpretivist sociology if it does not disrupt the intelligibility
of the subject and, by implication, the self and the social order, in the service of
deconstruction.
Having identified a decisive moment in the performative intervalwhereby queer
theory is distinguished from Foucauldian and interpretivist sociological approaches,
and having presented some importantmethodological considerations that follow from
this distinction, I turn below to reflect on these considerations in a broader body of
queer theory scholarship.

DECONSTRUCTING QUEER THEORY

In queer theory, the commitment to denaturalization through deconstruction is found
in its earliest definitional formulations and continues to run through its contempo
rary incarnations. Fuss's (1991) Inside/Out, Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, for in
stance, represents a volume in the early 1990s that anticipates queer theory and sets
forth a new, critical agenda for sexuality studiesmore generally.Despite its title, one
overarching goal of the collection is to destabilize identity categories, namely, those
designed to identify the "sexed subject" (1991:7) that is, categories of sexual ori
entation. Thus, on the hierarchical oppositions that stabilize "heterosexuality" and
"homosexuality," Fuss avers: "what is called for is nothing less than an insistent
and intrepid disorganization of the very structures which produce this inescapable
logic" (1991:6).While Fuss and fellow contributors to the volume make no claims
to resolving the problem of theorizing the "sexed subject" (1991:7), they nonetheless
advocate for the strategic use of identity categories in order to render them obsolete:

[O]ne can, by using these contested words, use them up, exhaust them, transform
then in to the historical concepts they are and have always been. Change may
well happen by working on the insides of our inherited sexual vocabularies and
turning them inside out, giving them a new face. (1991:7)

If Fuss's volume represents one of the earliest formulations of the queer theo
retical project, Eng, Halberstam, and Esteban Munoz (2005) offer one of its latest
incarnations in the aptly titled volume of Social Text, "What isQueer about Queer
Studies Now?" Using Butler's (1993) critique of sexual identity categories as a start
ing point (2005:3), Eng et al. frame contemporary queer theoreticalwork around a
''queer epistemology" that explicitly opposes the sexual categories of Lesbian and
Gay Studies and lesbian and gay identity politics:

What might be called the "subjectless" critique of queer studies disallows any
positing of a proper subject of or object for the field by insisting that queer
has no fixed political reference. Such an understanding orients queer epis
temology, despite the historical necessities of "strategic essentialism (Gayatri
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 37

Spivak's famous term), as a continuous deconstruction of the tenets of pos

itivism at the heart of identity politics. Attention to queer epistemology also
insists that sexuality the organizing rubric of lesbian and gay studies must
be rethought for its positivist assumptions. A subjectless critique establishes, in
Michael Warner's phrase, a focus on a "wide field of normalization" as the site
of social violence. (2005:3, emphasis in original)

But if classifications of sexual orientation effect a social violence via normalization,

Eng et al. (2005) insist that the field of normalization is not limited to sexuality.
In fact, social classifications such as gender, race, and nationality are constituted
by a "governing logic" (2005:4) that require an urgent epistemological intervention
through queer theory. Hence, Eng et al. mark the evolution of the queer turn in a
theoretical arc that begins with the problematization of sexual identity categories in
Fuss (1991) and extends outward to amore general deconstruction of social ontology
in contemporary queer theory:

At such a historical juncture, it is crucial to insist yet again on the capacity of

queer studies to mobilize a broad social critique of race, gender, class, nation
ality and religion, as well as sexuality. Such a theoretical project demands that
queer epistemologies not only rethink the relationship between intersectionality
and normalization from multiple points of view but also, and equally impor
tant, consider how gay and lesbian rights are being reconstituted as a type of
reactionary (identity) politics of national and global significance. (2005:4)

Edelman's No Future (2004) represents another recent, definitive piece of queer

theory, but here the queer turn moves from a deconstruction of the subject to a de
constructive psychoanalysis of the entire social order.Using the frameworkof Lacan,
Edelman's project hinges on the notion that themodern human fear of mortality pro
duces defensive attempts to "suture over the hole in the Symbolic Order." According
to Edelman, constructions of "the homosexual" are pitted against constructions of
"The Child" in themodern West, wherein the former symbolizes the inevitability of
mortality (i.e., the fact that homosexuals do not procreate) and the latter an illusory
continuity of the self with the social order (i.e., one survivesmortality through one's
offspring). At their core, the opposing constructs of homosexuality and The Child,
and the social order that they sustain, are animated by a futuristic fantasy designed
to evade mortality. Put another way, in his most dramatic argument, Edelman sug
gests that society itself is built on a displacement of the fear of death the latter that
produces an oppressive futuristic fantasy and its attendant Symbolic relations. This
leads Edelman to an effusive, queer theoretical denouement, cursing the project of
futurity and its role as the bedrock of the social order.

Fuck the social order and the Child inwhose name we're collectively terrorized;
fuck Annie, fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the
Net; fuck Laws both with capital Ls and with small; fuck the whole network of
Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop. (2004:29)

Fuss (1991), Eng et al. (2005), and Edelman (2004) represent distinct moments in
the development of queer theory that nonetheless exemplify a shared critical, decon
structionist approach that defines this genre of analysis and marks the epistemolog
ical evolution of the queer turn.Whereas Fuss's (1991) volume aims to decompose
 38 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

and render inert the reigning classifications of sexual identity, Eng et al. (2005) ob
serve the extension of a deconstructive strategy to a wider field of normalization,
while Edelman's (2004) work takes not only the specter of "the homosexual," but
the very notion of "society" as a manifestation of psychological distress requiring
decomposition.
Not all queer theoreticalwork is as faithful to its deconstructionist raison d'etre,
however, with the consequence that "the subject" -and by implication queer theory
more generally is rendered conceptually unintelligible. In this stream of queer theo
reticalwork, queer is in one moment a disembodied, nonidentity with no identifiable
"foundational logic" (Jagose 1996:96), but in the next moment, a marginal subject
position akin to a social cleavagemodel of ethnicity (Green 2002). Rejecting outright
subject positions that possess a classifiable interior in the first instance, but advancing
an analysis of subject positions with a classifiable interior in the second instance, this
formulation leaves queer theory between a rock and a hard place, epistemologically
schizophrenic and methodologically untenable. In fact, as I argue below, if queer the
ory is to remain faithful to its epistemological premises, it cannot willy-nilly dismantle
social contingency in some cases (e.g., homosexual subject positions) while recuper
ating social contingency in others (e.g., racialized subject positions). Below I revisit
three instances of this mixed treatment of the subject in queer scholarship and
suggest why these important works actually weaken the analytic promise of queer
theory.

The Homosexually Identified Queer in Warner's Fear of a Queer Planet

In the early 1990s, Michael Warner's Fear of a Queer Planet represented a bold
statement announcing the promise of queer theory. In a rousing introductory section,
Warner draws out the possibility of queer theory as a kind of critical intervention in
social theory, and as an intellectual arm to a broader queer movement that, following
Hannah Arendt, "opposes society itself' (1993:xxvii). Yet, despiteWarner's express
investment in the potentialities of a radical deconstructionism, his introductory queer
manifesto weaves back and forth between the reification and deconstruction of sexual
identity.
Warner begins the volume by invoking an ethnic identity politics, "What do queers
want?" (1993:vii), solidified around a specific social cleavage, ..."[Q]ueers live as
queers, as lesbians, as gays, as homosexuals" (1993:vii, xxviii), but then switches mid
stream to a deconstruction of identity politics, "the frame of identity politics itself be
longs to Anglo-American traditions and has some distorting influences" (1993:xvii),
a critique of of identity in multiculturalism
the reification and the analytic short
comings analysis (1993:xix), and a discussion
of intersectional of the importance of
deconstructing notions of lesbian and gay identity: "A lesbian and gay population ...
is defined by multiple boundaries that make the question who is and is not 'one of
them' not merely ambiguous but rather a perpetually and contested issue" (1993:xxv).
A similarly mixed treatment of the queer subject runs through the introduction
section, wherein queer is used to signal a homosexual subject position (1993:x), with
a collective sense of alienation (1993:xxv), and a particular vulnerability to "het
erosexual ideology" (1993:xvi), but then a kind of radical epistemological position
that defies regulation and regimes of the normal (1993:xxvi, xxvii) (Green 2002). In
fact, despite its radical deconstructionist posturing, where the remainder of Warner's
volume takes up the notion of a queer subject or self, it does so in largely con
ventional constructionist terms: as lesbian and gay people bound by homophobic
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 39

institutions and practices. Thus Sedgwick contributes a chapter on the historical re

lationship between "gay kids" and themedicalization of gender and sexual identity
in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual; Harper, a chapter on HIV prevention among
"minority groups" who share subject positions characterized as "black sexuality"
and "black male homosexuality"; and a chapter by Crimp, who invokes the term
queer to signal a lesbian and gay subject position and community struggling over
contentious sexual politics. In the latter case, for instance, "queers" are merely les
bians and gays who share a common struggle over and collective history in "coming
out":

All queers have extensive experience with the closet, no matter how much of a
sissy or tomboy we were as children, no matter how early we declared our sexual
preferences, no matter how determined we are to be openly gay or lesbian. ...
As part of our experiencewith the closet, which was formost of us the only safe
place to be as adolescents, we also know what it is like to keep the closet door
firmly shut by pretending not only to be heterosexual but also to be homophobic.
(1993:305)

My focus on these works inWarner's volume is not meant as a criticism of their

respective arguments but, rather, to demonstrate how one of the leading volumes of
queer theory engages the subject via conventional sociological epistemologies that
conceive of subject positions constituted through systems of stratification and orga
nized around shared experience and identity.There is no radical deconstruction here,
no anti-foundationalist analysis, no subversion of the social order, no "subjectless
critique." In fact, in these accounts of "queers," it is hard to locate the failing But
lerian subject or Fuss's strategic use of the terms of identity in order to render them
obsolete. Indeed, when it comes to the sexual subject,Warner's queer planet does
not seem so queer after all.

Decidedly Racialized Queers of Color inBarnard's "QueerRace"

A similar set of incommensurablepropositions are found in theoreticalwork that at
tempts to marry queer theory to concerns around race, class, and gender identities
that is, to bring an analysis of social cleavage and stable subject positions into the
queer theoretical repertoire (Barnard 1999; Halberstam 2005; Perez 2005). For in
stance, Barnard takes issuewith thewhite, Eurocentric articulations of queer theory
that have the effect of "the erasure of the identities of queers of color" (1999:199). For
Barnard, any consideration of sexualitymust include its inextricabilitywith racialized
subjectivities the latter that arise as a synthetic, rather than additive, formation.

Sexuality is always racially marked, as every racial marking is imbued with a

specific sexuality (gender, class and other classificatory inscriptions are equally
as determined and determining). In other words, I do not see sexuality and race
as disparate constituents of subjectivity or axes of power, but rather sexuality as
always-already racialized. (1999:200)

Accordingly, Barnard rejects queer theoretical conceptions of sexuality on the

grounds that such work fails to account for the particularity of racialized sexual
ities.He reasons that the failure to incorporate racial specificity arises because queer
40 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

theorists are themselveswhite, and thereforeoperate from the particularity of a white

racial standpoint.8

The construction of sexuality is usually treated separately from the construction

of race, as if each figuration of subjectivity could develop independently of the
other. ... [W]ith few exceptions, all the already canonized white queer theorists
have failed to theorize queer race or to adumbrate the always racialized nature
of every queerness in the context of academic institutions and epistemological
imperialism from which Queer Theory makes itsWestern postcolonial advance.
(1999:200)

This critique aside, Barnard aspires to recuperate an analysis of race in queer

theory, for while race itself may exist as a social construction, it nonetheless has
determinative effects on the psychological lives of nonwhites. Thus, referring to de
constructionist analysis of the category of race, Barnard writes:

And this understanding cannot, of course, eradicate the reality of thematerial

and psychological effects of these constructions on people's lives and identifica
tions, and on the ways in which they are "racialized" by themselves and others,
both historically and today. That is, race may no longer be scientific, but it still
means things; it is still social, cultural and political.

Miraculously, Barnard proposes that the deconstructionist epistemology of queer

theory can be used to decompose a white queerness, in the first instance, in order to
recover a racialized queerness, in the second.

[Q]ueer has the potential to work from and to an anti-essentialist understanding

of sexuality that recognizes the historical and cultural specificity of and multi
plicity within contemporary identities, including lesbian and gay identities.This
definition-as-differencemakes "queer" especially amenable to an understanding
of sexual identity as formatively shaped by, for instance, race, as opposed to
an identity politics model that must premise its generation of subjects on the
assumption of commonalities between "queers" (as it also constructs monolithic
communities marked by race, gender, and so on). (1999:206)

Barnard's attempt to bring social contingency into queer theory to recuper

ate a subject position using a deconstructionist framework is an oxymoronic for
mulation that violates the core epistemological premise of queer theory. Indeed,
"deconstruction" does not mean "reconstruction," nor does itmean "selective decon
struction" for a "selective reconstruction." In fact, by proposing that queer theory
capture racialized subject positions, Barnard asks queer theory to account for know
able subjects with interiors that are congruent with, represented by, and accessible
through dominant social classifications the very antithesis of the "queer turn." His
defense of the significance of race as a social category, and the "material and psy
chological effects" of racialization, reinstates, rather than deconstructs, what itmeans

8
For a recent example of this same dilemma, see Halberstam (2005) and Perez (2005) on the contentious
politics emerging out of a 2003 queer theory conference whereby the deconstructive epistemological premise
of queer theory came to loggerheads with concerns over the erasure of racialized subject positions among
a white-dominated elite of queer theorists.
QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 41

to be a person of color. And his critique of thewhite subject position of queer the
orists is itself a testimony to the stability of the social order and the power of social
categories tomark a particular kind of experience, a particular kind of subjectivity,
and, in turn, a particular kind of queer author. In short, Barnard's "queer race"
project, while surelywell intended, is doomed to failure, steering queer theory away
from the queer turn and back down the road of a decidedly sociological analysis of
subject position and the self.

The Oxymoronic Project of Jagose's Queer Theory: An Introduction

In the same way that Barnard's formulation of "queer race" represents a laudable,
but ultimately confused moment in the development of queer theory, Jagose (1996)
aims toward epistemological ecumenicalism through the oxymoronic logic of pairing
deconstructionism to an ethnicitymodel within a single framework. In this optimistic
work, the goals of a strong deconstructionism are peppered with the promise of an
analysis of social cleavages, including those accruing by race and ethnicity. Thus,
on the one hand, Jagose underscores the strong deconstructionist epistemological
premise of the term queer and queer theorymore generally:

Disillusioned with traditional identity-based forms of political organization and

engaged in a radical denaturalization of all identity categories, queer operates
not somuch as an alternative nomenclature which would measure its success by
the extent to which it supplanted the former classifications of lesbian and gay
than as means of drawing attention to those fictions of identity that stabilize all
identificatory categories. (1996:125)

Yet, in her defense of queer theory against the claims of thosewho charge itwith a
"Eurocentricbias," Jagose goes on to laudHennessey's (1993) and Sedgwick's (1990)
analyses of identities and sexualities "inflected by heterosexuality, race, gender and
ethnicity" (1996:99).Advocating the incorporation of social contingency in thisway,
Jagose is left with a muddy variant of feminist intersectional analysis that offers
neither the critical edge of queer theory nor the clarity of standpoint theory. For
what exactly is a sexuality or an identity "inflected by" race, gender, or ethnicity,
if not the object of sociological and feminist analyses that link the interior of the
subject including her self-concept and her erotic life to a particular social location?
How can queer theory operate at once as a "subjectless critique" (Eng et al. 2005:3)
and a "critique of identity" (Jagose 1996:131) that draws attention "to those fictions
of identity that stabilize all identificatory categories" (Jagose 1996:125), but at the
same time is a tool for recovering identities that align with dominant identificatory
categories that is, the sedimentation of the social order in a self?And does not one
need themethodological tools of empirical analysis rather than themethodological
procedures of deconstructionism to access such identities and subjectivities? Indeed,
ifwe follow Jagose's recommendations, thenwhat is queer theory above and beyond
interpretivistand constructionist sociology?

CONCLUSION: LOCATING THE SUBJECT AND THE SELF IN THE

STUDY OF SEXUALITIES
The problems of capturing identity and a subject in queer theory have not gone un
noticed. Fifteen years into the development of queer theory, there is now a significant
42 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

literature that demonstrates epistemological, methodological, and political shortcom

ings attendant to its deconstructionist project (Hooks 1992; Edwards 1998; Seidman
1993; Adam 2000; Green 2002; Gamson 2000; Perez 2005). For instance, in terms
devoid of subtlety, Seidman asks:

Who is the agent or subject of the politics of subversion?The poststructuralist

critique of the logic of identity ends in a refusal to name a subject. Indeed,
I detect a disposition in the deconstruction of identity to slide into viewing
identity itself as the fulcrum of domination and its subversion as the center of
an anti-identity politic. (1993:132)

Seidman's criticism of queer theory and the latter's epistemological commitment

to desubjectification represents an important caution for those wishing to turn down
the poststructuralist path in their work within sexuality studies. To choose queer
theory is to choose a very specific set of analytic strategies and assumptions that, in
effect, promote a radical rejection of the self (Wiley 1994) and thosemethodological
procedures that anchor the researcher to the empirical world. Yet, whereas Seidman
and others regard the anti-identity position of queer theory as problematic, I suggest
that this criticism may ultimately represent a misplaced effort to synthesize queer
theory and sociology, asking too much of queer theory and, perhaps, too little of
sociology. For, as I have argued here, if queer theory is tomaintain its intelligibility,
it cannot exist as a framework for capturing subjects conceived from the sociological
position of a knowable, socially constituted interior that is, a self. To the contrary,
the "recovery"of subject positions or subjectivities "inflected" by race, class, gender,
and sexual orientation is, by definition, underwritten by epistemological assumptions
and methodological procedures invested in social categories and their access through
language and observation. Hence, when sociologists attempt to make queer theory
accountable for subjects and selves or, conversely, when queer theorists attempt to
bring in social contingency to the queer theoretical project, so queer theory is ren
dered untenably oxymoronic a casualty of its own deconstruction.
Rather, perhaps the study of subjectivities and selves is not the job of queer theory,
but the territory of sociology, including (but by no means limited to) a long tradi
tion of analysis of the socially constituted self in language and interaction, including
the self's stability, but also its complex emergence (Mead 1934),multiplicity (Stryker
1980), and fluidity (Goffman 1959). For this latter project requiresnot only sociolog
ical epistemological and methodological tools for capturing a self, but an historical
orientation to the latemodern individual for whom the development of a socially
intelligible identitymay be paramount. Indeed, if there is an epochal imperative for
the late modern subject, it is to be found in the cultivation of a self that is, an
historical project directed toward a closure in the performative interval. But queer
theory, anchored in deconstruction, is the saboteur of the late modern self, and in its
hands the historical project of social intelligibility and the correspondingmechanisms
of subjectification are gaily offered up in ritual sacrifice.
Nevertheless, to argue jurisdiction for a sociological approach to the subject, be it
old school Goffman or something more contemporary, is not to toss queer theory to
the dustbin of academic irrelevance. Quite the contrary, to the extent that sexual and
gender identities are misrecognized as "real" and constituted in relation to language,
culture, religion, law, the state, local and geo-politics, media, science, technology, and
education so the deconstructionist lens of queer theory is an invaluable tool. For
the social order and, in turn, the sexual self, is no doubt organized around the axes
 QUEER THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY 43

ofWestern sexology (Sedgwick 1990), the processes of governmentality (Patton 1993),

the postmodern technologies of reproduction (Griggers 1993), the binding decisions
of legal frameworks (Halley 1993), the problem of collective identity (Gamson 1996),
the performativity of "whiteness" (Harris 2000), the parody of drag (Rupp and Taylor
2003), and so on. As a deconstructionist framework trained on denaturalization,
queer theory is something of a wrench wedged in the performative interval, laying
bare the genealogy of a given discourse and its institutional, political, and collective
effects, including its pedagogical and diagnostic manifestations, its role inmoral cam
paigns, its consequences for governmentality, and, broader still, the limits of social
ontology. Hence, the queer theoretical contribution to social theory arises precisely,
if ironically, from its rejection of "the social," rendering permanently disjunct do
ing and "being," the society and the self.Accordingly, its contribution to sexuality
studies lies not in uncovering subjects and selves, but, followingWarner (1993), by
pivoting the analysis to a broader field of normalization that invokes the terms of
the social order so that itmight ultimately reduce them to obsolescence.
But equally, to argue jurisdiction for a sociological approach to the subject is not
to sit content with the current status of sociological approaches to the sexual self, or
to call for a reinstated sociological essentialism.Quite the contrary, the deconstructive
lens of queer theory has and should continue to serve as an invaluablecounterpoint
to the ways in which sociologists conceive of the reigning schema of social classifi
cations, and their relationship to selves and subject positions. This is not to call for
a queer theory of the subject but, rather, a reflexive sociology situated in a produc
tive incommensurabilitywith queer theory a partnership in the study of sexualities
that promises a vital dialectic between the constructionist and reifying tendencies of
interpretivism, on the one hand, and the deconstructionist, negating tendencies of
queer theory, on the other. In the study of sexuality, both are necessary.
To conclude, queer theory and sociology have an important place at the table of
sexuality studies. But a proper application of each requires a clear recognition of
their respective epistemological premises, and the methodological implications that
follow.With respect to the study of the self, I have argued that the effort to synthesize
sociology and queer theory is a perilous venture.On the contrary, I suggest that the
very promise of queer theory rests in its strong deconstructionist position, existing
in tension with, rather than as an extension of, sociological approaches to the self.
Indeed, queer theory is not a theory of the self, but it is a theory surely relevant to
selves and the discursive determinants that characterize latemodernity.

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