Queer Theory and Communication

From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s)

Gust Yep

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317953609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Get a queer perspective on communication theory! Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s) is a conversation starter, sparking smart talk about sexuality in the communication discipline and beyond. Edited by members of The San Francisco Radical Trio, the book integrates current queer theory, research, and interventions to create a critical lens with which to view the damaging effects of heteronormativity on personal, social, and cultural levels, and to see the possibilities for change through social and cultural transformation. Queer Theory and Communication represents a commitment to positive social change by imagining different social realities and sharing ideas, passions, and lived experiences. As the communication discipline begins to recognize queer theory as a vital and viable intellectual movement equal to that of Gay and Lesbian studies, the opportunity is here to take current queer scholarship beyond conference papers and presentations. Queer Theory and Communication has five objectives: 1) to integrate and disseminate current queer scholarship to a larger audience-academic and nonacademic; 2) to examine the potential implications of queer theory in human communication theory and research in a variety of contexts; 3) to stimulate dialogue among queer scholars; 4) to set a preliminary research agenda; and 5) to explore the implications of the scholarship in cultural politics and personal empowerment and transformation. Queer Theory and Communication boasts an esteemed panel of academics, artists, activists, editors, and essayists. Contributors include:

• John Nguyet Erni, editor of Asian Media Studies and Research & Analysis Program Board member for GLAAD
• Joshua Gamson, author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity
• Sally Miller Gerahart, author, activist, and actress
• Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity
• David M. Halperin, author of How to Do the History of Homosexuality
• E. Patrick Johnson, editor of Black Queer Studies
• Kevin Kumashiro, author of Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Antioppressive Pedagogy
• Thomas Nakayama, co-editor of Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity
• A. Susan Owen, author of Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media Representations of Transgressive Women
• William F. Pinar, author of Autobiography, Politics, and Sexuality, and editor of Queer Theory in Education
• Ralph Smith, co-author of Progay/antigay: The Rhetorical War over Sexuality

Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s) is an essential addition to the critical consciousness of anyone involved in communication, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the study of human sexuality, whether in the classroom, the boardroom, or the bedroom.

I. Research and Interventions

Introduction: Queering Communication: Starting the Conversation

Gust A. Yep, PhD

Karen E. Lovaas, PhD

John P. Elia, PhD

San Francisco State University

For positive social change to occur we must imagine a reality that differs from what already exists. … To treat the wounds and mend the rifts we must sometimes reject the injunctions of culture, group, family, and ego. Activism is the courage to act consciously on our ideas, to exert power in resistance to ideological pressure–to risk leaving home. Empowerment comes from ideas–our revolution is fought with concepts, not with guns, and it is fueled by vision.

–Gloria Anzaldúa (2002a, p. 5)

This project probably started when the three of us had our first conversation over dinner in January 2000. Although we have known each other on campus, the dinner was our first attempt to get together and talk about our common research and teaching interests. All three of us come from interdisciplinary backgrounds and our work has appeared in interdisciplinary publications. In that first conversation, we discovered that we have much in common. We share a strong interest in theoretical discourses about sexuality and our dissatisfaction with the way sexuality has been theorized, researched, and taught in our disciplines. We felt, and still feel, that much of the scholarly work on sexuality, either consciously or unconsciously, participates in, contributes to, and affirms the normalization of hegemonic heterosexuality as invisible, natural, given, and taken for granted. We also concur that we, as scholars and teachers, do not wish to participate in the reification of current sexual hierarchies and the oppression of sexual others. We come together with a commitment to positive social change by imagining different social realities and sharing ideas, passions, and lived experiences.

Since that first conversation, we have engaged in numerous lively exchanges. We believe that queer theory offers ways to imagine different social realities, gender/sexual systems, and participation in cultural politics. We hope that this volume will spark many lively conversations in the Communication discipline and beyond.

Queering Communication

The preference of “queer” represents … an aggressive impulse of generalization; it rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal…. The insistence on “queer”–a term initially generated in the context of terror–has the effect of pointing out a wide field of normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence.

–Michael Warner (1993, p. xxvi, our emphasis)

Queer theory¹ is one of the most significant intellectual movements of the last two decades. Based on the fundamental premise that queer theory is “another discursive horizon, another way of thinking the sexual” (de Lauretis, 1991, p. iv) that debunks the stability of identity categories by focusing on the historical, social, and cultural constructions of desire and sexuality intersecting with other identity markers, such as race, class, and gender, among others, queer theory has been influential both in the academy and in cultural politics. In the academy, this “queering” has taken place in a number of disciplines in the social sciences, education, humanities and the arts (e.g., Garber, 2001; Kumashiro, 2001; Letts & Sears, 1999; Patton & Sánchez-Eppler, 2000; Pinar, 1998; Seidman, 1996a; Somerville, 2000; Tierney, 1997). In the community, queer theory has reshaped identity politics, political organizing, and community activism (e.g., Adam, 1999; Blasius, 2001; Kirsch, 2000; Rimmerman, 2002; Tucker, 1997; Turner, 2000; Warner, 1999).

In spite of the theoretical currency and the potential pragmatic utility of queer theory, the Communication discipline is just beginning to acknowledge, recognize, and apply its fundamental tenets to the study of human communication. To date, there are only two published volumes in the field and both of them can best be characterized as projects in the realm of more traditional Gay and Lesbian Studies rather than contemporary queer theory.

In 1981, James Chesebro accurately observed, “a communication perspective of homosexuality has been extremely slow to emerge” (p. xiii). He further noted, “the speech communication discipline has only recently assessed its neglect of this research area and established a mechanism to encourage and to examine homosexuality and sexual preference as communication phenomena” (p. xiii). In his groundbreaking volume, Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication, Chesebro went on to offer a communication perspective on the study of “the language, nonverbal acts, and symbols of gay males and lesbians … and the symbols employed by heterosexuals to conceive of and to respond to homosexual behavior” (p. xii). Although this pioneering collection of essays was well received, a long period of silence and scholarly inactivity in the discipline followed.

It was not until 1994 that a second book, Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality, was published in the field. Jeffrey Ringer, editor of the collection, noted that the anthology was based on premises similar to those of its predecessor. More specifically, he writes,

[the book] examines the rhetoric of gay politicians, the symbols and strategies used during the coming out process, the strategies used to resolve conflicts in gay and lesbian relationships, and the decision whether or not to come out in the classroom as these reflect the gay and lesbian experience, primarily in the United States, today.

(1994, p. 2, our emphasis)

Although both collections are significant in the field of communication, it is apparent that they treat lesbian and gay experiences and identities as singular and stable categories; therefore, they might continue to (re)produce, perpetuate, and normalize heteronormative ideologies and contemporary sexual hierarchies. More simply put, these earlier works assume a minoritizing view of homosexuality and affirm the heterosexual center as normal, invisible, and unquestioned.

This volume endeavors to make two significant discursive shifts consistent with contemporary queer theory. The first is the rejection of minoritizing views in favor of the universalizing. The minoritizing view suggests that the homo/heterosexual definition is an issue of enormous importance for only a small, discrete, and relatively fixed homosexual minority, while the universalizing view maintains that it is an issue of tremendous importance in the lives of individuals across the spectrum of sexualities (Sedgwick, 1990). The universalizing view locates and exposes the incoherencies of terms such as “natural” sexuality, “woman,” and “man” that stabilize heterosexuality (Jagose, 1996).

The second shift is the approach to sexual identities as multiple, unstable, and fluid social constructions intersecting with race, class, and gender, among others, as opposed to singular, stable, and essentialized social positionings. Seidman (1996b) elaborates,

The aim [of queer theory] is not to abandon identity as a category of knowledge and politics but to render it permanently open and contestable as to its meaning and political role…. [D]ecisions about identity categories become pragmatic, related to concerns of situational advantage, political gain, and conceptual utility. The gain, say Queer theorists, of figuring identity as permanently open as to its meaning and political use is that it encourages the public surfacing of differences or a culture where multiple voices and interests are heard. (p. 12)

In short, queer theory challenges the modern system of sexuality as a body of knowledge that structures and organizes the personal, institutional, and cultural life of individuals in Western societies. As such, it shifts the focus from an exclusive concern with the oppression and emancipation of the homosexual subject to an analysis and critique “of the institutional practices and discourses producing sexual knowledges and the way they organize social life, attending in particular to the way these knowledges and social practices repress differences” (Seidman, 1996b, p. 13).

Since the publication of Ringer’s (1994) volume, there has been a growing interest in queer theory among communication scholars. For example, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Division of the National Communication Association (NCA) was established in 1997 to encourage the production and dissemination of queer scholarship in the discipline. Two years later, the GLBT Division reported an increase in membership to more than 250 scholars. Similarly, the Western States Communication Association (WSCA) sponsored several panels on queer communication at its annual meeting in Vancouver, BC, in 1999. Although current interest in queer theory has been reported in the communication discipline, no attempts have been made to bring together current queer scholarship in communication beyond conference papers and presentations. This volume, in part, begins to fill this gap.

Goals and Objectives

This volume recognizes the need for Gay and Lesbian Studies and Queer Theory to coexist in an ongoing productive tension. As such, it does not seek theoretical hegemony. The primary goal of this volume is to bring contemporary queer theory into the communication discipline. We have five objectives: (1) to integrate and disseminate current queer scholarship in communication to a larger national and international audience–both academic and nonacademic; (2) to examine the potential implications of queer theory in human communication theory and research across a variety of communication contexts; (3) to stimulate dialogue among queer scholars in the discipline; (4) to set a preliminary research agenda; and (5) to explore the implications of the scholarship in cultural politics and personal empowerment and transformation.

To accomplish these objectives, the essays in the collection address at least one of the following three themes. (Although such themes do overlap, we are, for purposes of discussion, identifying them separately.) One theme is interventions, in which essays address, describe, and explain current metatheoretical and theoretical issues related to “queering communication theory” and ways contemporary queer theory changes and provides new possibilities for how we theorize, research, or participate in cultural politics and engage in personal empowerment and transformation. Another theme is research. In this venue, essays present exemplary research in communication, using contemporary queer theory to examine a variety of communication situations. Finally, the Reflections section includes brief essays focusing on personal reflections by prominent queer theorists and young scholars of queer studies on the nature, impact, and challenges of queer theory in their academic scholarship, teaching, personal and collective lives, and engagement in cultural politics. The volume concludes with a resource section.

Contributions of the Articles

As mentioned earlier, this volume neither purports nor promises to be the definitive word on queer theory and communication studies. Rather, this collection, taken as a whole, is intended to be a “conversation starter.” In many ways, communication studies has lagged behind other disciplines in terms of including queer theory. The essays contained in this volume not only demonstrate some of the exciting possibilities queer theory holds for communication studies but also how interdisciplinary work in queer theory can inform communication studies and vice versa. As you will discover, this collection includes a number of pieces written by communication scholars and essays by scholars from other fields spanning Asian American studies, education, English literature, and health education, among others.

The collection begins with a foreword by Sally Gearhart, one of the pioneers in the communication discipline, who advocated for inclusion of sexual minority issues in the field, and whose efforts for inclusion could be felt from the classroom to the national organization. Her essay provides a rich historical context of how the communication discipline began including sexual others. Her essay urges readers to see the theoretical and practical import of queer theory, and applauds its potential for transformative discourse and practice.

The first three articles in this collection are incisively critical of heteronormativity and offer ideas about not only the importance and positive aspects of queer theory, but also its potential drawbacks and challenges. Setting the tone for the collection and providing readers with a detailed critical analysis of heteronormativity in the communication discipline, the first piece in the volume, by Gust A. Yep, specifically addresses issues of symbolic, psychological, and discursive violence that result from heteronormativity. Following an explication and analysis of the many forms of violence, he explores ways “for queer world-making through the lens of queer theory,” which he suggests can be used as a theoretical tool to unpack the very foundations and implications of hegemonic heterosexuality and to begin to move toward positive personal and social transformations.

Continuing the critique of heteronormativity, the next essay, by John P. Elia, deals with how the culturally dominant form of heterosexuality has specifically served to systematically erase the legitimacy–and thus has been thoroughly discriminatory–of other relational forms. To illustrate this, he offers a description and analysis of how various institutions perpetuate heteronormative ideologies and practices. Elia also raises concerns about how heteronormativity has been marketed, and goes on to describe the manifestations of this culturally reproduced and perpetuated sexual norm. Finally, this essay explores the merits and possible drawbacks of queering relationships, and ends with a call-to-arms position about how scholars of interpersonal relationships need to be far more theoretically inclusive to avoid reproducing narrow and discriminatory research that often does not represent queer people.

Also critical of heteronormativity, next in the collection, Karen E. Lovaas turns to an analysis and critique of the subfield of nonverbal communication. Beginning with a brief history of nonverbal communication studies, and then turning to a description of the absence of the queer subject in nonverbal communication scholarship (in particular, textbooks on nonverbal communication), she shows that pedagogy and research in this area reproduce not only heterosexist, but also sexist ideologies. She concludes her essay by showcasing three examples of exemplary scholarship in nonverbal communication that employ queer theory, which she says offer a view of what such scholarship might look like. Finally, Lovaas urges nonverbal communication scholars to be more inclusive of the queer subject in their research.

The next two pieces in the collection offer theoretical and methodological interventions. Calling attention to how various lesbians of color have contributed to research dealing with the relationship of queer theo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: My Trip to Queer
• I. Research and Interventions
• II. Reflections
• III. Resources
• Index