{"title":"Queer Studies Now; or, The (Political) Economy, Stupid","authors":"Jordan Alexander Stein","doi":"10.1093/alh/ajad232","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The 1990s witnessed the origin of a decades-long “discipline problem” in queer studies, a conflict between empirical and theoretical approaches, and the two monographs under review—lesbian and gay historian Marc Stein’s Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism and queer theorist Lee Edelman’s Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing—might seem like excellent candidates to reprise it. However, this review argues that the place where lesbian and gay history and queer theory have now caught up with one another is a structural one. What’s changed since the 1990s is less our disciplines and more the political–economic conditions that sustain them.What unites these two works in a common project, however, is the way each betrays an investment in the possibility—one might say, the hope—of political and social change.","PeriodicalId":45821,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad232","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AMERICAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The 1990s witnessed the origin of a decades-long “discipline problem” in queer studies, a conflict between empirical and theoretical approaches, and the two monographs under review—lesbian and gay historian Marc Stein’s Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism and queer theorist Lee Edelman’s Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing—might seem like excellent candidates to reprise it. However, this review argues that the place where lesbian and gay history and queer theory have now caught up with one another is a structural one. What’s changed since the 1990s is less our disciplines and more the political–economic conditions that sustain them.What unites these two works in a common project, however, is the way each betrays an investment in the possibility—one might say, the hope—of political and social change.
期刊介绍:
Recent Americanist scholarship has generated some of the most forceful responses to questions about literary history and theory. Yet too many of the most provocative essays have been scattered among a wide variety of narrowly focused publications. Covering the study of US literature from its origins through the present, American Literary History provides a much-needed forum for the various, often competing voices of contemporary literary inquiry. Along with an annual special issue, the journal features essay-reviews, commentaries, and critical exchanges. It welcomes articles on historical and theoretical problems as well as writers and works. Inter-disciplinary studies from related fields are also invited.