Like the various theories and topics of research paper writings that have been worked upon in literature, queer theory is one of them. For a long time, we have been surviving in a world that recognizes just two types of genders and the only intimate relationship that can exist is between two people of opposite genders. The path of the ‘normal’ had been broken away by several writers, critics, and theorists who came up with various new theories to change the perspective of the world and the people living.
Queer theory is often said to designate gay and lesbian studies, which combines with the critical and theoretical writings about all modes of variance such as transsexuality, bisexuality, and cross-dressing.
This they do in parallel reference to the society’s normative model of sexual identity, orientation, and activities of an individual. Earlier the term queer was used in a derogatory sense to stigmatize male-female same-sex relations.
They considered this love as deviant and unnatural and thus non-acceptable in society. But since the 1990s, it has been adopted by these very gays and lesbians themselves as a non-invidious term for their way of life as well as an area of scholarly inquiry.
Therefore, this inquiry developed at a fast pace and thus holds importance in the study of literary works written by these people today. There are thus chances that students working on the same may require assignment help to supplement their studies. The reason behind these studies holding importance is that they reflect the long years of struggle that these people have faced.
The Importance Of Queer Theory
Thereafter these studies also present the readers with a different point of view, a point of view that is far more different than the normal and that breaks all the stereotypes associated with it.
Just as the African American and feminist liberation movements, these gay and lesbian movements also began as liberation movements, during the antiestablishment, anti- Vietnam war, and counter-cultural ferment of the late 1960s and 1970s. Since then, these movements have held the attention of the activists who wish to get for these gay and lesbian people, equal social, economic, and political rights, just as the heterosexual ones.
Throughout the 1970s, both movements were primarily separatist. While the gays thought themselves to be quintessentially male, the lesbians aligned themselves to the feminist movements and thought that the gay movement shared the same antifemale attitudes just as the patriarchal society did.
However, there had been a growing recognition of the degree to which both the groups shared a long history of suppressed minorities and possessed common political and social aims.
In the 1970s, researchers in their research paper writings assumed that there was a fixed, unitary identity as a gay man or a lesbian that had remained constant throughout history.
Post-Structuralism And Queer Theory
The task that was taken at hand was to identify and reclaim the works of non-heterosexual writers such as Walt Whitman, W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, and others. The list also includes William Shakespeare as well as Christina Rossetti, who represented homoerotic subject matter in their works, but whose own sexuality is left uncertain by the available biographical elements.
However, by the 1980s and 1990s, because of the assimilation of the viewpoints as well as the analytic methods of Foucault, Derrida, and other poststructuralists, the earlier assumptions about a unitary stable gay or lesbian identity were frequently questioned and the historical and critical analysis of the sexual differences became increasingly subtle and complex.
Several queer theorists adopted the deconstruction mode of dismantling the key binary oppositions of Western culture, such as heterosexual and homosexual, male and female, natural and unnatural.
This view placed everything in just two categories and in which the first category is assigned privilege, power, and authority while the second one is always marginalized, subordinated, or derogated.
Later theorists such as Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler undertook the task of inverting the standard hierarchical opposition by which homosexuality is made unnatural and marginalized.
The Queer reading has become the term for interpretive activities that take into hand the task of subverting and confounding the established cultural and verbal oppositions and boundaries between the binaries established above.
Homosexuality And Heterosexuality
Another prominent theoretical procedure has been to undo the well-established assumption that homosexual and heterosexual are the universal and trans historic types of human identities or human subjects. This has been achieved by historicizing these categories, which was done by proposing that they are the cultural constructs that emerged under special ideological conditions in a particular culture and at a particular time.
Giving his views on the cultural-constructionist theory, Judith Butler described the categories of gender as performative by establishing that the features which a cultural discourse institutes as binary opposites, the discourse also makes it happen by establishing an identity according to which the individual must act.
The long-standing marginalization and dominance, as well as subordination of these gays and lesbians, have forced them and given them the courage to come up to the front and give a tough fight for their rights. What were normal centuries ago may not be normal now and above all the feelings and desires of individuals know no bounds.
The queer studies brought out to the world a different perspective towards these people. It highlighted their struggles and their fight for equality for a very long time. And above all, most of the time their fight was to gain normalcy in society. Therefore, the points that have been mentioned above are important and sufficient enough to offer assignment help to literature students who have turned their attention towards these studies.