"Ruthless Personalizers": Queer Theory and the Uses of The Personal
Author: Jess Shollenberger
Source: Modernism/modernity, Print Plus
Type of Publication: Article
Description: Queer theory has a vexed relationship to the personal and to persons: the former aligned with normative forms of social belonging (like heterosexual culture) and the latter tied to neoliberal, rights-based political programs that are focused on assimilation rather than resistance. Despite a powerful and legitimating impulse in queer theory to depersonalize sexuality, the field has always been a space in which to think about actual persons and the ways we go about living. In this essay, rather than risk a definition of a concept, I consider what “the personal” as a mode of critical thought and writing has enabled queer theory to do.