Queer politics

This chapter offers an introduction to the central themes, concepts and debates in queer theory. It explores three trajectories that queer studies has taken. First, it investigates the necessity of, and possibilities for, decolonising queer studies, focusing in particular on translation, conceptual innovation and alternative genealogies as decolonising strategies. Second, it illuminates a tradition of materialist analysis in queer studies while also demonstrating how the relationship between queer communities and capitalism is historically contingent and shifting. Third, it scales up concerns with race and class to the international level, demonstrating how queer politics matters to global politics. Not only are queer lives shaped by international structures and processes, but these international dynamics might themselves be queer, haunted as they are by figurations of normality and perversion.