Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks Tendencies: Queerness and Oppression Essay

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks Tendencies curio and OppressionOver the last twain decades or so, the thinker of anomalousness is one that has been utilized and considered by individuals and communities of marginalized sexualities and genders. The fancy is one that has attempted to broaden and deconstruct traditional nonions of gender and sexual activity in order to include all of their incarnations as valid experiences and identities. ludicrousness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a part of it yet, seemingly, not everyone can be queer without changing the very nature of queerness. Or can they? Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer identities and behaviors. In her book, Tendencies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick constructs queerness as a seemingly panoptic and individually determined space, writing thatqueer can refer to the dedicate mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, disson ances, resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning whenthe constituent elements of anyones gender, ofanyones sexuality arent made (or cant be made)to stand for monolithically. (8) She expands queer beyond the bounds of same-sex sexual object choice do queerness about performative behavior rather than sexual mechanics (Sedgwick 8). For example, Sedgwicks idea of queer includes feminists... masturbators... lesbian-identified men...and people able to relish, learn from, or identify with much(prenominal) among others(8). She posits that the fundamental precondition, to make the description queer a true one is the gallery to use it in the first person (Sedgwick 9). Yet is this self-determined queerness valid? Can actual queerness be claimed s... ...cepting ones status as incongruent allows one to claim a droll personal identity without inviting oppression because ones incongruence prohibits a singular identity claim to completely describe the self.The manner in which Foucault and S edgwick construct queerness allows for oppression because they assume that the self is a singular cohesive body. Warner supposes that by realizing the fragmentation the self, one can claim an identity and escape oppression. Works CitedFoucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1 An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. newly York Vintage Books, 1980.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham, NC Duke University Press, 1993.Warner, Michael. Tongues United Memoirs of a Pentecostal Boyhood. The Material Queer A LesBiGay CulturalStudies Reader. Ed. Donald Morton. Boulder, CO Westview Press, 1996.