Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory Volume 6

Social Text Collective, Michael Warner, editor. "Fear of a Queer Planet; Queer Politics and Social Theory" (Cultural Politics, vol. 6), University of Minnesota Press, 1993, Interesting Amos Lassen Written 16 years ago, "Fear of a Queer Planet" still remains an interesting look at sexual conduct and how it deviates from established "norms". We just do not know who is afraid and why. This is a selection of essays that cover such topics as sodomy in Panama as encountered by Balboa and the defeat of Quebec's bid for sovereignty which was supposedly defeated because of the province's tolerance of homosexuality. Do cases like this cause fear in the populace? This is left for the reader to decide himself. I found the essays included to be stimulating as they tend to push gay identity beyond the limitations that exist and to bring about a planetary look at gay and lesbian studies and theory. Of course much has happened since this book was written and tremendous strides have been made in America for the acceptance of members of the GLBT community. In my opinion what makes this valuable is that it is a great comparison point of where we were to where we are now. The queer fear seems to exist in the fundamental Christian and the communities where gay people are unknown (if there are such places).

The title Fear of a Queer Planet is a play on the famous essay on race, Fear of a Black Planet; only readers deaf to history would fail to make the connection. This is a pioneering book, with essays by Eve Sedgewick, Henry L. Gates, and Michael Warner, among others, the first to push gay identity politics beyond its limitations within "gay and lesbian studies" and into social, economic, and transcultural theory. It is indeed "planetary" in its attempt to take gay and lesbian theory past the blindness of American identity niche-marketing and and fashion magazine triumphalism.

The title Fear of a Queer Planet is a play on the famous essay on race, Fear of a Black Planet;only readers deaf to history would fail to make the connection. This is a pioneering book, with essays by Eve Sedgewick, Henry L. Gates, and Michael Warner, among others, the first to push gay identity politics beyond its limitations within "gay and lesbian studies" and into social, economic, and transcultural theory. It is indeed "planetary" in its attempt to take gay and lesbian theory past the blindness of American identity niche-marketing and and fashion magazine triumphalism.

Queer as used in this title means sexual conduct that deviates from established norms. It is not gender limited. The question then is who is afraid and how does that fear involve the planet? Those who fear, evidently, are those burdened with imposing the norms. The first essay in this anthology tells the story of Balboa's encounter with Panamanian "sodomy." The burden in that case fell upon political and religious figures. The next-to-last essay tells how the defeat of Quebec's bid for sovereignity was blamed on its tolerance of homosexuality, thus situating the burden in the domain of the general culture. The last essay recounts the "outing" in the US pop media of a female entertainer with attendant public anxieties, thus situating the locus in the general culture. But how does that make the fear planetary? The introduction, best read as a postscript, attempts to connect the theme with the planet through the device of Pioneer 10's spacecr! aft design. But the connection is superficia,l and the reader is left to find it in the issues raised by postmodernism, which heavily undergirds much of the volume's ponderosity. Eleven of its 15 contributors are teachers of English, with a lit-crit approach heavily freighted with fashionable structuralism-desctructuralism jargon; but the diligent reader can find a rich cornocupia for reflection here and food for thought; but he/she must look for the planatary connection (and it does exist, we have no doubt) in the areas of ontology and epistomology that postmodernism leaves us floundering in. Howard of Athens