The political ontology of queer theory

Abstract

This paper examines the implications of a radical theory that is important for a segment of the intellectual left, namely queer theory, which argues that central to the conditions for critical thinking is the assertion that the natural being of man is political, in the same way that it is political to appropriate women's bodies and sexuality, that it is political to affirm the non-existence of a universal category of woman, that it is political to state there is no unique type of gender oppression experienced equally by women of all ethnic and social groups, and that it is political to state that national and international social institutions and organisations are characterised by certain gendered and heterosexual patterns that make it possible to speak of a global gender order. Hence the queermovement’s political opposition to the essentializing nature of a political concept, namely the concept of the subject, or to put it another, way, the principle of obedience, which two refers to two forms of subjection, first the subject subjected to the rule of others, and second, the subject subjected to themselves, where subjectivity refers to the subject’s sense of being tied to the fixed identity with which they govern themselves, an identity tied to the truth of their sex.