Getting Emotional After Sex: Tendencies in Queer Studies

This article reviews three recent queer studies anthologies: Queer Methods and Methodology: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research, by Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash (2010), Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power by Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson (2011), and After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory, by Janet Halley and Andrew Parker (2011). A brief synopsis of the books is followed by discussion on three key observations. First, I discuss the specificity of the queer ‘body’, particularly with regard to the scholarly subjectivity articulated by contributors to these anthologies. Second, I discuss the distillation of queer identity from the field of queer corporeality as a specific move to embrace anti-identitarianism through conceiving identity as fluid. Lastly, questions of queer and identity are reconsidered as methodologically specific and, as such, as entailing sensitivity to the movement of concepts between the different epistemological fields of knowledge called the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Through discussion of these observations, this review aims to stimulate thought and reflection on these texts as responding to and participating in the highly contested institutionalisation of queer studies in the academy.