Elements of Queer Style

You have to love something about this way of writing. It’s shallow, it’s mean, sure, but its style breathes new and bitchy life into jesuitical pieties you thought you would never hear in public again…The story works, for many, because it is rooted in a developmental narrative. It makes the “we” of gay people into a big individual who experiences history as the phases of maturation, like acne. The decades leading to and following Stonewall were our adolescence. Now we are adult, and ready to marry.

This quote comes from Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal, a book I’ve been working through (and loving) these past couple of days. The quote is a response to Andrew Sullivan’s article arguing for gay marriage. Warner, a queer theorist, is developing an argument against gay marriage, and so he is taking issue with Sullivan’s argument with this quote.

But rather than looking at the argument in this quote, I wanted to share it to talk about style. As I read more and more, I become more aware to differences in style between different authors and fields. And as I’m reading more in queer theory, I am especially aware of a type of style queer theorists employ in their writing, a style that I think Warner’s writing exemplifies.

To understand this style better, it might be good to be familiar with some of the basic tenets of queer theory. Queer theory developed in a post-modern world, a world with an aesthetic that utilizes pastiche, commercialism, vulgarity, and references to popular culture. Like critical theory, whose motive is to question and critique society, queer theory is also a field that is highly critical of the world around it. It wants to offer radical solutions to society’s basic problems. Thus, Warner, who sees gay marriage as something that would merely reenforce heteronormative hierarchies of shame, argues against gay marriage from a radical perspective devoted to breaking down repressive societal structures, not from a traditionally conservative fear of gay marriage. In general, queer theory can be best understood by this radical streak.

I love the style that Warner and other queer theorists use because simply through the way these writers write instead of what they actually say they are practicing the theory they preach. This writing subverts the expectations we have about writing – that it is boring and lifeless – and celebrates radical, “vulgar” life through its use of colloquial jargon (what other academic would refer to another person’s writing as “bitchy” and be serious about it?). It refuses to pander to institutionalized norms, whether that means not including standard citations (Warner uses virtually none, except for a small notes section) or including in-your-face pictures, like Warner’s book cover, which features a man in a white tux standing next to a sexually provocative man in leather against a hot pink background with bold lettering. Further, the writing doesn’t just rely on facts to make a point but metaphors. The image Warner offers of the collective gay masses going through puberty helps him to make two points that would be lost if he relied on simply stating the facts: First, just like everyone matures through puberty differently, Warner subtly suggests that every gay person develops differently so that marriage wouldn't be a priority or final developmental stage for everyone. Second, with the reference to the visceral image of acne, Warner questions if the puberty and maturation that lead to wanting gay marriage are even things that gay people should want to experience. After all, who among us remembers with fondness the awkward middle school years, random breakouts on your face visible for everyone, or having to worry if your voice would crack every time you spoke out in class?

Queer theory offers a style of writing that I really enjoy. Simply through its style, it questions the norms and pushes the boundaries of what academic writing can be. If, as Audre Lorde says, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s home,” queer theorists, by using tools from outside the heteronormative academic institution, are certainly able to bring their own tools to work.