From Margins to Method: Queer Theory as a Critical Paradigm for Analysing Societal Ideology

Abstract

Queer theory prominently emerged as a distinct field is derived from post-structuralism and largely from deconstruction. Queer theory would contradict traditional perspectives that social history has recognised as sick, deviant and crime. Starting in the 1970s, various authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to think on issues of sexual identity, particularly heteronormativity and non-heteronormative sexuality. Fuss, in "The Politics of Inside/Out", opines that the concept of "coming out" and being visible has been normalized. The queer theory was also shaped by Anglo-American cultures in the HIV/AIDS activism during 1980s and contemporary feminism of early 1990s. The Queer theory is heavily influenced by the works and ideas of Lauren Berlant, Michael Warner, Leo Bersani, Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, Michel Fouccault, Jack Halberstam, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. This paper explores the evolution and widening of platform of the Queer theory as an independent discipline in sociological, historical, literary, cultural, and legal studies and how it is not theory of sexual minorities but as general social theory to analyse the society as whole. The paper further examines the jurisprudential turn in queer theory, particularly its application within Indian constitutional jurisprudence, where the judiciary has employed queer theoretical frameworks to articulate the rights of gender identity and equality, most notably in the Navtej Singh Johar and NALSA judegments.