Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks Tendencies: Queerness and Oppression Essay

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks Tendencies Queerness and OppressionOver the resist two decades or so, the idea of oddness is mavin that has been utilized and considered by individuals and communities of marginalized sexualities and grammatical genders. The concept is one that has attempted to broaden and deconstruct traditional notions of gender and sexuality in order to include tout ensemble of their incarnations as well-grounded experiences and identities. Queerness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a segmentation of it further, obviously, not everyone can be queer without changing the very spirit of queerness. Or can they? Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer identities and behaviors. In her book, Tendencies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick constructs queerness as a seemingly all-inclusive and individually determined space, writing thatqueer can attend to the open mesh of poss ibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning whenthe constituent elements of anyones gender, ofanyones sexuality arent made (or cant be made)to signify monolithically. (8) She expands queer beyond the bounds of same-sex sexual object plectrum making queerness about performative behavior rather than sexual mechanics (Sedgwick 8). For example, Sedgwicks idea of queer includes feminists... masturbators... lesbian-identified men...and people able to relish, learn from, or order with such among others(8). She posits that the fundamental precondition, to make the description queer a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person (Sedgwick 9). Yet is this self-determined queerness valid? Can actual queerness be exacted s... ...cepting ones status as incongruent allows one to claim a singular identity without inviting subjugation because ones incongruence prohibits a singular identity claim to completely describe the self.The manner in wh ich Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness allows for oppression because they assume that the self is a singular cohesive body. Warner supposes that by realizing the fragmentation the self, one can claim an identity and escape oppression. Works CitedFoucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1 An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York Vintage Books, 1980.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham, NC Duke University Press, 1993.Warner, Michael. Tongues United Memoirs of a Pentecostal Boyhood. The hooey Queer A LesBiGay CulturalStudies Reader. Ed. Donald Morton. Boulder, CO Westview Press, 1996.