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Tim Dean
Syllabus: Queer Theory: From Freud to Foucault
and Beyond
Department of English, University of
Illinois, 2001
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Queer Theory: From Freud
to Foucault and Beyond
This course examines the
founding philosophical, psychoanalytic, and critical texts of the
new, heterogeneous field of study known as queer theory. We will
begin by considering the premise that queer is more than a
catchall term or synonym for gay and lesbian, and we will
proceed by taking seriously the various critiques of identity that
emerged in France during the past half century. This is not a
course in lesbian and gay studies, neither is it a course in
cultural studies or popular representations of sexuality, though
we will try to consider the full range of contemporary erotic
practices.
In order to trace a genealogy of
the concept of queerness, we will return to the nineteenth century
and the basic texts of psychoanalysis, in which Freud develops his
theories of perversion and the unconscious: The Interpretation
of Dreams and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.
We will also examine one or two of Freud’s case studies, such as
that of Schreber or "Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality
in a Woman," in which homosexuality is understood to play a
determining role. From Freud we will move to Michel Foucault and
his political critique of discourses of sexuality. We will read
not only the introductory volume of The History of Sexuality,
but also his later work on sexual ethics and the care of the self.
Regarding both Freud and Foucault, we will attempt to grasp their
basic concepts and these concepts’ mutations. We will pay
attention to popular misconceptions of their work and to various
critical attempts to bring Freud and Foucault together for the
purposes of queer critique. By considering post-Freudian
rearticulations of psychoanalysis in the work of Lacan, Laplanche,
Deleuze and Guattari, and Hocquenghem, the course will double as
an introduction to both psychoanalytic theory and Foucaultian
philosophy.
Topics for discussion
include:
 | "gay" versus "queer"; |
| the historical emergence of the concept of
sexuality; |
| techniques of normalization; |
| the authority of experience; |
| politics beyond identity politics; |
| the aesthetics of self-formation, self-care,
self-replication, and self-dissolution; |
| polymorphous perversity; |
| psychoanalytic versus psychological concepts
of unconscious fantasy and desire; |
| transgender phenomena; |
| intergenerational sex; |
| the range and limits of queer critique. |
In addition to books by Freud
and Foucault, reading includes work by the following contemporary
critics and theorists: Lauren Berlant, Leo Bersani, Judith Butler,
Arnold I. Davidson, Tim Dean, Samuel Delany, Jonathan Dollimore,
Teresa de Lauretis, Elizabeth Grosz, Eric Santner, Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, and Michael Warner. We might also read Allan Stein,
a recent novel by Matthew Stadler.
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