Difference Troubles: Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)
Cambridge University Press, 10/9/1997
EAN 9780521599702, ISBN10: 0521599709
Paperback, 322 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Difference Troubles, first published in 1997, examines the implications for social theory and sexual politics of taking difference seriously. It explores the trouble difference makes not only for the social sciences, but also for the people - feminists, queer theorists, postmodernists - who champion difference. Seidman asks how social thinkers should conceptualize differences such as gender, race, and sexuality, without reducing them to an inferior status. This is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of contemporary social theory and sexual politics, presented with Seidman's familiar imagination and clarity. In addition, it argues persuasively for a pragmatic approach to difference troubles in theory and politics.
Introduction
the contemporary reconfiguring of social theory and cultural politics
Part I. Resisting Difference
The Malaise of the Human Sciences
1. The political unconscious of the human sciences
2. The end of sociological theory
3. Relativizing sociology
the challenge of cultural studies
4. The refusal of sexual difference
queering sociology
5. Difference troubles
the flight of sociology from 'otherness'
Part II. Between Identity and Difference
From Lesbian and Gay to Queer Theory
6. Identity and politics in a 'postmodern' gay culture
7. Deconstructing queer theory or some difficulties in a theory and politics of difference
Part III. Democratic Prospects
The Politics of Knowledge and Identity
8. Transfiguring sexual identity
aids and the cultural politics of sexuality and homosexuality
9. From gay ethnicity to queer politics
the renewal of gay radicalism in the United States
10. Postmodern anxiety
the politics of epistemology
11. The politics of sexual difference in late twentieth century America
12. Difference and democracy
group recognition and the political cultures of the United States, Holland, and France
Epilogue
pragmatism, difference and a culture of strong democracy.