Antisocial Queer Theory, 2005-2023

Convened by Murat Aydemir | Practical info: all meetings are on Zoom, every last Friday of the month starting February and ending in June (i.e., 28/2, 28/3, 25/4, 30/5, 27/6) from 15:00-17:00 hrs. Students participating in the reading group as a tutorial can earn 6 EC. If you’re interested, please sign up through m.aydemir@uva.nl. 

Antisocial queer theory claims that sexuality, at its core, disrupts or negates forms of identity, relationality, and sociality. In this reading group and tutorial, we’ll trace the development of the theory from its early formulation following a 2005 MLA Annual Convention panel to the 2023 Postmodern Culture special issue on “The Afterlives of the Antisocial” (edited by Austin Svedjan and John Paul Ricco). We’ll read contributions by Tim Dean, Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz, Robyn Wiegman, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, and others. Issues we’ll address may include the relation of sexuality to other aspects of identity and control, such as race, class, and gender; the tension between an essentially negative sexuality and sexuality functioning as apparatus for constituting human subjects; and the historical bearing of the Aids crisis, progressive neoliberalism, homonationalism, and the rise of the far right.