Difference Troubles

Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics

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by Steven Seidman

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published September 1997, 275 pages, paper

ISBN 0521599709

Seidman examines the implications for social theroy and sexual politics of taking difference seriously. He explores the troubles difference can make for the social sciences and for the very people--feminists, queer theorists, postmodernist--who champion difference.

Contents

Introduction: The contemporary reconfiguring of social theory and cultural politics; PART 1 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 2 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 3 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 US; 10. Postmodern anxiety: the politics of epistemology; 11. The politics of sexual difference in late 20th century America; 12. Difference and democracy: group recognition and the political cultures of the US, Holland, and France; Epilogue: Pragmatism, difference and a culture of strong democracy