Empire of Desires: History and Queer Theory in an Age of Global Affect

This paper surveys the current state of queer studies and argues that epistemological historicism be brought back to bear on queer theoretical analyses, particularly in order to address the challenges of accounting for the globalization and transnationalism of sexuality. The paper proposes that this can be done by, first, "giving up” certain intellectual preoccupations, including (1) the interpretation of the nineteenth-century "Great Paradigm Shift” as a historical succession of sexual "acts” by sexual "identities,” (2) the conviction that whatever modes of temporality queer theory argues for ultimately lack coherency or some kind of linear regularity, and (3) the idealist assumption that whatever queer theorists are deconstructing, denormalizing, or denaturalizing can be somehow conceptually sealed from their simultaneous constructions, normalizations, and naturalizations. Allowing history to serve some trans-formative purposes for queer theory can be accomplished accordingly by "opening up” the parallel doors, such as (1) by bringing epistemological issues back into the theorization of queer subjectivities, (2) by making generalizations more willingly about changes and continuities across not just geographical space but also time, and (3) by being more ethically concerned with the imperialist nature and consequences of queer theoretical critique.