"Queer theory is a term that has been applied to a body of work that has explored gay, lesbian and bisexual life experience. Crucial to queer theory is the recovery of the concealed and repressed presence of gay and lesbian 'actors' and activities within social and cultural life.

1. QUEER THEORY
Name:- Dhruvita Dhameliya
Roll no:- 03
Enrollment number:-4069206420210006
Subject: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies
Paper no:- 204
Topic:- Queer Theory
Submitted to:- S. B.Gardi Department of English , MKBU

2. What is Queer Theory
‘Queer’ can function as a noun, an adjective or a verb, but in each case is defined against the ‘normal’ or normalising.
Queer theory is not a singular or systematic conceptual or methodological framework, but a collection of intellectual
engagements with the relations between sex, gender and sexual desire. Annamarie Jagose
Merriam Webster
An approach to literary and cultural study that rejects traditional categories of gender and sexuality
Ten years ago ‘queer’ was a term of abuse; now it is routinely, although controversially, used as self-description.
Queer Theory traces the intriguing history of same-sex sex over the last century through the mid-century homophile
movements, gay liberation, the women’s movement and lesbian feminism to the new concept of queer. Annamarie
Jagose investigates the arguments of the supporters and opponents of queer theory, finding that its strength lies in its
potential to question the very idea of sexual identities. By blending insights from contemporary intellectual theories
like post-structuralism and from the work of theorists like Judith Butler, Jagose argues that queer theory’s challenge is
to create new ways of thinking about not just heterosexuality and homosexuality but also such seemingly given fixed
notions as ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’, even ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Queer Theory demonstrates a radical, exciting new way
of analysing human identity itself.Annamaria Jagose

3. History of Queer Theory
According to Tamsin Spargo
In the 1990s, queer theory has emerged as an influential mode of thought in the ongoing debate about
empowerment issues. Queer theory is concerned with the non-essentializing nature of sexual identities and is
premised on the notion of resistance to forms of domination, such as heterosexism and homophobia. The
historical roots of queer theory are traced from the homosexual rights movement through the gay liberation
movement. This history of homosexual resistance focuses on the grass roots efforts of the homosexual
community to gain control from scientific experts in representing their own experience. This contextualist
history provides a perspective for considering the contemporary relevance of queer theory for psychological
theorizing and practice.
The film theorist Teresa de Lauretis coined the term at a University of California, Santa Cruz, conference about
lesbian and gay sexualities in February 1990. The conference proceedings were later collected in a 1991
special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. In her introduction to the special issue, de
Lauretis outlines the central features of queer theory, sketching the field in broad strokes that have held up
remarkably well.

4. History
Tamsin Spargo
In the mid-1970s, the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault
published The History of Sexuality, which describes the origin of modern
homosexual identity. In this sweeping history of sexuality, Foucault creates an
influential theory of sexual-identity formation. For Foucault, “Sexuality must not
be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as
an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name
that can be given to a historical construct.’ By rejecting the idea that something
called sexuality exists in all of us, waiting to be liberated, Foucault’s work
challenged not only how sexuality was understood in popular and scholarly
Discource but also how power was understood.
For Foucault, power does not repress a preexisting sexual identity; it provides the
conditions needed for sexual identities to multiply. power is everywhere,
although it is not evenly dispersed. He argues that medical discourse, particularly
the field of Sexology, which applies scientific principles to the study of sexuality,
intersected with legal discourse to simultaneously create the need and the means
to identify and produce knowledge about sexual identity, particularly “the
homosexual.”

5. QUEER Theory
Markus Thail
Queer theory is a part of the field of queer studies whose roots can be found in women’s studies, feminist
theory, and gay and lesbian studies, as well as postmodern and poststructuralist theories. The works of
Michel Foucault and Judith Butler are often considered the founding texts of queer theory.
Sexuality politics and the queer scholarship connected to it arrived late on the theoretical scene in part because
sexuality and gender initially were anchored in the private, rather than the public, spheres. Scholars advanced
critical and feminist viewpoints emerging from the writings of Michel Foucault (1976), Judith Butler (1990) and Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990) among others. Foucault’s groundbreaking linking of sexuality and knowledge to
political power, and Butler’s rejection of stable sexual orientation and gender identities in favour of everyday
performed ones remain foundational notions. Kosofsky Sedgwick’s calling attention to the discursive definition of
homo/ heterosexuality in society further defined queer thinking. These scholarly statements were hardly accepted
in mainstream political science because they rejected objectivity and highlighted the conditional and unstable
human nature of social and political orders, including IR questions of security and governance. Hence queer
theory evolved largely in literature, philosophy, sociology and queer studies programmes without making
substantial inroads into IR theorising.

6. Representation of LGBT Community in Literature
Harshita ChaudhryThroughout Vedic literature, the
sex or gender of the human being is clearly divided
into three separate categories according to prakriti
or nature. These are: pums-prakriti or male,
stri-prakriti or female, and tritiya-prakriti or the third
sex. Generally the word “sex” refers to biological sex
and “gender” to psychological behavior and identity.
People of the third sex are analyzed in the Kama
Sutra and broken down into several categories that
are still visible today and generally referred to as gay
males and lesbians. While gay males and lesbians
are the most prominent members of this category, it
also includes other types of people such as
transgender and the intersexes.

7. Representation of LGBT Community in Literature
The third sex in Kama sutra is described as a natural mixing or combination of the male and female natures
to the point in which they can no longer be categorized as male or female in the traditional sense of the word.
The example of mixing black and white paint can be used, wherein the resulting color, gray, in all its many
shades, can no longer be considered either black or white although it is simply a combination of both.
Third-gender citizens were neither persecuted nor denied basic rights. Gay men could either blend into
society as ordinary males or they could dress and behave as females, living as transvestites.. Citizens of the
third sex represented only a very small portion of the overall population, which most estimates place at
approximately 5 percent
Nineteenth Century: The nineteenth century introduced the next great period of LGBTQ literature, though
less direct and more subversive. Writers like Arthur Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust,
Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf wove sly references to LGBTQ identity and relationships into many
works. They began paving the way for more LGBTQ awareness among readers.
Twentieth Century: Authors such as James Baldwin, Truman Capote, E.M. Forster, Allen Ginsberg, Audre
Lorde, Diane di Prima, Adrienne Rich, Thomas Mann, and many more pushed social boundaries and brought
LGBTQ plots to prominence. These authors and their works often achieved critical and commercial success,
marking the twentieth century as a new dawn for LGBTQ inclusion. Harshita Chaudhry

8. Oscar Wilde
Literary scholars often point to Oscar Wilde as an important historical influence on homosexual
identity. His meteoric rise to stardom, criminal prosecution, and two years of imprisonment for
committing acts of “gross indecency” have generated enduring interest among contemporary critics
(Bristow 2003; Sinfield 1994). As Eve Sedgwick reminds us, “the figure of Wilde may have been the
most formative individual influence on turn-of-the-century Anglo-European homosexual definition
and identity” (Sedgwick 213). In accounts of gay and queer history Wilde is held up as the first
"modern" homosexual. The trials of Oscar Wilde.
Both Bartlett and Koestenbaum read Wilde’s life and work together, searching for “Oscar Wilde,” the
origin of a gay male identity that contemporary gay readers can recognize as their own. In this sense,
Koestenbaum displays a flagrant disregard for the “ethics” of reading rooted in New Critical
methodologies such as not reading for authorial intention, “the intentional fallacy,” and judging a
work based on its emotional effects on a reader, “the affective fallacy”.Shawna Lipton

9. Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness were both published in 1928 and
each book takes a radically different approach to depicting characters with non-normative experiences of
gender identity. The trial of Radclyffe Hall is often offered as historical evidence that Virginia Woolf was
writing under the threat of censorship. Hall’s book had overt lesbian content and was prosecuted for obscenity,
whereas Woolf’s more subtle Sapphic satire slipped by the censors. In a lesbian reading of Woolf’s style,
Leslie K. Hankins describes how Woolf “plays an elaborate game of hide and seek with the reader and
censor” and suggests love and eroticism between women through “coded lesbian signatures”. When critics
such as Hankins perceive Woolf’s work to be coded, they are compelled to crack it wide open. The sense that
Woolf was forced to suppress her lesbian content results in the “decoding” approach to interpretation,
motivated by the desire to free the lesbian hidden in the text. However, being suggestive about lesbian
possibilities in Orlando instead of being literal allows Woolf to achieve a greater variety of artistic effects. As
Jodie Medd argues in Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism, the suggestion of lesbianism allows the
book to be about more than just lesbianism and “to serve Woolf’s agenda of cultural critique, literary critique,
and narrative experimentation”.

10. The Representation of Queer (LGBT) in Hindi Cinema
Cinema is a powerful medium to catalyze social change. Like other art forms cinema is both a part of social reality
and also a medium of portraying it. Films have subtle influence on society’s way of thinking. Cinema has
undoubtedly contributed a lot to the queer movement in India. Sexual minority consists of all those people who
fall under the categories of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders. Projection of gender stereotypes in films
forms society’s perception of gender roles. The over-saturation of gender stereotypes in the films results in the
misrepresentation of gender roles which gets embedded in the human mind and is passed on from generation to
generation as an acceptable view. Homosexuality is still considered a taboo in India.
In a country like India where cinema has the potential to shape the perception of majority of the population,
realistic films about the LGBT community will definitely have a massive positive impact on the mindsets of the
people. Over the years the representation of LGBT community in Hindi cinema has found itself under the scanner.
Hindi cinema has witnessed a steady display of LGBT characters some for the comic effect and some, however,
stayed true to reality and made an effort to treat the subject in a very sensitive and realistic light but unfortunately
to a larger extent these films could not challenged the traditional myths and have failed to break the ‘taboo’.
Pushpinder Kaur

11. ● Fire (1996)
● My Brother Nikhil(2005)
● Aligarh (2015)
● Shubh Mangal Jyada Savdhan (2020)
Lachmi Deb Roy

12. LGBTQ - as Social media influencer
The Internet has changed communication and how
individuals interact with each other. In contrast to traditional
media, social media allows users to build personal profiles to
share information and engage with others. Both YouTube
and Instagram networks provide users with their own
platform that allows them to share content, interact, and
engage with users. The rise of all these different social
media platforms has resulted in the emergence of brand
influencers, or as scholars define it, “influencer marketing”.
The LGBTQ community uses social media to engage in
developing their identity while sharing new understandings
across the public. Previous scholarship on the LGBTQ
community has often focused on different topics regarding
the perception of this group and the interaction with
them.Stephanie Sabala

13. Conclusion
Times are changing and with that sexual minorities are slowly finding a place in
Hindi cinema and society . Representation of lesbians, gays, bisexuals,
transgenders, hijras and others who identified as ‘queer’ in films in a positive
manner has acted as a balm for the community. The Indian society is changing
and with it the mindset of the people. The commercial failure of LGBT films also
raises a big question-whether the attitude of the people towards the LGBT
community is changed or changing or has changed or yet to change.

14. Works Cited
Chaudhary, Harshita S. “Representation of Homosexuals (LGBT) in Indian Literature, Media and Cinema.” Representation of Homosexuals (LGBT) in Indian Literature,
Media and Cinema, 24 August 2012. manupatra ARTICLES,
https://articles.manupatra.com/article-details/Representation-of-Homosexuals-LGBT-in-Indian-Literature-Media-and-Cinema. Accessed Thursday October 2022.
Chugh, Mehak. “A study on the portrayal of different sexualities in Indian cinema and its acceptance in Indian society with special reference to Delhi NCR.” vol. 10, no. 3,
3 March 2022. IJCRT2203379.pdf, https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2203379.pdf. Accessed Thursday October 2022.
Kaur, Pushpinder. “Gender, Sexuality and (Be) longing: The Representation of Queer (LGBT) in Hindi Cinema.” Amity Journal of Media & Communication Studies, vol. 7,
2017.
Lindsay, Jack. “Queer(y)ing Brexit: Sexuality and the Shifting Nature of Remainer and Leaver Worldviews.” E-International Relations, 1 April 2021,
https://www.e-ir.info/2021/04/01/queerying-brexit-sexuality-and-the-shifting-nature-of-remainer-and-leaver-worldviews/. Accessed 6 October 2022.
Lipton, Shawna. “QUEER LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL FALLACY.” May 2016, https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2176&context=etd.
Accessed Thursday October 2022.
“Queer Theory, Annamarie Jagose — Melbourne University Publishing.” Melbourne University Press, 31 May 2013,
https://www.mup.com.au/books/queer-theory-electronic-book-text. Accessed 6 October 2022.
Roy, Lachmi Deb. “Pride Month| Queer representation in Indian cinema; how far have we gone-Entertainment News.” Firstpost, 27
June 2022,
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/pride-month-queer-representation-in-indian-cinema-how-far-have-we-gone-10840181.
html. Accessed 6 October 2022.
Sabala, Stephanie. “The Perception of LGBTQ Influencers on Social Media.” LGBTQ INFLUENCERS, 8 May 2020.

15. THANK YOU