ABSTRACT
One of queer theory’s most influential claims is that sexuality delineates an epistemic rather than a primarily erotic space in western contexts (Foucault 1990; Sedgwick 1990; McWhorter 1999: 40–41). Queer theory challenges two prevailing assumptions about sexuality in Western contexts: (1) sexuality is a stable, fixed part of innate human nature and (2) sexual identities and acts exist prior to and independent of the need to know and catalogue them as such. Thinking queerly about sexuality denaturalizes sexual identities and acts and the presumed inevitability of connections between them.
