Abstract
Heather Love's latest book is very dense and packed with much information and analysis. This review focuses on just a few of the points Love makes in Underdogs.
Queer theory emerged out of a time of upheaval beginning in the late 1960s with the Stonewall riots, the influence of film artists such as Divine and John Waters, and continuing through the HIV/AIDS crisis and the response of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. In response to these events, queer studies written by and for the LGBTQ community emerged within the academy. Love asserts that queer theory can also trace some of its roots to social deviance studies conducted after World War II and studies that examined the lives of stigmatized “underdogs” (those on the margins of mainstream society), including but not limited to drug addicts, criminals, and homosexuals. These post-war research projects in the United States were, in part, inspired by the cluster of stigmatized population groups annihilated by the Nazis in Germany and emigres from Europe who had managed to survive the extermination campaigns. Some of these “deviants” would become activists and initiate new social movements.
Currently, queer theory is a discipline that is both outside and inside the academy. Queer theory often critiques the academy, but it is doing so within academic departments. Some influences such as Marxism, poststructuralism, feminism, and Foucauldian analysis of power and language were warmly welcomed into queer theory, while others, including deviant studies, were ignored or critiqued. According to Love, queer theory should acknowledge and embrace the legacy of deviance studies rather than ignore or dismiss this legacy because these studies influenced (knowingly or not) queer theorists and helped them get a seat at the table of the academy.
In addition to the tension of being both inside and outside of the academy, tensions exist between the methodologies employed within queer theory and deviance studies. Queer theory is based in the humanities, while deviance studies are based in the social sciences, especially ethnography, which relies on observation and description. Applying taxonomies or labeling is important in ethnographic studies but can lead to dehumanization. Description, which is essential in the social sciences and other empirical work, has a bad reputation for reducing or changing the substance of something or someone. Within queer theory, there has been a rejection of social science methods because they objectify their subjects, describing them in language that shifted from being descriptive to prescriptive. Is the focus on the person or the action? What is “objective” and what is “subjective”? In addition to these questions, some social science practices of the past are today considered unethical because they did not include informed consent from their human subjects. In many cases, the “deviant” subjects of these studies were not protected but rather were often objectified. As a result, queer theorists have critiqued the social sciences as dehumanizing, while focusing on texts and language and sometimes themselves forgetting about actual people.
Throughout this book, Love examines the work of many scholars, especially Eve Sedgwick's “Queer Performativity: Henry James’ Art of the Novel,” which first guided Love to an in-depth study of Erving Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Love also examines Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, which would violate many of the best practices of today's Institutional Review Boards. Love notes that one of Goffman's main contributions to queer theory is that the marginalization of homosexuals is the result of social constructs rather than innate unnatural desires, a contribution that has influenced Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and other queer theorists who understand queer identity as performance.
Although sometimes difficult to absorb, this book has important implications for social work and social work education. First, it is important to find common ground in scholarship and advocacy. For example, Love notes that there is not just a crisis within the humanities, but there is a crisis within higher education in general. Second, it is important to do coalition building without enforcing false universalisms, equivalences, and imperialism. Finally, Love raises but does not address, the question of whether stigma can have a transformational effect. This question may be best addressed by those in the field of social work and social work education, those grounded in both theory and praxis, and those working inside and outside of the academy.
