Abstract

For more than ten years the collective set of critical post-structuralist positions labelled 'queer theory' hasbeen deployed to show that sexual identity&emdash;and particularly hetero and homo sexualsubjectivities&emdash;are produced through discursive knowledges; contingent and historical. Suchwork has usefully opened paths for the examination of racial, ethnic and gendered tensions within theethnic-minority grouping that is the lesbian/gay community. What might be considered thelargest contribution of queer theory to the field of lesbian/gay politics has been the ways in which it canbe deployed for the examination of lesbian/gay subjects as they are subjectivelyperformed in accord with various discourses of sexuality and subjectivity, thus prompting examinations ofhow these discourses are governed by the cultural construct hetero/homo binary. Nevertheless, much ofthis work is ignored in the praxis of lesbian/gay politics which continues to assert and reassert thehetero/homo binary as 'sexual truth'