Redefining Gender Perspectives in Literature through Queer Questions: An Overview

Abstract

The term Queer was first used by Teresa de Lauretis in 1991 to describe constructs that did not adhere to binary gender and heterosexuality. Late twentieth century is considered to be a watershed from gender to gender queer. Gender became a deterministic term to denote codified and stabilized norms of human behaviour. Gender was no longer sufficient in itself to denote to fluidities in identities. It can be said that Queer is a product of the Feminist, Marxist ideologies and Structuralism of the early twentieth century. A need for an accommodative nomenclature to describe the ever divergent human orientation, there in grew gender queer. The roots of Queer theory traced to Gay and Lesbian studies too. Queer offers solutions to the problems related to identity and label. To reexamine homosexual texts .contexts and ideas in the new context is the primary role of Queer theory. This paper studies this paradigm shift from Gender to Gender Queer in the light of literary analysis and critiquing. This write up focuses on the need for such a shift propelled by socio- ethical models. Culture, from this perspective is reduced to a social constraint and queer is broader and a defining term that is all inclusive. The term defines the inappropriateness in terms likes sex and gender and manifested human desires. The main idea of this shift is to discover a deviant discourse away from regular taxonomy and mono-scripting. The paper attempts to bring out this transition in theory and approach to societal issues and its consequent reflection in literature.