Queerness, Openness

The state of queer theory today is somewhere between death and life. Since Teresa de Lauretis coined the term at a conference at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1990, this body of theoretical work, it has been claimed, has quickly peaked—or reached an impasse—within the last 15-20 years. In fact, de Lauretis gave up on the term only after three years, claiming that “queer” had already been taken over by the various mainstream institutions and establishments it was created to resist against.