Queering methodology

Dans son célèbre texte de 1989, bell hooks abordait d'une façon inusuelle la question de la marginalité. A travers sa lecture de la marge comme espace de résistance et lieu radical de possibilité, elle nous offrait une vision empowering de la marginalité, vu comme espace de création et non de soumission. Ce renversement du point de vue permettait de penser la marge comme un espace à habiter, dans lequel trouver sa place, où rester et non comme un espace de transit pour atteindre le centre. Il s'agit d'un changement épistémologique fort parce que cette idée transforme les marges en espaces de création, de partage, d'élaboration de stratégies collectives, de contre-espaces (Foucault, 1984) d'élaboration de façons différentes de vivre le monde. La marge comme espace contre-hégémonique est le lieu de la mise en commun des expériences, des conditions, des parcours de vie. La marginalité devient alors non seulement un lieu privilégié de création mais aussi un lieu qui offre un point de vue sur le monde capable de rendre visible l'invisible, de dénaturaliser les processus intériorisés, un lieu où voir les mécanismes qui rendent fonctionnel le système dominant. Un lieu de contre-attaque pour contre-attaquer : la marge devient l'espace privilégié d'élaboration de micro-politiques à diffusion virale. Voix off. (play), bell hooks (1989, p. 148-149) : « These margins have benn both sites of repression and sites of resistance (...). I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance ? as location of radical openness and possibility. This site of resistance is continually formed in that segregated culture of opposition that is our critical response to domination. (...) We are trasformed, individually, collectively, as we make radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of the world » (musique stop). Est-il possible d'imaginer un centre différent à partir de ses marges ? Est-il sensé de parler des marges du centre ? Et dans ce cas, est-il possible de les occuper ? Est-ce que les marges du centre peuvent être considérées comme des espaces de production de radicalité pour la construction de nouveaux mondes ? #Cadre Je voudrais partager des pratiques que j'ai expérimentées à partir de la marge d'un espace-centre, c'est-à-dire d'un espace qui est central à l'intérieur du système dominant et qui est impliqué directement dans la reproduction des mécanismes de pouvoir et des rapports de domination : l'université. L'espace académique français résiste au développement et à l'engagement épistémologique critique. Il maintient l'épistémologie positiviste comme norme scientifique, soutenant souvent de multiples formes de

This essay is based on a cyber autoethnographic research I have conducted on Hornet, a geosocial networking application (GNA) created for gay and bisexual men, without establishing a clear-cut distinction between my identity as a user and that as a researcher. Here I discuss how feminist and queer autoethnography in and of cybercultures can refrain from objectifying or exploiting others by enabling research relations that (a) are not hierarchical, (b) disturb the researcher/researched binary, (c) embrace the impersonal ethics of cruising, and (d) do not shy away from recognizing the role of the researcher’s body unlike the conventional (masculine) researcher who allegedly has no emotional, erotic, or bodily presence within the field or in the research. I also address cruising as a queer autoethnographic method, while uncovering the methodological and ethical implications of doing autoethnography in a cyberfield that is libidinally invested.

The notion of Queer, today, is in use beyond demarcations not only between different genders and sexualities, but also among diverse disciplines germane to the body politics. However, design, as a part of the system of sexual representation and gender performativity within its visual and material tools, still needs to be purged from heteronormative binaries and dominant man-made praxis that reinforce gender-segregation and exclusion of queer beings. This paper aims to propound a theoretical and methodological framework to open up successive inquiries for a future practice-based design research: 1) What would 'queering' design process in its modus operandi and using 'Queer aesthetics' and 'Queer methodologies' mean as a way of shifting normative scientific knowledge of design into a subversive method? 2) How would this process of queering be implemented in a design practice by non-designers who live queer lives and are excluded from conventional practices and to deconstruct taken-for-granted performative genders? Consequently, the goal is to explore how such design process can reinforce emancipation in the context of gender politics.

本篇定名為「做兵、做愛、做男人」，不僅以押首韻的「做」強調行動者在軍事體制下進行軍人∕性∕性別的自我打造及其動態過程，也企圖開展一個質性研究方法論的典範：「酷兒理論方法論」（queer theory methodology）。本文將簡介原論文的輪廓，以軍事田野為出發談及性∕別作為男人成年禮（通過儀式）的意義為何？跟過往的性∕別研究如何區隔？其次，情慾在做兵研究過程中以什麼樣貌存在著？最後，將過往被侷限為「同志研究」的酷兒理論，往前探索成為一個方法論的可能性。

高穎超(2010)做兵、做愛、做男人：從軍事田野經驗探索酷兒理論方法論。見周平、林昱瑄編，質性／別研究，頁331–368。台北：巨流。
Kao, Ying-Chao. 2010. “Doing Soldier, Making Love, and Becoming Men: An Exploratory Study on Queer Methodology from Military Fieldwork.” Pp. 331–68 in Qualitative/Gender Studies, edited by P. Chou and Y.-H. Lin. Kaohsiung, Taiwan: Chuliu.

Queer Archives
   
        By the nineteenth century a vast array of ethnographies such as racialization, class, sexuality, gender and criminology had become the cornerstone to the social sciences. The body became a site of social regulation, and the notion of truth and its manifestations on the body became culturally realized through systemic ideologies. The social body was the triumph of Bourgeois order, where the political economy of Industrialism, Capitalism and Imperialism were entwined with the individual and the state, and where sexual conduct was converted to economic and political behavior.
        The category of homosexuality was a device meant to control and regulate. Foucaultian analysis asserts that nineteenth century prohibitions established far reaching oppressive sexual discourses, however, through systems set out to control sexuality - homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf (Foucault 1980).   
      The queer archive provides a site of memory that historically has been entrenched in erasure, inscribing both the archives and their users with political power. Without knowledge of the past, what can we expect of future queer subjectivities?

A central element of queer theory is the challenge to clear divisions of sexual orientation categories and the politics upon which they depend, both heteronormative and homonormative. This piece explores methodological issues in a queer research project inspired by the desires to understand how (some) people experience 'sexual orientation' and to imagine alternatives for political practice. With these desires in mind, I interviewed sixteen people in intimate relationships which crossed borders of sexual orientation identities; interviews focused on the areas of sexual identities, experiences, relationships and desires. Addressing these sensitive issues combined with my commitment to anti-authoritarian practice meant that issues of research ethics were central to this project. This chapter describes how overlaps and differences in autonomous Marxist, anarchist, feminist and poststructuralist thought, as well as queer theory, contributed to the development of the ethical practices in this project as well as how the emotional/embodied experience of interviews emphasised both concerns about the realities of doing intimate research from within the bureaucratic structures of universities and, consequently, the importance of care of the self. Queering any distinction between theory and data, as an additional aspect of research ethics, I describe my efforts to weave stories produced in interviews with other stories of queer, anarchist and feminist thought. In this piece, I further describe how I came to see these stories as narratives of policing, resistance and empowerment. Combining this storytelling approach with Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomic thought and a recognition of the significance of reflexivity, I examine the context of this research in four short stories on 1) my work in schools doing sexual health education, 2) changes in my own sexual identity and activism, 3) emotions and research and 4)my experiences of the mixed identity relationships. The chapter concludes with a call for letting go of demands for research to be justified according to a single value (i.e., validity) and instead to response to research to with respect to a multivalue consequentialism whereby the research is acknowledged to have multiple consequences which may or may not help the researcher and other participants (including readers) meet a variety of needs/values (i.e. integrity, autonomy, respect, community and beauty).

As a critical methodology, performance ethnography offers researchers a unique opportunity to tap into what I call queer social scientific remainders by using the dramatic staging of ethnographic material such that it can be disseminated to audiences in an arts-based dramatic forum. While ethnographers are often drawn to the atmosphere of the theatre and its capacity to give multidimensionality to their research, there is a lack of engagement with queer theory and transgender countercultural aesthetics. There is also an investment in a transcendental truth that negates the possibilities of staging the emotive and unknowable dimensions of the gendered subject. Performance ethnography has become a pedagogically exciting methodological form because it can emotionally engage audiences in topics they would normally avoid. However, such topics must incite curiosity and critical questioning, as opposed to definitive truth claims and easy answers. As evidenced by the play Queer Bathroom Monologues (QBM)*my case study*audiences engage, refuse, query, contest, affectively respond to, and ignore, the difficult and disturbing excesses of research about queer and transgender material.

Զրույցը վարել ենք էլեկտրոնային նամակագրության տեսքով 2016 թվականի դեկտեմբերի 15-ից 2017-ի հունվարի 8-ը ընկած ժամանակահատվածում: Սրանից առաջ միշտ Նելլի Սարգսյանն է հանդես եկել «Տարօրինակելով Երևանը» կոլեկտիվի հետ (հարցա)զրույցներ վարելու նախաձեռնությամբ, բայց այս անգամ նախաձեռնողն ու վարողը ՏԵԿ-ն է: Սովորաբար (ըստ ակադեմիական շրջանակներում ընդունված պրակտիկայի) հեղինակ համարվում են նախաձեռնողները (զրուցավարները), բայց այս դեպքում, մանավանդ որովհետև մեզ հետաքրքրողը հարցադրման (մեթոդաբանությա՞ն) նոր եղանակների ստեղծումը և իմաստարարումն են, մենք ցանկանում ենք խռովարկել ընդունված ավանդույթն ու թև տալ համահեղինակման սկզբունքին: ՏԵԿ: Սկսենք պարզ հարցով, կբարդացնենք հընթացս: Ինչպե՞ս ես առաջին անգամ իմացել «Տարօրինակելով Երևանը» կոլեկտիվի մասին, և հատկապես ի՞նչն էր, որ հետաքրքրեց քեզ ﬔր աշխատանքում: ՆՍ: 2009-ի սեպտեմբերին էր, երբ պատահմամբ աչքս ընկավ Վահան Իշխանյանի «ArmeniaNow» պարբերականում տպագրած հոդվածներից ﬔկը: Հեղինակի տոնն ինձ կոպիտ թվաց, բայց հոդվածի վերջում ﬕ հղում էր զետեղված: Բացեցի այն: Ձեր ցանցօրագիրն էր՝ բլոգը: Պարզորոշ հիշում եմ ինձ պատած ապշանքը (նաև որովհետև առաջին անգամ էի լսում ձեր մասին): Տպավորված էի թե՛ ձեր ստեղծագործականության և մտածողության խորությամբ, թե՛ նաև ձեր տեսական գիտելիքներով, իսկ աﬔնն այդ ստեղծվում էր Հայաստանում, Արփի Ադամյան «Մշտադալարների անքն(ն)ությունը» շարքից, 2017թ.։

A “sexless marriage” seems a most joyless and banal union to many, old as matrimony itself. Yet the new sexless marriage championed in this paper does not concern cold-bedded companionships, but the legal union of two citizens whose sexed bodies remain unspecified, unsignified and unimportant … in legislation (their importance in bed is left to participating citizens to determine). This article considers the recent changes to marriage legislation in European countries through the frame of Queer Theory. It particularly reflects on the introduction of the sexless marriage in Norway and Sweden, in the context of other models. It applies Judith Butler’s notions of gender performativity to the policisation of partnerships, applying her concepts of Overplay, Transference and Erasure in the disruption of the heterosexual matrix within coupled citizenship. It considers the varying value of marriage models to Queer projects in “opening up” citizenship, offering new perspectives on “gay marriage” debates.

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (‘PREP’) has so far emerged as a reluctant object in much gay community discourse, primarily because of its association with the supposed excesses of unbridled sex. Its approval in the USA sparked bitter debate and a new round of sexual health moralism issuing mainly from gay community-based commentators with initial uptake much slower than expected. This article considers early gay community responses to PREP and connects them to the failure of existing HIV scientific practices to produce inhabitable sexual pedagogies.  The controversy surrounding PREP speaks to the ways in which condoms have served as a way of managing communal fears about sexual excess in the era of AIDS; providing not only a latex barrier but also symbolic reassurance that gay sex might in some way be made “safe”.  Another mode of attending to what is risky and exciting about sexual and scientific encounters might be possible in conceiving them as events.

Issue annotation: Queer Theory understands gender and sexuality as relational constructs, subject to significant historical and cultural variation. Refusing to stabilize these variations into any singular norm, queer curating thus presents a challenge to the museum as a normalizing, meaning-making entity and asks how these concerns can be addressed in museumpractices, that have, for the most part, silently and unknowingly reproduced and solidified contemporary heteronormative structures and desires. How have queer issues, queer curators, and queer exhibitions at one and the same time both shaken the foundations of traditional curatorial practice, and found their potential for intervention papered over or silenced? How can queer desires continue to force the museum to evolve? What does queer change in the museum look like? This issue is an attempt to foster a dialogue about queer curating in a transnational frame. / Jonathan D. Katz

Favoured by ethnographers with some degree of closeness to the culture they wish to examine, the cultural participant as insider researcher has become relatively commonplace across the humanities. A large body of methodological literature now exists on this, highlighting the advantages and some of the dilemmas of conducting insider research. This literature is not exhaustive, as there remain elements of insider research still underdeveloped, such as how one goes about negotiating previously established friendships and intimate relationships in this context. Indeed, what are the benefits and dilemmas engendered by such negotiations? Drawing on existing scholarly accounts of field-based friendship and the author’s experiences of researching queer culture as an insider, this article addresses these questions in relation to the author’s field of inquiry and to social research paradigms more broadly. Subsequently, it argues that while being intimately inside one’s field does offer significant advantages, it also reshapes the researcher’s role in and experiences of her own culture and those within it.

Queer Forum, Bangkok Bar, Manchester, UK, 7th December 2014.
My talk looks back on 13 years of play in gallery spaces with community and education groups and with the general public passing through. Using as example my theatre company Cast-Off Drama, and our workshop and performance activities in Leeds and York, I will introduce some key ideas in the development of life-modelling theatre, and the reasons why working with the body and nudity is essential to public art spaces. My talk discusses the importance of adults having fun with drama and art and discusses politically why it is beneficial to involve gallery-goers in forming alternative canons of art from gallery collections. It notes the feminist and queer values of working with the body in art and the fun that can be had with getting naked in gallery spaces! It concludes with a summary of our current projects and invites you to get involved.
The powerpoint accompanying the talk is uploaded here. For a video recording of the talk, please click on the following link: http://vimeo.com/117382201

Over the last decade, Queer Studies have become Global Queer Studies, generating significant insights into key international political processes.  Yet the transformation from Queer to Global Queer has left the discipline of International Relations largely unaffected, which begs the question:  If Queer Studies have gone global, why hasn’t the discipline of International Relations gone somewhat queer?  Or, to put it in Martin Wight’s provocative terms, why is there no queer international theory? This article claims that the presumed non-existence of queer international theory is an effect of how the discipline of IR combines homologization, figuration and gentrification to code various types of theory as failures in order to manage the conduct of international theorizing in all its forms.  This means there are generalizable lessons to be drawn from how the discipline categorizes queer international theory out of existence to bring a specific understanding of IR into existence.

In this piece of writing I will discuss how contemporary queer theory and practice can be approached as an artistic methodology. To do that, I will navigate the history of the term ‘queer’ as to deliver its meaning as seen through this research, which will allow me to analyse and produce a critical enquiry into three performance works created during my research and further the notion of palimpsestuousness as a form of queer synthesis of matter and meaning.

In this article, I explore the potential for people with disabilities to conduct research about disability in
education. Drawing upon Rasmussen (2006), I consider whether merely sharing one aspect of identity with
participants is enough to gain an emic (insider) perspective when doing research. I argue that not only should
we problematize our own identity, but that research should change the researcher’s own identity and that the
degree to which research promotes this change is an essential aspect of formal validity of the research. Finally,
I propose some practical implications and offer some advice for researchers conducting research on disability.

This essay is based on a cyber autoethnographic research I have conducted on Hornet, a geosocial networking application (GNA) created for gay and bisexual men, without establishing a clear-cut distinction between my identity as a user and that as a researcher. Here I discuss how feminist and queer autoethnography in and of cybercultures can refrain from objectifying or exploiting others by enabling research relations that (a) are not hierarchical, (b) disturb the researcher/researched binary, (c) embrace the impersonal ethics of cruising, and (d) do not shy away from recognizing the role of the researcher’s body unlike the conventional (masculine) researcher who allegedly has no emotional, erotic, or bodily presence within the field or in the research. I also address cruising as a queer autoethnographic method, while uncovering the methodological and ethical implications of doing autoethnography in a cyberfield that is libidinally invested.

Drawing on an inquiry action research project, a group of teachers and scholars, who called themselves Pink TIGers, report, explore, and critique their pedagogical practices. Using a variety of qualita- tive methods they unpack their pedagogical practices with a focus on homophobia and heterosexism. This informative and transpar- ent project is written in accessible language and provides concrete suggestions for how teachers, researchers, teacher educators, and educational activists might create a more socially just educational field.

Abstract Researcher-based efforts to protect participant identity are common in qualitative research. Most Institutional Review Boards expect statements regarding researchers’ plans to protect participants’ privacy, often including assigning participant pseudonyms. These confidentiality practices are ubiquitous in qualitative scholarship, yet relatively unexamined. Drawing on Barad’s discussions of queer intra-action, this paper explores the implications of a U.S. Southeast-based K-12 educator’s efforts to participate in a research project as an LGBTQ + teacher ally, when such discussions put her and those she discussed at substantial personal and professional risk. Based primarily on two interviews, during which the participant explicitly examined, and sometimes rejected, the researcher’s efforts at achieving participant confidentiality, this paper centers the participant, her perspectives, and her needs as we explore the importance of an overt and iterative participant confidentiality process in qualitative research.

This paper explores certain facets of the quotidian of people who are living "queer" lives in Manipur, through stories of struggles and negotiation of 8 people trying to survive abuse, find livelihood and acceptance from their family and community; amidst the hostility of nation-state conflict. These stories complicate the narrative of the oppressor and the oppressed as well as that of violence and desire.

A "sexless marriage" seems a most joyless and banal union to many, old as matrimony itself. Yet the new sexless marriage championed in this paper does not concern cold-bedded companionships, but the legal union of two citizens whose sexed bodies remain unspecified, unsignified and unimportant … in legislation (their importance in bed is left to participating citizens to determine). This article considers the recent changes to marriage legislation in European countries through the frame of Queer Theory. It particularly reflects on the introduction of the sexless marriage in Norway and Sweden, in the context of other models. It applies Judith Butler's notions of gender performativity to the policisation of partnerships, applying her concepts of Overplay, Transference and Erasure in the disruption of the heterosexual matrix within coupled citizenship. It considers the varying value of marriage models to Queer projects in "opening up" citizenship, offering new p...

Researcher-based efforts to protect participant identity are common in qualitative research. Most Institutional Review Boards expect statements regarding researchers’ plans to protect participants’ privacy, often including assigning participant pseudonyms. These confidentiality practices are ubiquitous in qualitative scholarship, yet relatively unexamined. Drawing on Barad’s discussions of queer intra-action, this paper explores the implications of a U.S. Southeast-based K-12 educator’s efforts to participate in a research project as an LGBTQ + teacher ally, when such discussions put her and those she discussed at substantial personal and professional risk. Based primarily on two interviews, during which the participant explicitly examined, and sometimes rejected, the researcher’s efforts at achieving participant confidentiality, this paper centers the participant, her perspectives, and her needs as we explore the importance of an overt and iterative participant confidentiality process in qualitative research.

This paper explores the reasons why video, and other visual representations have been largely ignored in sociology, whilst the possibilities of video as an empirical source have been sidelined by cultural studies. Discussions of methodology have raised doubts about notions such as objectivity and scientific knowledge, and about the power relationships involved in the research and writing processes, and techniques that one might employ in order to avoid such problems have been suggested. Yet the aims of such techniques are misguided if they serve only to further legitimate the ‘truth’ of the research itself. In this context I explore some of the possibilities of visual methods, such as video and photography, whilst also examining some of the ethical issues raised by them. In this respect, the paper explores the notion of a ‘queer methodology’. This approach is indebted to the legacy of its predecessor, feminist methodology, but departs from this in several important ways. I will explore these differences and examine the possibility that a place for the visual within sociology is an inherently queer conception.

Attitudes toward and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) people have changed significantly in the Western world over the last few decades, especially for white people and people of means, and this shift extends to geography as well. At the same time, a formal body of literature on geographies of sexualities and LGBTQI geographies has continued to grow with more positive support from the field as a whole; in 2013, this Annals book review is the first to examine works on geographies of sexualities. A flurry of recent edited volumes, edited journal issues, and conferences on the subjects of space and sexuality has shifted the attention and respect given this body of work. This review takes up two of these recent geography-focused volumes published by Ashgate, Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research (2010) and Queer Spiritual Spaces: Sexuality and Scared Places (2010), which have taken the work of geographies of sexualities in new, important, and timely directions.

At times radical theory can propose a singular story of the nature of power, suggesting that it must either be taken or abolished. This then becomes intertwined with a pedagogical strategy of recruitment, whereby others are encouraged to share in this ideological framework and the political practices based upon it. In this paper, we propose an alternative based on practices of freedom and the role of love in subverting interdependent patterns of normativity and hierarchy. Bringing together anarchist, feminist and queer theories alongside authoethnographic accounts from classrooms and other spaces of pedagogy, we highlight the value of a multiplicity of stories, of telling stories and doing roles differently, and of releasing stories for the immediacy of connection.

Abstract Researcher-based efforts to protect participant identity are common in qualitative research. Most Institutional Review Boards expect statements regarding researchers’ plans to protect participants’ privacy, often including assigning participant pseudonyms. These confidentiality practices are ubiquitous in qualitative scholarship, yet relatively unexamined. Drawing on Barad’s discussions of queer intra-action, this paper explores the implications of a U.S. Southeast-based K-12 educator’s efforts to participate in a research project as an LGBTQ + teacher ally, when such discussions put her and those she discussed at substantial personal and professional risk. Based primarily on two interviews, during which the participant explicitly examined, and sometimes rejected, the researcher’s efforts at achieving participant confidentiality, this paper centers the participant, her perspectives, and her needs as we explore the importance of an overt and iterative participant confidentiality process in qualitative research.

When Is a Clitoris Like a Lesbian? a "Sociologist" Considers Thinking Sex Valerie Traub's Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015When is a clitoris like a lesbian? Sounds like the start of a joke, right? But as I read Valerie Traub's new book, I reflected on the challenges of researching sexuality both historically and today. The clitoris and the lesbian-one of Traub's subjects, one of my own-are "boundary objects" (Star and Griesemer 1989; Star 2010), existing at the junctures of social worlds and animated by intense controversy and competition to define them. For sexuality scholars, the trick has often been to simultaneously recognize the material realities of bodies, acts, affects, identities, performances, engorgements, and resolutions while accounting for our own "situated knowledges" bounded by time, location, geography, and discipline (Haraway 1988).In studying the clitoris, I call it into being-but not as a stable and singular entity to be discovered (Moore and Clarke 1995; 2001). I cannot simply and correctly calibrate my tools/techniques/methods to "find" lesbians or clitorises because these objects are always both becoming and confounding. Traub explains that the ontological and epistemological instability of these objects is indeed part of what queer methods should uncover-these opaque processes of becoming knowable and known is what our queer methods reveal. And it is the elusive, contested, and controversial problematics around defining these objects that is the actual "data." Traub implores queer methodologists to wallow in the actual troubles of researching sexual objects, rather than thinking we can figure our way out of them. Feminist methodologist Patti Lather (2007) calls this methodological tactic "getting lost."As a feminist medical sociologist trained in grounded theory in the early 1990s by Adele Clarke, I occupy a strange position between empirical sociology and cultural studies. On the one hand, my research on fe- male genital anatomy, human sperm, and honeybees can be deemed not quite empirical or sociological enough by certain standards. On the other hand, my work has rarely been considered part of queer studies, though I see myself as queering sociology. I suspect that my work is too empirically grounded and too reliant on methods. In certain circles, the palpable hostility to empiricism has sometimes inspired me to keep my mouth shut and silence my critiques. Since my methods act toward the world as if it exists, no matter how it is constructed, I start my projects with what I consider to be material realities-contested, political, and heterogeneously represented realities, and yet still material realities.Honeybees die, clitorises disappear in genital anatomy textbooks and reappear in pornography, and human global sperm counts decline. Understanding how we coproduce the conditions of these material realities, and then work to interpret them, is my job as I understand it. Like Traub, I suggest that our work must interrogate "how categories . . . came to be" (81). Her historical analysis uses literary sources to recursively think with and about sex and at the same time reveals inconsistencies, frictions, and ambiguities of sexual objects.My feeling of being a misfit is why Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns is so affirming for me as a queer empiricist. Though I am not a literary scholar, Traub's acknowledgment of the need for methodological commitments among historical, literary, and queer studies scholars was refreshing. "Queer's free-floating, endlessly mobile, and infinitely subversive capacities may be one of its strengths-accomplishing strategic maneuvers that no other concept does-but its principled imprecision poses considerable analytic limitations" (76). I like to flirt with queer studies scholarship, and I have promiscuously used theoretical concepts to illuminate my data. Understanding the anatomical renderings of the clitoris as disciplinary (a la Michel Foucault), sea level rise as a hyperobject (a la Timothy Morton), or leaking breast milk as an interruption of phallocentrism (a la Judith Butler), enables me to know my fieldwork differently. …