Playing with Fire

The last five years have witnessed the birth of a vibrant new group of young scholars who are writing about queer law, politics, and policy--topics which are no longer treated as of interest only to lesbians and gay men, but which now garner the attention of political theorists of all stripes. Playing With Fire--the first scholarly collection on queer politics by US political theorists--opens the intersection of lesbian and gay studies and political theory to a wide audience. It covers a wide range of issues, including: the theory of queer identities; the contrasts among ethnic, racial, and sexual identities; the debate between liberals and communitarians; the right to privacy; and the meaning of equal citizenship.

Shane Phelan is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Introduction/Shane Phelan -- Critically queer/Judith Butler -- True or false: the self in radical lesbian feminist theory/Cynthia Burack -- Dichotomies and displacement: bisexuality in queer theory and politics/Stacey Young -- Lesbians and mestizas: appropriation and equivalence/Shane Phelan -- Somewhere over the rainbow: queer translating/Angelia R. Wilson -- The centering of right-wing extremism through the construction of an "inclusionary" homophobia and racism/Anna Marie Smith -- Community, rights talk, and the communitarian dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick/Gordon A. Babst -- Essentialism and the political articulation of identity/Gary Lehring -- Intimacy and equality: the question of lesbian and gay marriage/Morris B. Kaplan -- Politics, practices, publics: identity and queer rights/Paisley Currah -- Queer problems, straight solutions: the limits of a politics of "official recognition"/Lisa Bower.