Queering Queer Legal Studies: An Unreconstructed Ode to Eve Sedgwick (and Others)

Abstract

The essay explores the extant field queer legal studies and maps the multiple meanings of “queer” deployed within it. I distinguish queer from LGBT, but resist any further disciplining of the term. I propose instead an understanding of queer legal studies as a sensibility. Neither a prescription nor a pronouncement, the article is written as an ode to Eve Sedgewick, her axioms and her reparative readings. I offer the essay as a celebration of queer legal studies to date and of its hopeful potentialities into an unknown future.