Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory

A pathbreaking genealogy of queer theory that traces its roots to an unexpected source: sociological research on marginal communities in the era before Stonewall. &nbsp; The sociology of "social deviants" flourished in the United States at midcentury, studying the lives of outsiders such as homosexuals, Jews, disabled people, drug addicts, and political radicals. But in the next decades, many of these downcast figures would become the architects of new social movements, activists in revolt against institutions, the state, and social constraint. As queer theory gained prominence as a subfield of the humanities in the late 1980s, it seemed to inherit these radical, activist impulses--challenging not only gender and sexual norms, but the nature of society itself. With Underdogs, Heather Love shows that queer theorists inherited as much from sociologists as they did from activists. Through theoretical and archival work, Love traces the connection between midcentury studies of deviance and the anti-normative, anti-essentialist field of queer theory. While sociologists saw deviance as an inevitable fact of social life, queer theorists embraced it as a rallying cry. A robust interdisciplinary history of the field, Underdogs stages a reencounter with the practices and communities that underwrite radical queer thought.

Literature & Fiction

Love, Heather

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

Product Description 
A pathbreaking genealogy of queer theory that traces its roots to an unexpected source: sociological research on marginal communities in the era before Stonewall.\nThe sociology of “social deviants” flourished in the United States at midcentury, studying the lives of outsiders such as homosexuals, Jews, disabled people, drug addicts, and political radicals. But in the following decades, many of these downcast figures would become the architects of new social movements, activists in revolt against institutions, the state, and social constraint. As queer theory gained prominence as a subfield of the humanities in the late 1980s, it seemed to inherit these radical, activist impulses—challenging not only gender and sexual norms, but also the nature of society itself.\nWith 
Underdogs, Heather Love shows that queer theorists inherited as much from sociologists as they did from activists. Through theoretical and archival work, Love traces the connection between midcentury studies of deviance and the antinormative, antiessentialist field of queer theory. While sociologists saw deviance as an inevitable fact of social life, queer theorists embraced it as a rallying cry. A robust interdisciplinary history of the field, 
Underdogs stages a reencounter with the practices and communities that underwrite radical queer thought. 
 Review \n“What might we learn about queer studies by exploring its intellectual debts to midcentury social scientists’ interest in underdogs, underworlds, and the dynamics of stigma? Heather Love’s provocative and defamiliarizing analysis asks us to see queer studies—its limitations and its transformational possibilities—anew. A critical intellectual history, teeming with ideas and unlikely engagements.” 
 ― 
Regina Kunzel, Yale University\n“ 
Underdogs is a well-crafted, subtle, and beautifully written foray into the worlds of mid-twentieth century social science by a humanities scholar who uncovers, in the fine details of descriptive empirical research, the largely unrecognized precursors of today’s queer studies. With keen focus, Love reveals new possibilities for scholarly, ethical, and political commitments to the defense of outcasts and outsiders. Love makes an impassioned claim that humanists and social scientists need one another—and need to set aside the tenacious methodological dogmas that keep them apart.” 
 ― 
Steven Epstein, Northwestern University\n“ 
Underdogs clarifies how the social science of deviance, like the queer theory that superseded it, depended on the figure of the outsider. Love asks queer theory to take social science 
methodologies, especially ‘underdog methods,’ seriously. At their best, these methods promise to keep queer theory open to surprise and alert to the potentialities of everyday life.” 
 ― 
Elizabeth Freeman, University of California, Davis\n"Heather Love’s 
Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory (University of Chicago Press) is an intervention into the field of queer studies. But it is also an important work of intellectual history, tracing a surprising new genealogy that locates the origins of 1990s ‘queer theory’ not in literary studies, but in mid-20th-century empirical social research. It will appeal to readers invested in the nascent effort to historicise queer studies, but also to those interested in the history of the social sciences." 
 ― 
History Today 
 About the Author \nHeather Love is professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of 
Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History.

Feeling Backward weighs the costs of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. While the widening tolerance for same-sex marriage and for gay-themed media brings clear benefits, gay assimilation entails other losses--losses that have been hard to identify or mourn, since many aspects of historical gay culture are so closely associated with the pain and shame of the closet. 
 Feeling Backward makes an effort to value aspects of historical gay experience that now threaten to disappear, branded as embarrassing evidence of the bad old days before Stonewall. It looks at early-twentieth-century queer novels often dismissed as "too depressing" and asks how we might value and reclaim the dark feelings that they represent. Heather Love argues that instead of moving on, we need to look backward and consider how this history continues to affect us in the present. 
 Through elegant readings of Walter Pater, Willa Cather, Radclyffe Hall, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, and through stimulating engagement with a range of critical sources, Feeling Backward argues for a form of politics attentive to social exclusion and its effects.

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

Harvard University Press

30-Minute Sewing

Search Press Ltd

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Books by Love, Heather

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Love, Heather. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory

Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

30-Minute Sewing