Queer

October 31, 2016
Academic/activist Barker (Rewriting the Rules) attempts to demystify the ideas that make up queer theory’s framework, accompanied by plenty of illustrative and humorous cartoons from Scheele (Metroland). Spanning from 19th-century sexology and Freud to modern queer theorists such as Julia Serano and Sara Ahmed, Barker analyzes the history of the word queer itself, examining the progressive and regressive aspects of theory’s most vital thinkers. Though Scheele’s portraits are somewhat lazily copied and pasted throughout the book (reminiscent of her zine work), her diagrams and visual aids are invaluable in understanding Barker’s more intricate explanations. Perhaps most importantly, Barker and Scheele make sure to emphasize that while queer theory has many problems with race, disability, and various hierarchies, the nature of queerness ensures that these issues can be changed. This hopeful and welcoming attitude should encourage readers to queer their own lives in whatever ways feel right.

November 15, 2016
Subjects as daunting as physics, genetics, andhoo-boy!chemistry have been successfully given graphic-novel treatment, so perhaps the same can be done with queer theory. Barker and Scheele certainly try, admitting only the most obvious complaint about it, that it's hard to get a handle on. Really, it's not as difficult as its detractors say. Barker and Scheele trace its fairly familiar prehistory through nineteenth-century sexologists, Freud, Kinsey, mid-twentieth-century sex therapists, and the gay rights movement, then turn to the broad range of scholars and cultural critics who, influenced by feminism and social-justice advocacy, concocted versions of queer theory and have kept it mercurial. In essence, they disclose, queer theory is a method of reductive critical analysis bent on questioning conceptions of sexual identity, sexuality, and gender that, even inadvertently, create categories of ins and outs or hierarchies of value. The mode of presentation is the familiar text over, around, and under bold-lined drawingscartoony for merely illustrative figures, realistic for real persons (Scheele is a dab hand at simple, faithful portraiture).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)