Queer Roots for the Diaspora : Ghosts in the Family Tree /

As a way of understanding identity, the concept of rootedness has increasingly been subjected to acerbic political and theoretical critiques. Politically, roots narratives have been criticized for attempting to police identity through a politics of purity-excluding anyone who doesn't share the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hayes, Jarrod (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2016.
Series:Book collections on Project MUSE.
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Online Access:Full text available:
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Summary:As a way of understanding identity, the concept of rootedness has increasingly been subjected to acerbic political and theoretical critiques. Politically, roots narratives have been criticized for attempting to police identity through a politics of purity-excluding anyone who doesn't share the same narrative. Theoretically, a critique of essentialism has led toga suspicion against essence and origins regardless of their political implications. The central argument of Queer Roots for the Diaspora is that, in spite of these debates around the concept of roots, ultimately the desire for roots contains the "roots" of its own deconstruction. The book considers alternative root narratives that acknowledge the impossibility of returning to origins with any certainty; welcome sexual diversity; acknowledge their own fictionality; reveal that even a single collective identity can be rooted in multiple ways; and create family trees haunted by the queer others patrilineal genealogy seems to marginalize. The roots narratives simultaneously assert and question rooted identities within a number of diasporas-African, Jewish, and Armenian.
Physical Description:1 online resource (340 pages).
ISBN:9780472122066
Access:Open Access