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Croce, Mariano --- "Queer in the law: critique and postcritique" [2019] ELECD 1670; in Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco (eds), "Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 79

Book Title: Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory

Editor(s): Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Queer in the law: critique and postcritique

Author(s): Croce, Mariano

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

This chapter illustrates how queer theories affect the way we think of the law. I first discuss the dynamics of negotiation that are required for forms of sexuality and types of relationships to gain access to legal recognition and state protection. In doing so, I look at three lines of the queer lineage (namely, Freudo-Marxism, radical constructivism and antisocial theories) and foreground how they conceive the relation between law and sexuality. To cut deeper into the ambivalence of this relation, I centre on the same sex marriage debate and especially the heated contrapositions that still surround it. This shines a light on how claims to legal recognition affect the law in a transformative manner and to what extent these very claims are reabsorbed in a constrictive lexicon that effaces the challenging character of same sex sexuality. The chapter concludes by gesturing to the innovative effects of postcritique on queer theory and its conception of the legal practice.