Main description:

Offering a concise yet comprehensive introduction to gender theory, this thought-provoking new book aims to make an intervention into the contemporary American paradigm of thinking gender and sexuality and offers a powerful challenge to the paradigm of social constructionism.

Within each gender paradigm there are unacknowledged truths. The controversial claim of this book is that queer theory and intersectionality - and, more broadly, the social constructionist paradigm - have reached a limit. Indeed, it is possible that they are becoming regressive political gestures. However, there are possibilities of moving forward in this new area of transformation and Rousselle claims that a new logic of gender invention is opening up a new paradigm of thought.

Part of the popular Routledge Focus on Mental Health series, this book will be of immense value to students and teachers who aim to understand in a basic way some of the various main paradigms, theories, and concepts within gender and sexuality studies. It will also be an important attempt to think beyond those paradigms and theories.

Contents:

01. Gender meta-theory: an in(ter)vention 02. Theory as an antidote to chaos 03. Thinking gender as a Marxist: foundational ideas 04. The social construction of gender: the case of queer theory 05. Situating paradigms: from intersectionality to citational practices 06. Interrogating intersectionality 07. Psychoanalysis and gender: the Mobius strip 08. Subject formations 09. Trans* inventions: from anxiety to certainty