Queer and
Feminist Theory

Teresa de Lauretis coined the term ‘queer theory’; for her, it was a means of denaturalizing sexuality and developing a theory of lesbian desire, which she provocatively, yet affirmatively, called ‘fetishistic’ and ‘perverse’. Drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the analysis of power, Teresa de Lauretis formulated a process of sexual structuring that informed her understanding of queer theory. In 1990, she titled the conference on lesbian and gay sexualities held at UCI Santa Cruz ‘Queer Theory’. She hoped that queer theory would bring about ‘new forms of community’ and ‘resistance to cultural homogenization’. Yet, she was also among the first to criticize the danger of normalization that accompanied the institutionalization and rapid spread of the term queer. As early as 1994, she described queer theory as vacuous and overhyped in an essay entitled ‘Habit Changes’. She criticized the shift in focus from sexuality to gender inclusivity, democratic representation, and multiculturalism. Lauretis was also a decisive critic of Freud, Laplanche, and psychoanalysis; nevertheless they remained the focal point of her thinking. Through her writings on psychoanalytic film theory and the structuring of the subject, as in her 1994 books Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire as well as Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction (1987), Teresa de Lauretis became a pioneer and co-founder of feminist film theory and media-gender studies. She always resisted reaching a hasty consensus and insisted on critical thinking regarding the current state of affairs. It was precisely because of this uncompromising, passionate approach, unafraid of contradiction that de Lauretis had such a formative influence on many of us.

Teresa de Lauretis was born in Italy in 1938 and taught in the interdisciplinary History of Consciousness Program at UC Santa Cruz from 1985 until her retirement in 2008. She died in San Francisco on 3 February 2026. The workshop will explore and discuss selected texts by de Lauretis. The texts will be distributed prior to the workshop to registered participants.

ICI Berlin in cooperation with the Institute for Queer Theory

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky
Christoph Holzhey
Antke Antek Engel

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