Michael Warner

Michael Warner (born 1958) is a literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University.

Quotes

• The preference for [the term] 'queer' represents, among other things, an aggressive impulse of generalizations; it rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal. ... For both academics and activists, 'queer' gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual. ... The insistence on 'queer' ... has the effect of pointing out a wide field of normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence.
  • Warner, Michael (1993). "Introduction", Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, p. xxvi. Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.