Essays on identity, culture and the politics of meaning

How did the radical politics of the 1960s find a lasting home in universities? What role did the democratization of higher education play in the rise and popularization of gender theory? And how did sexual liberation develop into a political project whose ambitions extend far beyond sexuality itself?

My forthcoming essay, Judith Butler, examines Butler’s own unease with the limitations of gay identity, her turn toward gender, and the curious resistance of queer theory to any stable definition of its subject. It explores the relationship between intellectual authority, political militancy, and institutionalized activism, asking how a tradition committed to challenging established norms acquired an authority of its own.

Butler’s apparent inability to adequately explain the appeal of the manosphere raises a further question: can a philosophy so deeply concerned with vulnerability, recognition, and the prevention of violence make sense of aggression, sexual rivalry, and the renewed attraction of traditional masculinity?

Ultimately, the essay asks whether the revolutionary spirit of 1968 has been kept alive through the institutions it once challenged—and what became of homosexuality when identity itself became an endless political project.