What Does Queer IR Want? A Queer Psychoanalytic Critique

Abstract

Abstract This article presents a sympathetic critique of the concept of “queer” operative in the subfield of Queer International Relations from a psychoanalytic perspective. I first reconstruct queer International Relations (IR) in relation to disciplinary IR and queer theory, and offer an appraisal of the current state of the field's division between LGBT+ theorists and queer theorists. I then consider Cynthia Weber’s recent work and suggest that the boundary between the two camps of queer IR is precarious in that both require and presuppose an opposition to some concept of the straight world. I suggest that, thus construed, the form of the queer/straight distinction approximates that of the mirror stage Jacques Lacan theorized in the 1930s. Read through Lacan, the notion of “queer” in queer IR can be shown to reduce the concept of desire to that of identity, which precludes understanding of the political import of queerness in respect of the LGBT+ group. Finally, I apply the Freudian–Lacanian reflection on narcissism, group formation, and desire to the debate on LGBT+ rights, and conclude that attending to the Lacanian concept of pure desire (via queer readings of Antigone) may be productive for queer IR's rethinking of the deadlocks it has run into in its brief history.