Gay/lesbian literary studies and queer theory now hold an increasingly visible position in humanities departments in British and US universities and in English/French critical theory. In the USA and UK, queer theory has branched off from gay and lesbian studies; the move to queer represents a theoretical shift linked to the socio-political. It is possible to analyse in Foucauldian terms the historical shifts in identity (self-)categorization from homosexual to gay/lesbian and then to queer. ‘Gay’ was a term appropriated in the late 1960s in order to represent a positive social identity in contrast with ‘homosexual’ as a form of behaviour with negative connotations. Scott Tucker (1982, 60) clarifies the distinction between the two terms thus: ‘many of us define ourselves as gay because we associate that term with pride and self-definition, whereas we associate homosexual with oppression and manipulation’. It was later in the 1980s, within the context of activism in response to the growth of AIDS, as well as to anti-assimilation stances within the collective gay movement (especially by feminists and lesbian groups), that queer came into popular culture and theory. Pejorative terms were again taken and ‘re-lexified’ in the USA: Queer Nation and Pink Panthers were just two organizations exemplary of this process. Queer theory is therefore rooted in the US and British politics of sexual difference of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and the result of a disenchantment with some aspects of gay and lesbian politics in terms of collective normativity. As such, queer is not only at odds with heterosexual norms but also with gay and lesbian norms.

As an academic discipline, queer theory can be dated to the beginning of the 1990s. It represents a separate theory, which ‘says something to gay studies’ (to quote one definition), and in branching off from gay/lesbian studies some antagonism has been formed between the two areas. Foucault and Butler have been particularly influential to queer theory in terms of power/resistance bindings and sexual identity/gender categories. Literary critics influenced by Foucault have furthered cultural, historical and gay readings, especially the need to look at homo–hetero relations rather than antagonisms. Leo Bersani (1995, 68–9) mentions in admiration the ‘breathtaking claim’ by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick that any study of Western civilization requires a ‘critical analysis of modern homo-heterosexual definition’.