Queering Social Sciences: From Symbolic Interactionism to the Epistemology of the Closet

Abstract

This article aims at demonstrating the epistemological continuity between symbolic interactionism and queer theory. In particular, I will suggest that queer theory realizes the anti-rationalist and post-structuralist turn in social sciences, theorized by Dewey, James, Mead, Thomas and Pierce, at the beginning of XXth century. This early works of pragmatist\interactionist scholars represent, in my opinion, the main reference for all interpretive social sciences nowadays, in order to realise a new post-Aristotelian scientific logic of inquiry. Consistent with Green’s essay Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject (2007), I will propose to re-frame queer theory “forgetting Foucault” (Halperin, 2003). But differently, I will focus more on the epistemic analogies between the two traditions, in terms of deconstructionism, anti-identitarian approach to subjectivity, agency and sexuality. After introducing the axioms of pragmatis/interactionist epistemology, I will discuss how this axioms have been translated in a proper methodology by Blumer; how Mead, Turner and the new representatives of symbolic interactionism have dealt with the topics of role performances and identity; how Sedgwick and Butler have founded an epistemology of queer theory presenting strong analogies with symbolic interactionism. In the conclusions, I will draw a possible scenario of future integration between the two traditions.

Keywords: epistemology, symbolic interactionism, queer theory, identity theory, deconstructionism.