ellisaspen 's review for:

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker

1.0

slow-paced

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 Trying to get through this book was <i>tough</i>. I purchased it believing, foolishly, based on the subtitle that it was a history of queerness in that it would examine cultures, lives, activism/movements, etc. of or related to queerness—some ancient and traditional cultures, some Magnus Hirschfeld, some Marsha P. Johnson, etc etc. Instead, it’s about queer <i>theory</i>, which is quite different from the type of queer history the subtitle seems to imply. Silly me for thinking the (sub)title would reflect the contents.

Is it a good queer theory book, at least? Excellent question. I personally dislike getting into theoretical weeds, as at a certain point it feels a bit useless and pedantic. I know a lot of people value those conversations (I mean, if not, queer theory and other types of theory wouldn’t exist); it just makes my head hurt because it almost always, inevitably, ends up feeling too lofty and untethered from actual reality (which yes, queer theory does also get into, esp with some of the later discussion around antisocial queer theory and whatnot; personally I care more about the material concerns and whether everyone is able to access food, housing, medicine, etc. before I care about these very cerebral discussions).

I suppose, as a queer theory novice and self-professed hater-in-general-of-theories-without-praxis (hey, look, one of those binaries the authors warn against!), this book does do a decent job of introducing queer theory—as long as the reader doesn’t hope to actually do anything about what they’ve learned.

Because, dear review-reader, there is no bibliography or reference section. There are no handy footnotes or endnotes to denote where the ~paraphrases~ are coming from (and they’re almost all paraphrases). There is only a single page of “Resources” that acts more like a “further readings” list than anything substantial and scholarly. You want to know what book or chapter a paraphrase is referencing or where an idea is developed more in-depth? Well, great, go f*ck yourself, I guess.

It’s where the breakdown of graphic texts becomes really apparent; people view them as casual—so casual, in fact, that graphic nonfiction can become a bit useless once you travel beyond memoir. In trying to make a previously published text (as in the case of adaptations) or set of ideas (as in this book) more accessible, oftentimes it ends up backfiring by cutting out large swathes of context or information, by oversimplifying, by deciding, “Hey, my stupid readers don’t need a goddamned bibliography because this is a picture book!”

In sum: This book is really frustrating and not for me. I was annoyed by it, but the sloppiness in terms of (the lack of) citations makes me absolutely hate it. I honestly think I’d fare better wading through the hundreds of pages of a dry textbook than I did struggling thru this.