The field of queer studies is relatively young, but as it has made inroads in a number of different academic fields and debates, some critics have asserted that the term is no longer useful, that it has become passé, that it has lost its ability to create productive friction. Pointing to its seeming ubiquity in popular-cultural venues such as the recent television shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or Queer as Folk, others criticize the ways that the greater circulation of “queer” and its appropriation by the mainstream entertainment industries have emptied out its oppositional political potential. Whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the increasingly visibility of “queer” culture remains an open question. Meanwhile, scholars continue to carefully interrogate the shortcomings and the untapped possibilities of “queer” approaches to a range of diverse issues, such as migration (Luibhéid and Cantú 2005) or temporality (Edelman 2004; Halberstam 2005). Whatever the future uses and contradictions of “queer,” it seems likely that the word will productively refuse to settle down, demanding critical reflection in order to be understood in its varied and specific cultural, political, and historical contexts.

This is an excerpt from Siobhan B. Somerville’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 191).