Margot Wei
Biographic Data
| ID | 3616861 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Margot Wei |
| GIVEN NAMES | Margot |
| FAMILY NAME | Wei |
| SIGNATURE | WEI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wesleyan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7275-0415 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Unsettling Queer Anthropology
Queer Theory from Elsewhere and the Im/Proper Objects of Queer Anthropology
What is queer in contemporary transnational queer studies? In this essay, I explore queer as a political‐intellectual orientation and aspirational field animated by its constitutive polarity: between a more constrained queer focused on sex, sexuality, and gender and a more expansive queer that bears an oblique relationship to these more proper objects. I trace how the desire to do justice to our objects of study produces queer ’s characteristic i…
Thinking kink
The Interlocutor Slot
Hope and Despair in the Queer Nonprofit Industrial Complex
Research Article| April 01 2020 Hope and Despair in the Queer Nonprofit Industrial Complex Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer PoliticsBeam, MyrlMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 236 pp. Margot Weiss Margot Weiss Margot Weiss is associate professor of American studies and anthropology and coordinator of queer studies at Wesleyan University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2020) 26 (2): 343–345.…
Intimate Encounters
This article explores ethnographic intimacy beyond an identitarian focus on sex, sexual identity, and sex-desire by reflecting on three of my own fieldwork projects in queer anthropology. Bringing queer, decolonizing, postcolonial, and critical race theory into conversation with reflexive work on sex in/and ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that broadening our conceptions of intimacy enables us to think less about sex in the field and more about se…
Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times (1970–2010s)
Neoliberalism has had a profound effect on post-1970s LGBT/queer cultures and politics. This essay reviews how, by privatizing social services, fostering consumer citizenship, and promoting corporate welfare and urban redevelopment, neoliberal policies have pit “deserving” gays and lesbians against “undeserving” others: the same-sex married couple vs. the “welfare queen,” the gay/lesbian consumer-citizen vs. the poor queer, and the gay gentrifier…
Always After
Sensational Flesh
Amber Jamilla Musser’s Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism takes up masochism not as a sexual practice, nor a psychological or philosophical concept, but as a set of relationships between sensation and power. Beginning with turn-of-the-century sexology and ending with contemporary African American art, with a lengthy sojourn in mid-century French existential philosophy, Sensational Flesh gathers together an extraordinary range of theore…
Queer Precarity and the Myth of Gay Affluence
The LGBT movement’s laser-focus on marriage equality propagates the myth of gay and lesbian affluence as political strategy, leaving aside any analysis of class or economic inequality or poverty—much less an analysis of capitalism. LGBT people are typically depicted as affluent consumers with high d
On Marriage Equality
Book Review| April 01 2013 On Marriage Equality The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage and Neo-Liberal Governance, Whitehead, Jaye Cee, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. x + 205 pp. Margot Weiss Margot Weiss Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2013) 19 (2): 273–275. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1957267 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Margot We…
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore Margot Weiss (bio) Margot Weiss talked to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about the academic appropriation of activist intellectual labor and the hierarchies of intellectual work inside and outside the university. Sycamore is a writer, editor of several books including That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull, 2004, 2008), Nobody Passes: Rej…
Introduction
Introduction: Left Intellectuals and the Neoliberal University Naomi Greyser (bio) and Margot Weiss (bio) This American Quarterly forum builds on a symposium held in 2011 at Wesleyan University on the relationship between academia and activism. Our symposium was inspired by a pair of concerns: that academics too often either romanticize activism as the site where “real” political work happens or else ascribe an abstracted radical politics to quot…
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination”: A Roundtable with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez of Against Equality Margot Weiss (bio) Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the pris…
The Epistemology of Ethnography
This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of qu…
Gay Shame and BDSM Pride
This essay contrasts two contemporary activist groups: Gay Shame San Francisco, which seeks to disrupt homonormative lesbian and gay activism by challenging policing and gentrification; and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which disseminates a public image of BDSM, leather, and kinky practitioners as suburban minivan drivers who “look and dress like your neighbors.” Margot Weiss argues that neoliberalism’s relegation of sexuality into t…
Mainstreaming Kink
This article explores nonpractitioners' understandings of and responses to the increasingly mainstream representation of BDSM in U.S. media, focusing on the film Secretary (Shainberg, 2002). Survey, focus group, and interview data indicate that popular images of SM promote the acceptance and understanding of sexual minorities through two mechanisms: acceptance via normalization, and understanding via pathologizing. Rather than challenging the pri…
Working at Play
In this article, I argue that BDSM sexuality should be conceptualized as a form of "working at play. " Considering two dominant models of sexuality, identity and lifestyle, I argue that BDSM is more fluid and less binary than identity Moreover, while lifestyle focusses attention on BDSM as consumptive labour, this model does not adequately address the pleasure or sociality BDSM practitioners themselves emphasize. Instead, I argue that "working at…
Mainstreaming Kink
This article explores nonpractitioners' understandings of and responses to the increasingly mainstream representation of BDSM in U.S. media, focusing on the film Secretary (Shainberg, 2002). Survey, focus group, and interview data indicate that popular images of SM promote the acceptance and understanding of sexual minorities through two mechanisms: acceptance via normalization, and understanding via pathologizing. Rather than challenging the pri…
Always After
The Interlocutor Slot
Queer Precarity and the Myth of Gay Affluence
The LGBT movement’s laser-focus on marriage equality propagates the myth of gay and lesbian affluence as political strategy, leaving aside any analysis of class or economic inequality or poverty—much less an analysis of capitalism. LGBT people are typically depicted as affluent consumers with high d
The Epistemology of Ethnography
This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of qu…
Working at Play
In this article, I argue that BDSM sexuality should be conceptualized as a form of "working at play. " Considering two dominant models of sexuality, identity and lifestyle, I argue that BDSM is more fluid and less binary than identity Moreover, while lifestyle focusses attention on BDSM as consumptive labour, this model does not adequately address the pleasure or sociality BDSM practitioners themselves emphasize. Instead, I argue that "working at…
Gay Shame and BDSM Pride
This essay contrasts two contemporary activist groups: Gay Shame San Francisco, which seeks to disrupt homonormative lesbian and gay activism by challenging policing and gentrification; and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which disseminates a public image of BDSM, leather, and kinky practitioners as suburban minivan drivers who “look and dress like your neighbors.” Margot Weiss argues that neoliberalism’s relegation of sexuality into t…
Intimate Encounters
This article explores ethnographic intimacy beyond an identitarian focus on sex, sexual identity, and sex-desire by reflecting on three of my own fieldwork projects in queer anthropology. Bringing queer, decolonizing, postcolonial, and critical race theory into conversation with reflexive work on sex in/and ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that broadening our conceptions of intimacy enables us to think less about sex in the field and more about se…
Introduction
Introduction: Left Intellectuals and the Neoliberal University Naomi Greyser (bio) and Margot Weiss (bio) This American Quarterly forum builds on a symposium held in 2011 at Wesleyan University on the relationship between academia and activism. Our symposium was inspired by a pair of concerns: that academics too often either romanticize activism as the site where “real” political work happens or else ascribe an abstracted radical politics to quot…
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination”: A Roundtable with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez of Against Equality Margot Weiss (bio) Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the pris…
Mainstreaming Kink
This article explores nonpractitioners' understandings of and responses to the increasingly mainstream representation of BDSM in U.S. media, focusing on the film Secretary (Shainberg, 2002). Survey, focus group, and interview data indicate that popular images of SM promote the acceptance and understanding of sexual minorities through two mechanisms: acceptance via normalization, and understanding via pathologizing. Rather than challenging the pri…
Working at Play
In this article, I argue that BDSM sexuality should be conceptualized as a form of "working at play. " Considering two dominant models of sexuality, identity and lifestyle, I argue that BDSM is more fluid and less binary than identity Moreover, while lifestyle focusses attention on BDSM as consumptive labour, this model does not adequately address the pleasure or sociality BDSM practitioners themselves emphasize. Instead, I argue that "working at…
Gay Shame and BDSM Pride
This essay contrasts two contemporary activist groups: Gay Shame San Francisco, which seeks to disrupt homonormative lesbian and gay activism by challenging policing and gentrification; and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which disseminates a public image of BDSM, leather, and kinky practitioners as suburban minivan drivers who “look and dress like your neighbors.” Margot Weiss argues that neoliberalism’s relegation of sexuality into t…
The Epistemology of Ethnography
This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of qu…
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore Margot Weiss (bio) Margot Weiss talked to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about the academic appropriation of activist intellectual labor and the hierarchies of intellectual work inside and outside the university. Sycamore is a writer, editor of several books including That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull, 2004, 2008), Nobody Passes: Rej…
Introduction
Introduction: Left Intellectuals and the Neoliberal University Naomi Greyser (bio) and Margot Weiss (bio) This American Quarterly forum builds on a symposium held in 2011 at Wesleyan University on the relationship between academia and activism. Our symposium was inspired by a pair of concerns: that academics too often either romanticize activism as the site where “real” political work happens or else ascribe an abstracted radical politics to quot…
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination
Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination”: A Roundtable with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez of Against Equality Margot Weiss (bio) Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the pris…
On Marriage Equality
Book Review| April 01 2013 On Marriage Equality The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage and Neo-Liberal Governance, Whitehead, Jaye Cee, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. x + 205 pp. Margot Weiss Margot Weiss Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2013) 19 (2): 273–275. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1957267 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Margot We…
Sensational Flesh
Amber Jamilla Musser’s Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism takes up masochism not as a sexual practice, nor a psychological or philosophical concept, but as a set of relationships between sensation and power. Beginning with turn-of-the-century sexology and ending with contemporary African American art, with a lengthy sojourn in mid-century French existential philosophy, Sensational Flesh gathers together an extraordinary range of theore…
Queer Precarity and the Myth of Gay Affluence
The LGBT movement’s laser-focus on marriage equality propagates the myth of gay and lesbian affluence as political strategy, leaving aside any analysis of class or economic inequality or poverty—much less an analysis of capitalism. LGBT people are typically depicted as affluent consumers with high d
Always After
Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times (1970–2010s)
Neoliberalism has had a profound effect on post-1970s LGBT/queer cultures and politics. This essay reviews how, by privatizing social services, fostering consumer citizenship, and promoting corporate welfare and urban redevelopment, neoliberal policies have pit “deserving” gays and lesbians against “undeserving” others: the same-sex married couple vs. the “welfare queen,” the gay/lesbian consumer-citizen vs. the poor queer, and the gay gentrifier…
Hope and Despair in the Queer Nonprofit Industrial Complex
Research Article| April 01 2020 Hope and Despair in the Queer Nonprofit Industrial Complex Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer PoliticsBeam, MyrlMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 236 pp. Margot Weiss Margot Weiss Margot Weiss is associate professor of American studies and anthropology and coordinator of queer studies at Wesleyan University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2020) 26 (2): 343–345.…
Intimate Encounters
This article explores ethnographic intimacy beyond an identitarian focus on sex, sexual identity, and sex-desire by reflecting on three of my own fieldwork projects in queer anthropology. Bringing queer, decolonizing, postcolonial, and critical race theory into conversation with reflexive work on sex in/and ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that broadening our conceptions of intimacy enables us to think less about sex in the field and more about se…
Thinking kink
The Interlocutor Slot
Queer Theory from Elsewhere and the Im/Proper Objects of Queer Anthropology
What is queer in contemporary transnational queer studies? In this essay, I explore queer as a political‐intellectual orientation and aspirational field animated by its constitutive polarity: between a more constrained queer focused on sex, sexuality, and gender and a more expansive queer that bears an oblique relationship to these more proper objects. I trace how the desire to do justice to our objects of study produces queer ’s characteristic i…
Unsettling Queer Anthropology
Sociology (18 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Queer (12 works) · Law (7 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works)