"Girls Welcome!!!": Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Queer Theory

I begin with two epigraphs, both of which were guest columns written for, commissioned especially by, PMLA. Although they are separated by fifteen years, they both make some strikingly similar points which are relevant for someone attempting to chart the potential connections or intimacies between queer theory and speculative realism (and in this position piece I’m placing quite a strong emphasis on object-oriented ontology which is just one offshoot of speculative realist thinking). The first thing we might emphasize is the need to pin things down, to say what exactly queer theory is and does and to be entirely clear about what speculative realism is and what precisely it is that speculative realists do. Yet, perhaps the power and virtue of both queer theory and speculative realism, what makes them so compatible, is that neither is a delimitable field. Part of the attraction of both is their very undefinability, their provisionality, and, most importantly, their openness.