Samuel Clowes Huneke
A Queer Theory of the State is about the inability of queer theory – and, in a broader sense, modern progressivism and liberalism – to effectively imagine a better future. The book first examines this conundrum by charting a genealogy of why this is the case, of why we feel so constrained in what we imagine to be politically possible. Second, it thinks through how we might start to change this incapacity. My hope is that, in our current dire political climate, the book’s ultimately hopeful message resonates with people who are hungry for change.
NOTCHES: What drew you to this topic, and what questions do you still have?
Samuel Clowes Huneke: I am a queer historian, and so I am naturally interested in the question of what queer history and queer theory can, practically speaking, do for us today. As a scholar, I am particularly interested in the relationship between citizens and states and how that relationship changes over time. This is something that I have investigated in pretty much all of my work – specifically how the vectors of gender and sexuality shape this relationship between state and citizen over time.
A few years ago, it struck me that we are in a particularly paradoxical moment in history. On the one hand, there has been a backlash swelling against trans people, gender nonconforming people, gay and lesbian people, bisexual people, and so forth. On the other hand, we as queer people enjoy unprecedented rights and protections from the state – at least in much of the United States and Europe. On top of that, queer activists have for decades now directed biting critiques at many of those rights and privileges. It struck me that we have worked ourselves into a kind of paralysis, in which we know that bad things are happening, we know that progress has been made, and yet we can’t quite seem to articulate either an effective strategy against a resurgent far right or a positive vision of our own. The ultimate question that I still have is whether or not a queer state is possible. I wrote this book in a much more hopeful era at the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, when I did think that a better future was possible. Now, after a year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, I am much less optimistic.
NOTCHES: This book engages with histories of sex and sexuality, but what other themes does it speak to?
SCH: Well, in a literal sense it also speaks to gender, in particular to the experiences of trans people. But, it also addresses histories of democracy, conservatism, and the modern state. These are issues that I’m deeply invested in in my own historical work. I’m interested in getting underneath commonplace assumptions about what makes something democratic or what makes something authoritarian and how those systems treat sexual and gender minorities. For me, these questions originated in my earlier research on gay activism in East and West Germany. That research completely overthrew my assumptions, namely that democratic West Germany would have been a more welcoming place for queer activism than communist East Germany. In fact, East Germany had, by many metrics, a much more robust gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1980s than did West Germany. And so, in A Queer Theory of the State, I am trying to broaden my scope and apply that kind of critical analysis to both the left liberalism that characterizes “progressivism” in much of the United States and Western Europe today, while also understanding and grappling with the dynamic nature of the far right in these countries.
NOTCHES: How did you research the book?
SCH: This was an unusual book for me insofar as it is primarily a work of theory rather than archival historical research. And so, this book, which originated as a longform essay in The Point, was something I researched by reading theory – oftentimes going back to earlier sources of queer theory from the 1990s. I was (re)reading these texts as not only analysis in their own right, but also as documents of their time. I think one of the challenges to this approach is that these are oftentimes sources that we still read in queer theory classes as timeless statements of truth or insight. It’s always uncomfortable to go back to those kinds of meaningful and still-insightful sources and to historicize them.
NOTCHES: Did the book shift significantly from the time you first conceptualized it?
SCH: I don’t think that the book shifted all that much from when I first conceived it to when it was published. However, my views on these matters have shifted quite a bit since it was published, as we have witnessed the 2024 presidential election and the first year of Donald Trump’s second term. I wrote the book in the first half of Joe Biden’s presidency, when the administration and Congress succeeded in passing a host of progressive laws. Those first two years gave me real hope for the future of the country. Over the last months, however, we have seen the rapid dismantling of those measures and an aggressive assault on the very idea of modern governance. When I came to this topic, it was in an effort to think about how we could build on or even transcend the modern state. As I look at the political situation now, I wonder if there will be anything left to salvage.
NOTCHES: How did you become interested in the history of sexuality?
SCH: I first became interested in the history of sexuality as a student in college when I came out as gay. Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality was a particularly important turning point for me. I read it my senior year of college as I was conducting thesis research on homosexuality in the literary works of Klaus Mann. It was a revelatory text, because it was the first time I had seen a writer place the body at the center of history. While I now disagree with much of Foucault’s characterization of that history – and, in fact, A Queer Theory of the State is my attempt to think past Foucault – I still cherish the intellectual excitement of reading his works for the first time. And I emulate him insofar as I, too, try to write the past in a way that centers the desires and experiences and fallibilities of the human body.
NOTCHES: How do you see your book being most effectively used in the classroom? What would you assign it with?
SCH: I actually had a somewhat unexpected experience with this about a year ago. I visited a friend’s class – a seminar on global history – to talk about the book I’m currently writing, a queer history of the world. When it came time for the Q&A, many of the students asked about A Queer Theory of the State, even though it had not been assigned to them. In fact, their professor had not even mentioned it to them – she was totally nonplussed. In my experience from talking with readers, there is a lot in the book that grabs them and makes them think differently about our political situation. It forces them to question assumptions they may have had about the political commitments we have as a result of our queerness.
NOTCHES: Why does this history matter today?
SCH: You can’t look at the present moment and not see that queerness and queer history is integral to how we are experiencing it. To be frank, it is also integral – in a negative sense – to how the political right comprehends the left.
NOTCHES: Your book is published, what next?
SCH: Well, I have two projects that I’m currently working on. The first, as I’ve already mentioned, is tentatively titled Queer: A History of the World, and should be hitting shelves in 2028. The other is the book I just finished writing, I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany, which is coming out this spring.
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