Disciplining "Sextext": queers, fears, and communication studies

This essay is a critical interrogation of disciplinary responses to Tom Nakayama and Fred Corey's 1997 Text and Performance Quarterly essay, "Sextext." Disciplinary responses to the essay suggest strong resistance to queer theory as a "legitimate" intellectual and critical framework. By reading the responses to "Sextext" through the lens of queer theory, and by offering a political reading of conventional studies of sexual representation, this essay suggests how disciplinary boundaries in Communication Studies are policed to protect the production of "legitimate" scholarship. By revealing these practices, this essay provides further support for the central value of queer theory to the discipline of Communication Studies.