I have become interested in the queer theory that Akbari discusses in her book review. As she notes in reference to Giffney and Hird’s Queering the Non/Human, their overarching topic is “a problematization – a ‘queering’ – of the human, understood both affirmatively (Human) and through negation (Non/Human)” (Akbari, 276). Through this definition, which does not seem to explicitly deal with hetero/homo-sexualities, I hope to draw specific examples of how the queer-ness (or non-assimilationist) of Marie de France’s Bisclavret and the Cylons in Battlestar Gallactica is merely a social construct.
Although the werewolf of Bisclavret was at one point a human, while he dwells in the forest without clothes he is of another form and cannot be physically seen as human. It takes his compassion and his human-like characteristics for him to be seen as the human he once was. Although not the same, the cylons have a similar predicament. They were at one point, when the humans had last seen them, anti-human (large robots that performed basic tasks). When they returned to their planet of creation, they were nearly indistinguishable, but since there are only a few different models, their cylon-ness is distinguishable. This factor of distinction is blurred when emotions are at play. At moments like this even the most racist (in an anti-cylon way) humans seem to connect with these non-humans.
These examples allow for us to see both sides of the problematization of the human that Giffney and Hird discuss; Bisclavret is the negation of a human by appearing as a beast, and the cylons affirm the appearance of a human although they are not technically a part of the human race.
I will also be looking to texts such as Bergwinkles’s Queer Theory and the Middle Ages, Murphy’s Considering Different Ways: In(ter)secting Martriachal Utopias and Joy and Neufeld’s A Confession of Faith: Notes toward New Humanism.