A Discussion of Leo Bersani's "Intimacies" and his Views on Queer Intellectuals

Leo Bersani, a renowned professor in the French Department at the University of California Berkley, is widely seen as a psychoanalytically engaged writer. In collaboration with his friend Adam Phillips, he wrote a dialogue and interview between the two of them called Intimacies in 2008.

Bersanis’ book is as complex and interesting as one could expect. To put it in a nutshell, he accuses queer theorists not to live their lives like they want you to do it in their own writings. In the following paragraphs I will try to briefly explain what queer theory is about in order to make an analyse of Bersanis’ point of view about queer intellectuals.