From “gay pirate criticism” to “queer bucaneer theory”

One of my fellow alumns told me years ago of the one of my undergraduate professor’s quip about the historical moment when, as he put it, what has once been “gay pirate criticism” turned into “queer bucaneer theory.” I’m not sure what he meant by this phrase, but to me its always been a nice way of encapsulating the historical shift from a somewhat nebulous interdisciplinarity (think “blurred genres”) to the birth of ‘theory’ as a consolidated thing that academics ‘did’ (think the “culture/power/history” reader). The transition — here somewhat spitefully dismissed as mere relabelling — definitely happened. But when? At what point did the confluence of philosophy, literary criticism, and social science become ‘theory’ in the sense embraced by some, and denounced by the detail-minded? It’s a question that has been on my mind as I think about the spring class on “contemporary anthropological theory” that I’m supposed to be teaching at my university.

But at last, my friends, the question has been answered, for I have discovered “Sodomy And The Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers In The Seventeenth-Century Caribbean”:http://www.nyupress.org/books/Sodomy_and_the_Pirate_Tradition-products_id-812.html.

Behold! In the mere hours since I have discovered this book at a used book sale, my entire intellectual landscape has been changed. There is actually a book _on queer bucaneer theory_ — and one that is _endorsed by Johnny Depp_ no less.

The original title of the hardcover edition (released in 1983) was _Sodomy and the Perception of Evil_ but the paperback edition of 1984 was retitled _Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition_. This is, to my mind, definitive: ‘theory’ (at least of the queer bucaneer variety) began in 1984.

Alex Golub is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies mining and petroleum development in Papua New Guinea, as well as American culture in to the online game World of Warcraft. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org