Review of: Heike Raab: Sexuelle Politiken. Die Diskurse zum Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz. Frankfurt am Main u.a.: Campus Verlag 2011.

Abstract

In her analysis of “sexual politics”, Heike Raab develops the bases for a queer notion of state. In doing so, she assumes feminist, neo-marxist, and governmental notions of political systems as well as queer-feminist critiques of identity. This perspective is applied to the analysis of the so-called “gay marriage” (civil partnership). Raab’s understanding of statehood as “split up and contradictory terrain” (p.75) and processual configuration draws attention to the operating structures, governmental mechanisms, and economic inequalities that result in unequal possibilities for the participants. In the “practical” second part on civil partnerships, these coherent theoretical foundations, which offer a good orientation for researchers and should be the basis for further work, are only partly applied with the previously suggested complexity.