EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

I think this is one of the most beautiful definitions ever written in queer theory—not because it defines queer in the ordinary sense, but because it refuses the very idea that queer could be exhausted by a definition. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes with extraordinary precision, yet her prose deliberately resists closure. Reading this sentence feels less like receiving a definition than entering a field of possibilities.
The passage appears in the introduction to Tendencies, and it has become one of the foundational statements of queer theory.
The sentence begins with remarkable modesty:

"That's one of the things 'queer' can refer to..."

The first phrase is easily overlooked, yet it is philosophically decisive.
Sedgwick does not write:

"Queer is..."

Nor does she say:

"Queer means..."

Instead, she says:

"That's one of the things..."

This small grammatical choice reflects an entire philosophy of language.
Definitions usually seek to narrow meaning.
Sedgwick begins by expanding it.
She offers not the meaning of queer, but one possible reference among many.
The sentence itself performs the openness it describes.
She continues:

"...the open mesh of possibilities..."

This may be the most memorable image in the passage.
The metaphor of a mesh is extraordinarily rich.
A mesh is neither a solid wall nor empty space.
It is woven.
It contains both threads and openings.
Its strength lies precisely in the relationship between connection and permeability.
The adjective open is equally important.
A closed system can classify.
An open mesh can only invite further connections.
Queerness, then, is imagined not as a fixed identity but as an ever-expanding network of possible relations.
The metaphor quietly rejects the geometry of rigid categories in favor of something flexible, porous, and unfinished.
The sentence then unfolds into a remarkable series:

"...gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning..."

This is one of the finest examples of Sedgwick's style.
Rather than building an argument through logical deduction, she accumulates words until they begin to generate a conceptual landscape.
Notice how each pair resists binary thinking.
Gaps suggest absence.
Overlaps suggest excess.
Dissonances evoke tension.
Resonances evoke harmony.
Lapses imply interruption.
Excesses imply overflow.
The sequence refuses the assumption that meaning should always be coherent, complete, or internally consistent.
Instead, meaning appears as something dynamic—sometimes missing, sometimes overflowing, sometimes harmonious, sometimes contradictory.
The rhythm of the sentence itself enacts this multiplicity.
Reading it feels like moving through a series of openings rather than arriving at a conclusion.
The passage then shifts from language to embodiment:

"...when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality..."

The repetition of anyone's is profoundly significant.
Sedgwick is often mistakenly read as describing only queer people.
This sentence makes clear that her argument is far broader.
She is speaking about everyone.
Gender and sexuality are never singular substances.
They are composed of constituent elements—multiple dimensions, histories, desires, practices, identifications, fantasies, and social expectations that never entirely coincide.
The word constituent itself deserves attention.
It implies composition.
Something assembled.
Identity is not imagined as an indivisible essence but as a constellation of interacting parts.
The sentence concludes:

"...aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically."

This final clause rewards slow reading.
The parenthesis—

(or can't be made)

—is classic Sedgwick.
She interrupts her own claim before it hardens into certainty.
The distinction is subtle.
Some identities are not made to signify in a single way.
Others cannot be made to do so, despite persistent social efforts.
The parenthesis preserves both possibilities simultaneously.
It refuses to simplify the relationship between individual experience and cultural norms.
The final adverb,

monolithically,

is a brilliant choice.
A monolith is massive, singular, seamless, apparently indivisible.
To signify monolithically would be to produce one stable, unified meaning.
Sedgwick argues that gender and sexuality resist precisely this kind of coherence.
Not because they are chaotic, but because they are inherently plural.
They generate more meaning than any single interpretive framework can contain.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the passage is that its form mirrors its argument.
The sentence does not merely describe multiplicity.
It performs it.
Its syntax proliferates.
Its metaphors remain open.
Its parenthesis interrupts certainty.
Its catalog of paired terms expands rather than resolves.
Even its definition of queer refuses the finality usually associated with definitions.
One leaves the sentence not with a neatly bounded concept, but with an altered way of reading identity itself.
That, I think, is Sedgwick's deepest achievement here.
She shifts our attention away from the question, "What is the true meaning of gender or sexuality?", toward a far more generative one:
What becomes possible when we stop expecting them to mean only one thing?
The passage ultimately suggests that the richness of human experience lies not in achieving perfect coherence but in inhabiting the spaces where meanings overlap, diverge, resonate, and exceed the categories that attempt to contain them. It is not a celebration of confusion for its own sake; it is a defense of complexity as an irreducible feature of lived experience.