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The course focuses on sympathetic links between Western philosophers and queer theory in order to illuminate contemporary understandings of (gender or sexual) identity. The course identifies three strands of queer theory each with its specific understanding of identity and, consequently, each with its specific political solution to issues of persisting structures of patriarchy, homophobia, racism and capitalist exploitation. We begin in Ancient Greece with Plato’s seminal dialogue on Eros - the Symposium, which we will use to explore ancient Greek sexuality as a set of norms, practices, and identities that differ quite significantly from their modern counterparts. Thereafter, the course proceeds in three parts, each analyzing a specific strand of queer theory inspired by different thinkers from the Western philosophical canon: 1. Queer theory inspired by psychoanalytic thought of Freud and Lacan 2. Theories of performativity inspired by Foucault and Derrida 3. Affect and assemblage theory inspired by Deleuze and Guattari.