Our epistemological critiques are “links to the plan”, theory necessarily implicates the political. It’s uniquely valuable on this topic.

Although neither IP nor queer theory can be collapsed into monolithic ideologies or methodologies, both nonetheless are deeply concerned about the relationship between the tangible and the intangible.2 Our lived experience consists simultaneously of physical, massed things that we can see, hear, feel, touch, and taste as well as of concepts, ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and other abstractions. Queer theory and, increasingly, IP scholarship understand that the organization of these intangibles can shape the distribution of wealth, happiness, and political power in the physical world. Whose beliefs are recognized and revered, whose intellectual labor is commodified and marketed, and whose conceptions of the good life are met with state- backed punishment combine to shape the tangible, physical layout of our social environment. The regulation of the intangible aspects of culture moves certain physical bodies into certain geographic spaces and certain material objects into the hands of certain groups of people. And these material distributions in turn shape the production of ideas and culture.

Both queer theory and contemporary IP scholarship operate against intellectual traditions that too often sever the realm of the normative from the realm of the material. By overlooking the co-constituting role of material conditions and cultural norms, dominant conceptions of identity, innovation, and authorship all overlook the possibility of realigning systems of power through cultural and ideological intervention. This chapter examines the fusion of the tangible and intangible in both IP and queer theory, and it emphasizes the interplay among bodies, communities, and culture.