Susan Potter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042461
- eISBN:
- 9780252051302
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042461.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to ...
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This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to lesbian representation, initially by reframing the emergence of lesbian figures in cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s as only the most visible and belated signs of an array of strategies of sexuality. The emergence of lesbian representation and spectatorship in early cinema is not a linear progression and consolidation but rather arises across multiple sites in dispersed forms that are modern and backward-looking, recursive and anachronistic. In this tumultuous period, new but not always coherent sexual knowledges and categories emerge, even as older modalities of homoeroticism persist. The book articulates some of the discursive and institutional processes by which women’s same-sex desires and identities have been reorganized as impossible, marginal or—perhaps not so surprisingly—central to new forms of cinematic representation and spectatorship. Complicating the critical consensus of feminist film theory and history, the book foregrounds the centrality of women’s same-sex desire to historically distinct cinematic discourses of both homo- and heterosexuality. It articulates across its chapters the emergence of lesbian sexuality—and that of its intimate “other,” heterosexuality—as the effect of diverse discursive operations of early cinema, considered as a complex assemblage of film texts, exhibition practices, modes of female spectatorship, and reception.Less
This book is a counter-history of the emergence of lesbian sexuality in early cinema. Drawing on the critical insights of queer theory and the history of sexuality, it challenges approaches to lesbian representation, initially by reframing the emergence of lesbian figures in cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s as only the most visible and belated signs of an array of strategies of sexuality. The emergence of lesbian representation and spectatorship in early cinema is not a linear progression and consolidation but rather arises across multiple sites in dispersed forms that are modern and backward-looking, recursive and anachronistic. In this tumultuous period, new but not always coherent sexual knowledges and categories emerge, even as older modalities of homoeroticism persist. The book articulates some of the discursive and institutional processes by which women’s same-sex desires and identities have been reorganized as impossible, marginal or—perhaps not so surprisingly—central to new forms of cinematic representation and spectatorship. Complicating the critical consensus of feminist film theory and history, the book foregrounds the centrality of women’s same-sex desire to historically distinct cinematic discourses of both homo- and heterosexuality. It articulates across its chapters the emergence of lesbian sexuality—and that of its intimate “other,” heterosexuality—as the effect of diverse discursive operations of early cinema, considered as a complex assemblage of film texts, exhibition practices, modes of female spectatorship, and reception.
Mireille Rosello and Sudeep Dasgupta (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255351
- eISBN:
- 9780823261079
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255351.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What’s Queer about Europe is not about queer communities in Europe. It is about the ways in which Queer Theory helps us initiate disorienting conjunctions and counter-intuitive encounters for ...
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What’s Queer about Europe is not about queer communities in Europe. It is about the ways in which Queer Theory helps us initiate disorienting conjunctions and counter-intuitive encounters for imagining historical and contemporary Europe. The encounter between a queer perspective and Europe forces a reconsideration of both. This book queers Europe and Europeanizes queer. It refracts received understandings of queer through analyses of historical and contemporary Europe while re-orienting an imaginary of Europe by queering it through specific analyses. What’s Queer about Europe is a collection of articles written by scholars whose interdisciplinary expertise and queer perspective enable them to study Europe relationally. They ask not so much what it is but what we do when we attempt to define Europe.Less
What’s Queer about Europe is not about queer communities in Europe. It is about the ways in which Queer Theory helps us initiate disorienting conjunctions and counter-intuitive encounters for imagining historical and contemporary Europe. The encounter between a queer perspective and Europe forces a reconsideration of both. This book queers Europe and Europeanizes queer. It refracts received understandings of queer through analyses of historical and contemporary Europe while re-orienting an imaginary of Europe by queering it through specific analyses. What’s Queer about Europe is a collection of articles written by scholars whose interdisciplinary expertise and queer perspective enable them to study Europe relationally. They ask not so much what it is but what we do when we attempt to define Europe.
Michael Loadenthal
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526114457
- eISBN:
- 9781526128454
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526114457.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Security Studies
This chapter continues the genealogical account of illegalism, propaganda of the deed, revolutionary warfare, and post-millennial, insurrectionary networks of attack. To this end, the chapter ...
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This chapter continues the genealogical account of illegalism, propaganda of the deed, revolutionary warfare, and post-millennial, insurrectionary networks of attack. To this end, the chapter explores the strategy of Paris communard Louis Auguste Blanqui, the contribution of ‘classical anarchists’ and the twentieth century, the influence of European theorists such as Alfredo Bonanno, Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, and the contributions anonymous thinkers who have frequently authored key texts. In the latter portion of the chapter, the focus shifts towards the contributions of Queer insurrectionary praxis and the experience of rejectionist, anti-assimilationists. Finally, the chapter revisits the question of canonization in preparation for the subsequent chapter, which outlines the insurrectionary tendency discursively.Less
This chapter continues the genealogical account of illegalism, propaganda of the deed, revolutionary warfare, and post-millennial, insurrectionary networks of attack. To this end, the chapter explores the strategy of Paris communard Louis Auguste Blanqui, the contribution of ‘classical anarchists’ and the twentieth century, the influence of European theorists such as Alfredo Bonanno, Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, and the contributions anonymous thinkers who have frequently authored key texts. In the latter portion of the chapter, the focus shifts towards the contributions of Queer insurrectionary praxis and the experience of rejectionist, anti-assimilationists. Finally, the chapter revisits the question of canonization in preparation for the subsequent chapter, which outlines the insurrectionary tendency discursively.
Kevin Ohi
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694778
- eISBN:
- 9781452950754
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694778.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Literary texts that address tradition and the transmission of knowledge often seem concerned less with preservation than with loss, recurrently describing scenarios of what author Kevin Ohi terms ...
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Literary texts that address tradition and the transmission of knowledge often seem concerned less with preservation than with loss, recurrently describing scenarios of what author Kevin Ohi terms “thwarted transmission.” Such scenes, however, do not so much concede the impossibility of survival as look into what constitutes literary knowledge and whether it can properly be said to be an object to be transmitted, preserved, or lost. Beginning with general questions of transmission—the conveying of knowledge in pedagogy, the transmission and material preservation of texts and forms of knowledge, and even the impalpable communication between text and reader—Dead Letters Sent examines two senses of “queer transmission.” First, it studies the transmission of a minority sexual culture, of queer ways of life and the specialized knowledges they foster. Second, it examines the queer potential of literary and cultural transmission, the queerness that is sheltered within tradition. By exploring how these two senses are intertwined, it builds a persuasive argument for the relevance of queer criticism to literary study. Its detailed attention to works by Plato, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, James, and Faulkner seeks to formulate a practice of reading adequate to the queerness Ohi’s book uncovers within the literary tradition. Ohi identifies a radical new future for both queer theory and close reading: the possibility that each might exceed itself in merging with the other, creating a queer theory of literary tradition immanent in an immersed practice of reading.Less
Literary texts that address tradition and the transmission of knowledge often seem concerned less with preservation than with loss, recurrently describing scenarios of what author Kevin Ohi terms “thwarted transmission.” Such scenes, however, do not so much concede the impossibility of survival as look into what constitutes literary knowledge and whether it can properly be said to be an object to be transmitted, preserved, or lost. Beginning with general questions of transmission—the conveying of knowledge in pedagogy, the transmission and material preservation of texts and forms of knowledge, and even the impalpable communication between text and reader—Dead Letters Sent examines two senses of “queer transmission.” First, it studies the transmission of a minority sexual culture, of queer ways of life and the specialized knowledges they foster. Second, it examines the queer potential of literary and cultural transmission, the queerness that is sheltered within tradition. By exploring how these two senses are intertwined, it builds a persuasive argument for the relevance of queer criticism to literary study. Its detailed attention to works by Plato, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, James, and Faulkner seeks to formulate a practice of reading adequate to the queerness Ohi’s book uncovers within the literary tradition. Ohi identifies a radical new future for both queer theory and close reading: the possibility that each might exceed itself in merging with the other, creating a queer theory of literary tradition immanent in an immersed practice of reading.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The Introduction provides an overview of Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity as well as a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between Stein’s writings and her gender. By using ...
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The Introduction provides an overview of Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity as well as a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between Stein’s writings and her gender. By using psychoanalysis to complicate historicist imperatives and engaging recent debates over queer temporalities and relationalities, the Introduction lays the groundwork for the book’s argument that Stein ultimately rejected early twentieth-century gender formations in favor of a flexible, feminist, and anti-identitarian mode of transsubjectivity inscribed in texts that cross genres. Pushing back against formalist and materialist critiques of biographical interpretation, the Introduction also makes the case for readings that trace visual artworks’ and her writings’ roles as nodal points for intersubjective desire. The Introduction concludes with an overview of the book’s seven chapters and coda: four chapters that identify signs of Stein’s transmasculinity in her writings and others’ representations of her; three that track her masculine homosocial bonds with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten; and a coda that points to possibilities for examining the implications of Stein’s masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.Less
The Introduction provides an overview of Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity as well as a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between Stein’s writings and her gender. By using psychoanalysis to complicate historicist imperatives and engaging recent debates over queer temporalities and relationalities, the Introduction lays the groundwork for the book’s argument that Stein ultimately rejected early twentieth-century gender formations in favor of a flexible, feminist, and anti-identitarian mode of transsubjectivity inscribed in texts that cross genres. Pushing back against formalist and materialist critiques of biographical interpretation, the Introduction also makes the case for readings that trace visual artworks’ and her writings’ roles as nodal points for intersubjective desire. The Introduction concludes with an overview of the book’s seven chapters and coda: four chapters that identify signs of Stein’s transmasculinity in her writings and others’ representations of her; three that track her masculine homosocial bonds with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten; and a coda that points to possibilities for examining the implications of Stein’s masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.
Mary L. Mullen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474453240
- eISBN:
- 9781474477116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474453240.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The coda clarifies the political stakes of this book’s argument. Reflecting on the gap between people’s lived experiences of the university and public defenses of it, it argues that ...
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The coda clarifies the political stakes of this book’s argument. Reflecting on the gap between people’s lived experiences of the university and public defenses of it, it argues that nineteenth-century realist novels provide strategies for inhabiting the twenty-first century university. We, too, can find political inspiration in anachronisms. The coda shows that postcolonial and queer theory’s untimely presence in the academy resist the impulse to define the future as merely an extension of the present.Less
The coda clarifies the political stakes of this book’s argument. Reflecting on the gap between people’s lived experiences of the university and public defenses of it, it argues that nineteenth-century realist novels provide strategies for inhabiting the twenty-first century university. We, too, can find political inspiration in anachronisms. The coda shows that postcolonial and queer theory’s untimely presence in the academy resist the impulse to define the future as merely an extension of the present.
Madhavi Menon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695904
- eISBN:
- 9781452953656
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being ...
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Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.Less
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.
Peta Mayer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620597
- eISBN:
- 9781789629927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620597.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter establishes connections between Brookner’s novels A Friend from England (1987), A Misalliance (1986), Brief Lives (1990), Undue Influence (1998), Falling Slowly (1999) and Hotel du Lac ...
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This chapter establishes connections between Brookner’s novels A Friend from England (1987), A Misalliance (1986), Brief Lives (1990), Undue Influence (1998), Falling Slowly (1999) and Hotel du Lac (1984); her French Romantic art criticism in The Genius of the Future, Romanticism and its Discontents and Soundings; andthe queer nineteenth-century literary canon of the Romantics, Decadents and aesthetes including Stendhal, Baudelaire, Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Karl-Joris Huysmans. It outlines the strange behaviour of the solitary yet homosocial ‘Brooknerine’ and her female friendships in the domestic fiction, and the mixed responses of Brookner’s early reception from 1980-2010 frequently organised by gender, temporal and heterosexual normativity which tethers behaviour to a unilateral historical context. Alternatively, Brookner’s performative Romanticism is delineated as a queer cross-historical, intertextual, temporal literary practice which combines nineteenth-century and contemporary behaviours, tropes, narrative devices and temporal periods to expand historical context and subject to cross gender and historical temporalities. The book’s queer lesbian, intertextual, cross-historical methodology is illuminated, along with its performing cast of Romantic personae of the military man, analysand, queer, aesthete, dandy, flâneur, degenerate and storyteller.Less
This chapter establishes connections between Brookner’s novels A Friend from England (1987), A Misalliance (1986), Brief Lives (1990), Undue Influence (1998), Falling Slowly (1999) and Hotel du Lac (1984); her French Romantic art criticism in The Genius of the Future, Romanticism and its Discontents and Soundings; andthe queer nineteenth-century literary canon of the Romantics, Decadents and aesthetes including Stendhal, Baudelaire, Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Karl-Joris Huysmans. It outlines the strange behaviour of the solitary yet homosocial ‘Brooknerine’ and her female friendships in the domestic fiction, and the mixed responses of Brookner’s early reception from 1980-2010 frequently organised by gender, temporal and heterosexual normativity which tethers behaviour to a unilateral historical context. Alternatively, Brookner’s performative Romanticism is delineated as a queer cross-historical, intertextual, temporal literary practice which combines nineteenth-century and contemporary behaviours, tropes, narrative devices and temporal periods to expand historical context and subject to cross gender and historical temporalities. The book’s queer lesbian, intertextual, cross-historical methodology is illuminated, along with its performing cast of Romantic personae of the military man, analysand, queer, aesthete, dandy, flâneur, degenerate and storyteller.
Kaye Mitchell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719097171
- eISBN:
- 9781526115201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097171.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter situates Hollinghurst’s fiction within the contemporary contexts of late twentieth and early twenty-first century gay fiction and post-1990s queer theory. It argues that some of the ...
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This chapter situates Hollinghurst’s fiction within the contemporary contexts of late twentieth and early twenty-first century gay fiction and post-1990s queer theory. It argues that some of the qualities and concerns that lead Hollinghurst critics to associate his work with homophile writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century might equally be read as connecting him to the moment in which he is writing. The chapter offers comparative readings of Hollinghurst and contemporary peers such as Edmund White, Colm Tóibín, David Leavitt and Michael Cunningham, focusing on three common preoccupations of recent gay fiction: coming out, AIDS, and the family.
The chapter concludes by asking how Hollinghurst should be plotted in relation to the queer rejections of the social and futurity offered by theorists like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman, suggesting that, while revealing few obvious debts to recent queer theory, Hollinghurst’s fiction nevertheless manages to touch on highly topical questions of politics and sociality, the instability of sexual identities, and the lure of negative affect.Less
This chapter situates Hollinghurst’s fiction within the contemporary contexts of late twentieth and early twenty-first century gay fiction and post-1990s queer theory. It argues that some of the qualities and concerns that lead Hollinghurst critics to associate his work with homophile writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century might equally be read as connecting him to the moment in which he is writing. The chapter offers comparative readings of Hollinghurst and contemporary peers such as Edmund White, Colm Tóibín, David Leavitt and Michael Cunningham, focusing on three common preoccupations of recent gay fiction: coming out, AIDS, and the family.
The chapter concludes by asking how Hollinghurst should be plotted in relation to the queer rejections of the social and futurity offered by theorists like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman, suggesting that, while revealing few obvious debts to recent queer theory, Hollinghurst’s fiction nevertheless manages to touch on highly topical questions of politics and sociality, the instability of sexual identities, and the lure of negative affect.
Stacy Alaimo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816621958
- eISBN:
- 9781452955223
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816621958.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
The second chapter explores how, although scientists and cultural theorists have denied or dismissed the sexual diversity of nonhuman animals, they are important for new materialism, animal studies, ...
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The second chapter explores how, although scientists and cultural theorists have denied or dismissed the sexual diversity of nonhuman animals, they are important for new materialism, animal studies, and queer, green politics. The wonder, awe, and pleasure of contemplating the countless modes of nonhuman sexual diversity, which pulse with desire and erotic ingenuity, may generate environmentalisms that are already fabulously queer.Less
The second chapter explores how, although scientists and cultural theorists have denied or dismissed the sexual diversity of nonhuman animals, they are important for new materialism, animal studies, and queer, green politics. The wonder, awe, and pleasure of contemplating the countless modes of nonhuman sexual diversity, which pulse with desire and erotic ingenuity, may generate environmentalisms that are already fabulously queer.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity ...
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By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity was positive rather than a self-hating form of false consciousness. This book considers ways Stein’s masculinity was formed through her relationship with her feminine partner, Alice B. Toklas, and her masculine homosocial bonds with other modernists in her network. This broadens out Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s account of “male homosocial bonding” to include all masculine persons, opening up the possibility of examining Stein’s relationship to Toklas; masculine women such as Jane Heap; and men such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten. The Introduction and first four chapters focus on surfacings of Stein’s masculinity within the visual and the textual: in others’ paintings and photographs of her person; her hermetic writings from the first three decades of the twentieth century; and her self-packaging for mass consumption in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Whereas the chapter on The Autobiography underscores Toklas’s role in the formation of Stein’s masculinity and success as a modernist, the final three register the vicissitudes of the homosocial bonds at play in her friendships with Picasso, Hemingway, and Van Vechten. The Coda, which cross-reads Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) with the media attention two museum exhibits about her attracted between 2011 and 2012, points to possibilities for future work on the implications of her masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.Less
By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity was positive rather than a self-hating form of false consciousness. This book considers ways Stein’s masculinity was formed through her relationship with her feminine partner, Alice B. Toklas, and her masculine homosocial bonds with other modernists in her network. This broadens out Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s account of “male homosocial bonding” to include all masculine persons, opening up the possibility of examining Stein’s relationship to Toklas; masculine women such as Jane Heap; and men such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten. The Introduction and first four chapters focus on surfacings of Stein’s masculinity within the visual and the textual: in others’ paintings and photographs of her person; her hermetic writings from the first three decades of the twentieth century; and her self-packaging for mass consumption in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Whereas the chapter on The Autobiography underscores Toklas’s role in the formation of Stein’s masculinity and success as a modernist, the final three register the vicissitudes of the homosocial bonds at play in her friendships with Picasso, Hemingway, and Van Vechten. The Coda, which cross-reads Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) with the media attention two museum exhibits about her attracted between 2011 and 2012, points to possibilities for future work on the implications of her masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.
Jane Goldman, Calum Gardner, and Colin Herd
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781942954569
- eISBN:
- 9781789629392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781942954569.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter explains the composition of 'Queer Woolf' poems. Every instance of Woolf's usage of the word 'queer' in her ten novels and six published volumes was cited in chronological order to make ...
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This chapter explains the composition of 'Queer Woolf' poems. Every instance of Woolf's usage of the word 'queer' in her ten novels and six published volumes was cited in chronological order to make the poetry.Less
This chapter explains the composition of 'Queer Woolf' poems. Every instance of Woolf's usage of the word 'queer' in her ten novels and six published volumes was cited in chronological order to make the poetry.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter uses The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to frame and advance this book’s central argument about Stein’s masculine homosocial relationships with her colleagues. Tracking the dynamics of ...
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This chapter uses The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to frame and advance this book’s central argument about Stein’s masculine homosocial relationships with her colleagues. Tracking the dynamics of vision that animate The Autobiography, I argue that it uses Toklas’s loving gaze to establish and recognize Stein’s masculinity, as well as to highlight the importance to modernism of her masculine homosocial bonds. The Autobiography depicts those ties as very congenial with men such as Sherwood Anderson and with masculine women such as Jane Heap, but more fraught—and more likely to induce perspectival vacillation—with Hemingway and Picasso. This multiperspectivalism structures the book and mobilizes multiple narratives of modernism’s emergence. In so doing, The Autobiography reframes Stein’s masculinity and relationship with Toklas as part of the appearance of the new that the text initially attributes solely to the formal properties of modern art and writing.Less
This chapter uses The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to frame and advance this book’s central argument about Stein’s masculine homosocial relationships with her colleagues. Tracking the dynamics of vision that animate The Autobiography, I argue that it uses Toklas’s loving gaze to establish and recognize Stein’s masculinity, as well as to highlight the importance to modernism of her masculine homosocial bonds. The Autobiography depicts those ties as very congenial with men such as Sherwood Anderson and with masculine women such as Jane Heap, but more fraught—and more likely to induce perspectival vacillation—with Hemingway and Picasso. This multiperspectivalism structures the book and mobilizes multiple narratives of modernism’s emergence. In so doing, The Autobiography reframes Stein’s masculinity and relationship with Toklas as part of the appearance of the new that the text initially attributes solely to the formal properties of modern art and writing.
Meg MacDonald
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621730
- eISBN:
- 9781800341296
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621730.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter examines the role of the Bastard, one of the gods in Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ series, and his contribution to her depiction of an inclusive Queer Theology. ...
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This chapter examines the role of the Bastard, one of the gods in Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ series, and his contribution to her depiction of an inclusive Queer Theology. Drawing on the queer theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid, the chapter considers the distinctive set-up of the five-fold Quintarian pantheon that Bujold establishes, and how it creates and subverts dualistic ideas. The chapter provides close readings of interactions with the Bastard, particularly in Paladin of Souls and the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ series, where the Bastard is the patron god, and analyzes how the idea of the Queer God becomes essential to an inclusive dialogue within religious identity and society. The chapter demonstrates how these novels and novellas afford Bujold the opportunity to reflect upon many of the vital social functions performed by real religions throughout history while challenging those dualistic theological systems that remain prevalent, particularly in Western culture.Less
This chapter examines the role of the Bastard, one of the gods in Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ series, and his contribution to her depiction of an inclusive Queer Theology. Drawing on the queer theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid, the chapter considers the distinctive set-up of the five-fold Quintarian pantheon that Bujold establishes, and how it creates and subverts dualistic ideas. The chapter provides close readings of interactions with the Bastard, particularly in Paladin of Souls and the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ series, where the Bastard is the patron god, and analyzes how the idea of the Queer God becomes essential to an inclusive dialogue within religious identity and society. The chapter demonstrates how these novels and novellas afford Bujold the opportunity to reflect upon many of the vital social functions performed by real religions throughout history while challenging those dualistic theological systems that remain prevalent, particularly in Western culture.
Jocelyn Sakal Froese (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496815118
- eISBN:
- 9781496815156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496815118.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that ...
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This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.Less
This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter cross-reads Picasso’s paintings that reference Stein—Gertrude Stein (1906), Homage à Gertrude (1909), and The Architect’s Table (1912)—with her word-portraits “Picasso” (1912) and “If I ...
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This chapter cross-reads Picasso’s paintings that reference Stein—Gertrude Stein (1906), Homage à Gertrude (1909), and The Architect’s Table (1912)—with her word-portraits “Picasso” (1912) and “If I Told Him A Completed Portrait of Picasso” (1924) to argue that masculine homosociality was an important force in their dynamic. Tracking the ways their portraits of one another use cubist strategies to register the vicissitudes of their bond, I argue that whereas Picasso’s portrait of Stein reflects his trepidation about her masculinity and their masculine homosociality, her portraits of him instead show both fondness and concern about his uneven patterns of artistic production and imperial masculinity. If ultimately, Stein’s portraits of Picasso differentiate her queer transmasculinity from his misogynist masculinity, Czech artist Jiří Kolář’s reinflections of his portraits of her further transform the gaze through which her masculinity—and homosocial bond with Picasso—are made available for view.Less
This chapter cross-reads Picasso’s paintings that reference Stein—Gertrude Stein (1906), Homage à Gertrude (1909), and The Architect’s Table (1912)—with her word-portraits “Picasso” (1912) and “If I Told Him A Completed Portrait of Picasso” (1924) to argue that masculine homosociality was an important force in their dynamic. Tracking the ways their portraits of one another use cubist strategies to register the vicissitudes of their bond, I argue that whereas Picasso’s portrait of Stein reflects his trepidation about her masculinity and their masculine homosociality, her portraits of him instead show both fondness and concern about his uneven patterns of artistic production and imperial masculinity. If ultimately, Stein’s portraits of Picasso differentiate her queer transmasculinity from his misogynist masculinity, Czech artist Jiří Kolář’s reinflections of his portraits of her further transform the gaze through which her masculinity—and homosocial bond with Picasso—are made available for view.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Stein’s friendship with Ernest Hemingway, whose initial supplication to her tutelage transformed into aggression in the wake of his observation of Toklas’s power over Stein. ...
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This chapter examines Stein’s friendship with Ernest Hemingway, whose initial supplication to her tutelage transformed into aggression in the wake of his observation of Toklas’s power over Stein. Whereas Stein admits in The Autobiography to having “a weakness for Hemingway”, Hemingway—who spoke of wanting to “lay” Stein—spitefully attacked her relationship with Toklas in A Moveable Feast in retaliation for her calling him “yellow.” Differences between the public and private Hemingway precipitated crises as he disavowed the possibility that his attraction to the masculine Stein may have been driven by a far queerer configuration of gender and desire than the heteronormative logics that governed the works he published during his lifetime. Considering A Moveable Feast as well as Stein’s and Hemingway’s shorter poems about one another—Stein’s “He and They, Hemingway” (1923), “Evidence” (1929), “Genuine Creative Ability” (1930), and “Sentences and Paragraphs” (1931); Hemingway’s “The Soul of Spain” (1924)—this chapter argues that their relationship’s troubling vicissitudes reverberated across their lives and works.Less
This chapter examines Stein’s friendship with Ernest Hemingway, whose initial supplication to her tutelage transformed into aggression in the wake of his observation of Toklas’s power over Stein. Whereas Stein admits in The Autobiography to having “a weakness for Hemingway”, Hemingway—who spoke of wanting to “lay” Stein—spitefully attacked her relationship with Toklas in A Moveable Feast in retaliation for her calling him “yellow.” Differences between the public and private Hemingway precipitated crises as he disavowed the possibility that his attraction to the masculine Stein may have been driven by a far queerer configuration of gender and desire than the heteronormative logics that governed the works he published during his lifetime. Considering A Moveable Feast as well as Stein’s and Hemingway’s shorter poems about one another—Stein’s “He and They, Hemingway” (1923), “Evidence” (1929), “Genuine Creative Ability” (1930), and “Sentences and Paragraphs” (1931); Hemingway’s “The Soul of Spain” (1924)—this chapter argues that their relationship’s troubling vicissitudes reverberated across their lives and works.
Kevin Ohi
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694778
- eISBN:
- 9781452950754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694778.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In a reading of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which presents a theory of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (purporting to identify the addressee of the dedication) and a narrative about the ...
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In a reading of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which presents a theory of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (purporting to identify the addressee of the dedication) and a narrative about the transmission, between men, of that theory, Chapter Five explores Wilde’s understanding of gay reading; Wilde’s text ultimately points to a paradoxical identification with an inhuman form, which links the question of gay reading to the uncanny mode of survival through which a beautiful boy can be said to live on “in” a literary text.Less
In a reading of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which presents a theory of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (purporting to identify the addressee of the dedication) and a narrative about the transmission, between men, of that theory, Chapter Five explores Wilde’s understanding of gay reading; Wilde’s text ultimately points to a paradoxical identification with an inhuman form, which links the question of gay reading to the uncanny mode of survival through which a beautiful boy can be said to live on “in” a literary text.
John Wei
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888528271
- eISBN:
- 9789882206304
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528271.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter forays into the ongoing social, cultural, political, economic, and technological transformations concerning queer people in China and other Chinese societies. Through the assemblage of ...
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This chapter forays into the ongoing social, cultural, political, economic, and technological transformations concerning queer people in China and other Chinese societies. Through the assemblage of geographical, cultural, and social class migrations, it sheds light on the entangled formulations of queer kinship, cultural flows, and social mobilization that are productive by and of the increasingly ubiquitous and imperative mobilities. This chapter questions the emergent homocapitalist and homonormative cultures in today’s China, investigates the complex sexual identity politics and identity labels, and examines the values and pitfalls of combining digital and traditional anthropologies with cultural critique and social analysis in understanding transgressive desires.Less
This chapter forays into the ongoing social, cultural, political, economic, and technological transformations concerning queer people in China and other Chinese societies. Through the assemblage of geographical, cultural, and social class migrations, it sheds light on the entangled formulations of queer kinship, cultural flows, and social mobilization that are productive by and of the increasingly ubiquitous and imperative mobilities. This chapter questions the emergent homocapitalist and homonormative cultures in today’s China, investigates the complex sexual identity politics and identity labels, and examines the values and pitfalls of combining digital and traditional anthropologies with cultural critique and social analysis in understanding transgressive desires.
Kevin Ohi
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694778
- eISBN:
- 9781452950754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694778.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Giving an overall account of the argument, the introduction briefly situates the book in contemporary queer studies and then turns to a genealogy of its modes of reading. By way of Samuel Johnson, ...
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Giving an overall account of the argument, the introduction briefly situates the book in contemporary queer studies and then turns to a genealogy of its modes of reading. By way of Samuel Johnson, Jesper Svenbro, Anne Carson, Leo Bersani, T. S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, Andrew H. Miller, and, most important, Giorgio Agamben, it outlines the theoretical underpinnings of its model of close reading.Less
Giving an overall account of the argument, the introduction briefly situates the book in contemporary queer studies and then turns to a genealogy of its modes of reading. By way of Samuel Johnson, Jesper Svenbro, Anne Carson, Leo Bersani, T. S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, Andrew H. Miller, and, most important, Giorgio Agamben, it outlines the theoretical underpinnings of its model of close reading.
