Contents:
- WHAT ABOUT GAY MIMETIC SIRE? EDMUND WHE PARLE RENÉ GIRARD, ENTRETIEN AVEC DANIEL LANCE (ENGLISH SUBTL)
- SEXUAL INTY, STIGMA, AND DEPRSN: THE ROLE OF THE "ANTI-GAY PROPAGANDA LAW" MENTAL HEALTH AMONG MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN MOSW, RSIA
- CHANGG PERCEPTNS OF WHAT IS LIKE TO BE GAY MOSW – ONE TOUR AT A TIME
WHAT ABOUT GAY MIMETIC SIRE? EDMUND WHE PARLE RENÉ GIRARD, ENTRETIEN AVEC DANIEL LANCE (ENGLISH SUBTL)
Rereadg recently a uple of chapters om Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick‘s Epistemology of the Closet (U of California, 1990), I was stck by the power generated by her sgle-md termatn to view the world through the special optic of her homosexualy (she also claims membership three other victimary tegori: women, Jews, and fat people).
SEXUAL INTY, STIGMA, AND DEPRSN: THE ROLE OF THE "ANTI-GAY PROPAGANDA LAW" MENTAL HEALTH AMONG MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN MOSW, RSIA
Prot, she claims, was only able to nceive his prevly agmentary work as a unified novel on the basis of what she lls “the spectacle of the closet, ” the revelatn or “outg” of the homosexualy of key characters of the novel, notably the Baron Charl, whom she lls “the novel’s most ravishgly nsumable product.
The attractn of the narrator’s hidn eye to the display of “secret” homosexualy is not rcible to the formal superry over the characters the world of the novel of the thor, whom Flbert scribed as “like God his creatn, prent everywhere and visible nowhere. A surprisg proportn of the personnel of A la recherche is eventually revealed as homosexual; the only characters safe om this qualifitn are those whose sir are exclively non-sexual, such as the arch-snob Mme Verdur (who ends up Prcse Guermant), or those who belong to the narrator’s childhood world (e.
CHANGG PERCEPTNS OF WHAT IS LIKE TO BE GAY MOSW – ONE TOUR AT A TIME
Nor–although the Duc Guermant twice chang his posn on the Dreyf affair, Charl who once spised Mme Verdur later urts her favor, and the côté Guermant and the côté chez Swann are revealed at the end to be one–is homosexualy ever alleged as an example of the labily of sire. By revealg language their closeted spectacle, the voyristic narrator supplements the purely formal difference between one who speaks and one who is spoken about, one who observ and one who is observed, by the “substantial” difference between one whose worldly sir are labile and tentative and therefore do not fe him, and one whose inty as a homosexual bears the lible stigma of a “vice” but at the same time the bety of a self-termed artwork.
The era surroundg the turn of the twentieth century wnsed the emergence, along wh the word “homosexual” self, of a new homosexual inty, first nosologil and then social. Dpe the obv qutn-beggg that li behd a term that, like “homophobia, ” imput reprsed homosexual tennci to anyone hostile to homosexual practic or liftyl, Sedgwick has a pot. The rise of homosexual inty cis wh the maturatn of the market system to a nsumer society where the dividual self is fed by s choic the world of sire.
The “panic” Sedgwick speaks of reflects the possibily of losg one’s (rpectable) inty through accedg to a homosexual sire that earlier tim would have been nsired a temptatn but not a threat to one’s sense of self. What she fails to pot out is that the flip si of the panicky “homophobia” that led to such celebrated trials as those of Osr Wil and Eulenberg ( Germany) was the posive affirmatn of the homosexual self-image by someone like André Gi. That homosexualy is not a “vice” but an “alternative liftyle” is not the kd of ia that n be affirmed all at once; emerg the late neteenth century neher om homosexuals nor om “homophob, ” but om their teractn a new soc-enomic environment.