He had a long reer as a scholar of French lerature, but he was bt known for his wrgs on gay inty at the height of the AIDS crisis.
Contents:
- LEO BERSANI, LERARY CRIC AND THEORIST ON GAY LIFE, DI AT 90
- IGNACIO DARNAUDE: DON’T SAY GAY — THE ERASURE OF QUEERNS ART
- LET'S NOT ASSIGN GAY ARTISTS TO THE OBUARY CLOSET
LEO BERSANI, LERARY CRIC AND THEORIST ON GAY LIFE, DI AT 90
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHe had a long reer as a scholar of French lerature, but he was bt known for his wrgs on gay inty at the height of the AIDS Peppel/ICI BerlLeo Bersani, who over a 60-year reer as a scholar of morn French lerature had a profound fluence on art and lerary cricism, and who later played a central role bat about gay and queer inty at the height of the AIDS crisis, died on Feb. Bersani had entered the facily earlier this month after a brief hospalizatn wh Bersani was bt known for his 1987 say “Is the Rectum a Grave?, ” a nse, polemil crique of the tenncy among some gay activists to rpond to AIDS by downplayg their sexualy and emphasizg the need to replite bourgeois homosexualy was not the mirror image of heterosexualy, he argued, but somethg radilly different, lackg many of the patriarchal equali that he said fed straight life. “Far om apologizg for their promiscuy as a failure to mata a lovg relatnship, ” he wrote, “gay men should ceaselsly lament the practil necsy, now, of such relatns, should rist beg drawn to mimickg the unrelentg warfare between men and women.
IGNACIO DARNAUDE: DON’T SAY GAY — THE ERASURE OF QUEERNS ART
”He followed nearly a later, wh “Homos” (1995), a book-length crique of the emergg field of queer theory, and particular of s leadg figure, Judh Bersani argued that their pictn of gay inty as socially nstcted and of aspects of gay culture as performative and parodic of straight life, Dr. Butler and others threatened to remove those quali that ma male homosexualy salient and even potentially liberatg. “He thought that the whole pot of beg a homosexual man is that you dispted the experience of posssn, ownership, fily, nsistency, safety, and you allowed sexualy to be what really is, which is disptive, disorientg, shatterg, lim-vlatg and boundary-breakg.
Cldia Peppel/ICI BerlThough many wrers praised “Homos” — Richard Canng, wrg The New Statman and Society, lled a “tone gay studi” — others were more Peck, wrg The Village Voice, took Dr. Bersani to task for all but ignorg the reali of the AIDS crisis and the chang gay men need to make light of , while Denis Donoghue, wrg The New York Tim, warned that “his program ‘Homos’ seems to me a regrsn to apartheid, and one enforced this time round by homosexuals.
LET'S NOT ASSIGN GAY ARTISTS TO THE OBUARY CLOSET
Bersani’s lerary cricism and his work on gay inty, there are them nng through both. He found gay life a livg stance of the sort of “swerve” and athetic ivoly that he lled for art and lerature; for example, he praised gay bath ho for the sual sexual enunters they enuraged.