Epistemology of the ClosetSince the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. Working from classic texts of European and American writers - including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde - Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text. |
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Albertine androgyny antihomophobic bachelor Bartram Billy Budd Billy's binarisms bisexual canon Captain Vere chapter Charlus Claggart closet cognitive conceptual culture D. A. Miller defined discourse discussion distinct Dorian Gray double bind Ecce embodiment epistemological erotic Esther fact fantasy female feminism feminist figure Foucault gay male Gayle Rubin gender heterosexist heterosexual historical homo homo/heterosexual definition homophobia homophobic homosexual desire homosexual identity homosexual panic homosocial identification incoherence instance inversion James kitsch knowledge least lesbian literary male body male homosexual panic Marcher masculine master-at-arms meaning minoritizing modern narrative narrator never Nietzsche Nietzsche's nineteenth century novel object omnicide oppression paranoid particular perhaps person phobic political possibility potential privilege Proust question reader reading relations ressentiment rhetorical same-sex desire seems sense sentimental sexual definition sodomy space specifically story structure suggest taxonomy thematic thing tion Vere's violence visible Walter Kaufmann Wilde woman women York