Cooper's Queer Objects
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3774570 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marcie Frank (Concordia University 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. LB 641 Montreal, Quebec Canada H3Z 1J6) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 131-143 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Angelaki (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0969725x.2018.1435388 |
| OpenAlex | W2791429639 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Queer objects are crucial to the narrative strategies of Dennis Cooper’s George Miles cycle where they support his exhaustive inventory of what it means to have (in all senses) a sexual type. In Frisk (1991), Cooper transforms some objects into media to blur the boundaries between the writing subject and the objects he desires. The snuff photos, seen at too young an age, form the point of reference for Dennis the narrator’s erotic life but they acquire their force in a looping narrative structure that calls into question their status as representation as well as their capacity to communicate. The novel thus elicits a new theorization of the relation between objects and media that discloses the stakes for fiction in a queer subjectivity that takes the self as another object at the same time as it probes the limits of realism. I situate Cooper in a genealogy of autofiction that extends back to Marcel Proust and Jean Genet and forward to J.T. LeRoy, Ben Lerner, Maggie Nelson, and Sheila Heti. The essay concludes by contrasting Cooper’s narrative achievements to the collapse of the writing subject into the autobiographical self in the more recent examples
Art · Art history · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Object (grammar · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Realism · Representation (politics · Subject (documents · Subjectivity · Computer Science · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Psychology · Law · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |