The Beauty of Queerness

This essay argues that the idealization inherent in the academic concept of "queerness" bears a resemblance to the notion (prominent in interdisciplinary contexts) that "the literary" is an object of singular critical insight. I trace this resemblance to the centrality of literary thinkers in early queer theory, arguing that we live in the shadow of the definitions of queerness and the literary emergent around 1993. I examine essays by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Joan Wallach Scott from that period before turning to the writing of Samuel R. Delany, which models a de-idealized critical stance on literary genres and nonnormative sex

Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Human sexuality · Literature · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gender Studies · History · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies