{"id":67,"date":"2005-05-26T17:45:47","date_gmt":"2005-05-27T00:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/college-papers\/toward-queerer-homostories\/"},"modified":"2005-05-26T17:46:38","modified_gmt":"2005-05-27T00:46:38","slug":"toward-queerer-homostories","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/college-papers\/toward-queerer-homostories\/","title":{"rendered":"Toward Queer(er) Homostories"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nEnglish 391: Studies in Gay and Lesbian Literature
\nFebruary 24, 2003\n<\/div>\n

The function of queer literature lies somewhere between the ideas of Havelock Ellis and Bennett Singer. Ellis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 assertion that queer literature, in a sense, provides an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153insider\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153human psyche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of queer people, making it somewhat of a speculative writing, fails to capture the importance queer literature plays for queer people. Conversely, Singer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suggestion that queer literature establishes a sense of queer identity and allows queer readers to relate with other (even fictional) queer people does not address the importance queer literature holds for non-queer people. I think queer literature does, as it should, combine those two approaches to queer literature, which results in a genre that is comfortable for any reader. At the same time, however, I want to propose that queer literature should evolve and look to feminist texts and theorists for ways to grow as a literary art, a way to give voice to oppressed\/underrepresented people, and elevate itself on a critical and theoretical level.<\/p>\n

Lately I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been really interested in feminist (or, more specifically, the French Feminists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122) perspectives on writing. Using Lacan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s psychoanalytic understanding of language and the subconscious, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva (who I am least familiar with at the time), and H\u00c3\u00a9l\u00c3\u00a8ne Cixous spent a good amount of time in the 1970s analyzing the phallocentric construction of language and understanding. Cixous\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 suggestion that women should practice \u00c3\u00a9criture feminine<\/em>, to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153write their body,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d absolutely fascinates me. In Sorties<\/i> and The Laugh of the Medusa<\/i> [both from The Newly Born Woman<\/i><\/a>], Cixous outlines her ideas on how expression can be reclaimed from a system which has been created and enforced by men. While Cixous does make some vague references to homosexuality (or rather, against the overpowering nature of heterosexuality), she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t address queer issues as much as she could. Granted, in the 1970s in France the topic was not as big as it is now, so I hardly blame her for the omission\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI think her work as it stands is amazing and extremely thought-provoking. Nonetheless, I think a queer \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tweaking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of \u00c3\u00a9criture feminine<\/em> would prove interesting and I would like to see queer literature head in such a way.<\/p>\n

One of Cixious\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 disciples\/followers\/students\/etc., Nancy K. Miller, demonstrates a type of \u00c3\u00a9criture feminine<\/em> that I think can prove extremely useful for queer authors. In Rereading the Sophists<\/i><\/a>, Susan Jarrat discusses Miller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s essay \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arachnologies: The Women, The Text, and the Critic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the essay, Jarrat explains, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Miller provides examples of feminist readings which take a revision of logic through narrative as their central strategy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (77). Miller retells Ovid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story of Arachne, who, in Ovid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spins a meaningless web\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jarrat 77). In Miller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version, on the other hand, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arachne is reinstated\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6in the process of weaving a beautiful tapestry with its own story of women raped and destroyed by Zeus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jarrat 77). According to Jarrat, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Miller calls her own technique \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoverreading\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcunderread\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 text. The goal of overreading is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6to retrieve a text from anonymity it may have been forced into by a philosophical or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmasculine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 discourse\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (77). I think queer authors can follow Miller and Cixous\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lead to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153overread\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153underread\u00e2\u20ac\u009d texts for queer meanings.<\/p>\n

Queer literature, then, should become even more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153queer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It should become strange and questionable and fanciful. Just as the feminists have made critiques of his<\/em>tory, emphasing the masculine influence and telling hystery or herstory, queers need to displace herterostory and tell homostories. Queer men, as effeminized men from a theoretical standpoint, have been victims of phallocentric\/heteronormative doctrines just as much as women. The debates about gender and nature versus nurture are just as important to feminists as they are to queer authors, and the queers, like the feminists, need to uncover the untold stories that need to be told. Just because heterostory tells us that Abraham Lincoln was straight doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fathom the possibility that he might have had a male lover. Even though suggesting that Jesus was not heterosexual (if he was sexual at all) may be blasphemous, someone needs to ask whether there was something more to the relationships he had with the Disciples. Even if the homostories are not based in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153logical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d masculine his<\/em>\/hetero<\/em>storical fact, opening the possibilities makes it easier for contemporary readers to accept queers in mainstream culture. Further, the homostories will continue the feminists work to dismantle the oppressive structure of masculine (not physical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153men\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153masculine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d position of power) that has silenced the queers and women and blacks and others and give new ownership to the past and present to those who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had a chance yet\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand that should appeal to everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English 391: Studies in Gay and Lesbian Literature February 24, 2003 The function of queer literature lies somewhere between the ideas of Havelock Ellis and Bennett Singer. Ellis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 assertion that queer literature, in a sense, provides an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153insider\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153human psyche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of queer people, making it somewhat of a speculative writing, fails to … Continue reading Toward Queer(er) Homostories<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecompany.net\/jason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}