From Publishers Weekly
A leading practitioner of gay studies, Sedgwick ( The Epistemology of the Closet ) offers an illuminating and provocative collection of essays, many reprinted from academic journals, on subjects as varied as the politics of health care, the popularization of "queer theory" as an academic discipline (and its harassment by PC-bashing journalists) and Sedgwick's own diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. Sedgwick turns an unflinching eye on the dynamics of gender and identity that fail to fall into neat, heterosexual categories. She contends that the literature of James, Wilde and Cather call for a reading that is sensitive to the dissonances and ironies of a love that dare not speak its name; she interrogates the "naturalness" of heterosexual identity in literature and popular culture. The opening essay, for instance, invokes "the utopian bedroom scene of Chuck Berry's immortal aubade : 'Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.' " Though steeped in the jargon of academic cultural studies, Sedgwick's essays offer forthright cultural analysis and an autobiographical intimacy that will prove accessible and germane for a general audience.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
From Library Journal
This collection of essays is a meditation on sexuality in literature and life and on the artificial categories imposed on people because of their sexual orientation. The idea that the "two available categories (heterosexual and homosexual) are not symmetrically but hierarchically constituted in relation to each other" is just one of the brilliant thoughts Sedgwick has to offer in examining the works of Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Diderot, and Willa Cather. What she has to say deserves attention, but the ideas presented here will remain inaccessible to all but a handful of Sedgwick's own colleagues. Her writing is witty yet turgid, and the essays overall are slow and difficult reading. This first volume in a new series focusing on the theoretical aspects of gay and lesbian studies is not recommended except for special collections. Sedgwick ( Between Men , Columbia Univ. Pr., 1986) is Newman Ivey White Professor of English at Duke.
- Patricia Sarles, Brooklyn P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
- Patricia Sarles, Brooklyn P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
