Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Over the course of her long career, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick became one of the most important voices in queer theory, and her calls for reparative criticism and reading practices grounded in affect and performance have transformed understandings of affect, intimacy, politics, and identity. With marked tenderness, the contributors to this book reflect on Sedgwick's many critical inventions, from her elucidation of poetry's close relation to criticism and development of new versions of queer performativity to highlighting the power of writing to engender new forms of life. As the essays in this book demonstrate, Sedgwick's work is not only an ongoing vital force in queer theory and affect theory; it can help us build a more positive world in the midst of the bleak contemporary moment.

Affekt. --- Gays' writings --- Homosexuality and literature --- Homosexuality and literature. --- Homosexualität --- Identität. --- LITERARY CRITICISM / Gay & Lesbian. --- Queer-Theorie. --- History and criticism --- Theory, etc. --- History --- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky --- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, --- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. --- Criticism and interpretation. --- 1900-1999.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Late Victorian aesthetes were dedicated to the belief that an artwork's value derived solely from its beauty, rather than any moral or utilitarian purpose. Works by these queer artists have rarely been taken seriously as contributions to the theories of sexuality or aesthetics. But in Before Queer Theory, Dustin Friedman argues that aestheticism deploys its "art for art's sake" rhetoric to establish a nascent sense of sexual identity and community.Friedman makes the case for a claim rarely articulated in either Victorian or modern culture: that intellectually, creatively, and ethically, being queer can be an advantage not in spite but because of social hostility toward nonnormative desires. Showing how aesthetes-among them Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Michael Field-harnessed the force that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called "the negative," Friedman reveals how becoming self-aware of one's sexuality through art can be both liberating and affirming of humanity's capacity for subjective autonomy.Challenging one of the central precepts of modern queer theory-the notion that the heroic subject of Enlightenment thought is merely an effect of discourse and power-Friedman develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between desire and self-determination. He also articulates an innovative, queer notion of subjective autonomy that encourages reflecting critically on one's historical moment and envisioning new modes of seeing, thinking, and living that expand the boundaries of social and intellectual structures. Before Queer Theory is an audacious reimagining that will appeal to scholars with interests in Victorian studies, queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, and art history.

Homosexuality and literature --- Self (psychology) in literature. --- Literature --- Aestheticism (Literature) --- English literature --- Decadence (Literary movement) --- Literary movements --- Literature, Modern --- Literature and philosophy --- Philosophy and literature --- Literature and homosexuality --- History --- philosophy. --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism --- Theory --- Self-actualization (Psychology) in literature. --- Philosophy. --- Philosophical anthropology --- Aesthetics --- Sociology of the family. Sociology of sexuality --- Sexology --- Thematology --- aesthetics --- sexuality --- anno 1800-1899 --- Self in literature.