Between Men

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant thinker, a dreadful reader
Review: After establishing a brilliant theoretical framework Sedgwick provides utterly unconvincing and tediously reductive readings of literary works by Shakespeare, Wycherley, Dickens, and others. Read the introduction and then skip the rest.

Rating:
Summary: Important, compelling, enduring.
Review: Sedgwick brilliantly transformed gay and lesbian studies with this book, a text whose import has not diminished with the transition of gay and lesbian studies from the margins of academia to (at least closer to) the mainstream. While she uses as her framework here English literature, this framework does not bound her theories conceptually. Look, for example, at ch. 1, "Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles". Consider the triangulation of rapist, victim and spectator in representations of rape, such as in Kaplan's film "The Accused" - while she does not explicitly deal with contemporary media and textuality, it can certainly be applied. Certainly, the text could now be updated - there are literally thousands of contemporary examples which could apply, and which could, perhaps make for more accessible reading. However, such a rewriting would not substantially change Sedgwick's ideas, and the challenge of reading and absorbing SEdgwick is something which I have come to enjoy time and time again.

Rating:
Summary: The origins of queer theory
Review: This book is an essential antecedent to contemporary queer theory, arguing that the development of the public sphere depended upon a sublimated yet necessarily erotic "male homosocial desire." Once we have finished encountered that stunning and revolutionary idea, this is a work of literary criticism that will be of little interest to non-scholars. Sedgwick has proven herself more than adequate to the task of adapting her ideas to a larger academic and educated general audience; indeed, she is one of the most provocative cultural critics of our generation. But not here. I suggest some of Sedgwick's later work, especially "The Epistemology of the Closet" and "Tendencies."

Rating:
Summary: The origins of queer theory
Review: This book is an essential antecedent to contemporary queer theory, arguing that the development of the public sphere depended upon a sublimated yet necessarily erotic "male homosocial desire." Once we have finished encountered that stunning and revolutionary idea, this is a work of literary criticism that will be of little interest to non-scholars. Sedgwick has proven herself more than adequate to the task of adapting her ideas to a larger academic and educated general audience; indeed, she is one of the most provocative cultural critics of our generation. But not here. I suggest some of Sedgwick's later work, especially "The Epistemology of the Closet" and "Tendencies."