by Ery Shin
What are the intersections between queerness, gender, and class in an early modernist context, with the focus being on narratives of pain in relation to disenfranchised queer bodies? How do writers such as Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf reject or conform to the exclusionary, heterosexist politics of their day?
A new wave in queer theory is pushing to reclaim the stigmatization historically defining modern queer consciousness, thereby giving a fuller, more realized portrait of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) identity. If the first half of the twentieth-century largely features representations of closeted homosexuals suffering alone, the Gay Pride movement of today promotes “post-gay” gays: dashingly urban figures “flaunting their well-adjustedness.” What are the dissonances arising between these two clashing images? Joining a growing number of critics interested in queer negativity, I hope to further dialogue on what it means to be or feel queer in the twenty-first century by looking back to the early twentieth.
Given homophobia’s persistence in the present (evidenced in Uganda’s harsh penal codes and the recent string of gay teenage suicides publicized across the U.S.), a large part of this project involves figuring out how to navigate political infighting within the gay community, then, bridge the gaps between theory and political action. Much of queer theory deconstructs categories and stable identities, yet civil initiatives, by necessity, require group solidarity. How do we effect change without compromising intellectual integrity? Is such a thing possible?
This presentation examines both the past and future of queer theory and politics by asking, as Douglas Crimp urges us, “How do we make what we know knowable to legions?” Demystifying all of these issues before the general public is a daunting prospect, but one that must be tackled nonetheless in light of the ongoing struggle for gay rights.
Given homophobia’s persistence in the present (evidenced in Uganda’s harsh penal codes and the recent string of gay teenage suicides publicized across the U.S.), a large part of this project involves figuring out how to navigate political infighting within the gay community, then, bridge the gaps between theory and political action. Much of queer theory deconstructs categories and stable identities, yet civil initiatives, by necessity, require group solidarity. How do we effect change without compromising intellectual integrity? Is such a thing possible?
This presentation examines both the past and future of queer theory and politics by asking, as Douglas Crimp urges us, “How do we make what we know knowable to legions?” Demystifying all of these issues before the general public is a daunting prospect, but one that must be tackled nonetheless in light of the ongoing struggle for gay rights.
Biography
Ery Shin received her B.A. in English at Princeton University, and is now pursuing a doctorate in English at the University of Oxford. Her specialties lie in LGBTQ literature, queer theory, modernism, as well as gender & sexuality studies. Her PhD dissertation is currently titled “Queer Modernisms: Pain and Paradox in Women’s Writing,” and will focus on authors such as Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield. The point of the study is to examine queer suffering in select texts in order to recuperate it in the present.
