What timing! I was just--JUST!-- reading the 20th anniversary edition of Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers, and then I saw your post pop up! Jenkins speaks about Sedgwick's "male homosocial desire" in relation to the development of slash fan fiction in the '80s.
"Commentators often pointed out the juxtaposition between Sedgwick's transgressive and often radical writing on the limits of human sexuality with the fact that she maintained a married, monogamous, heterosexual relationship for decades."
Yanno, if they were just pointing it out as an interesting notation about her life, I'd be okay with it. but if they were pointing it out as a criticism, as a way to discredit her thinking, her work, then it oisses me off to no end--we don't need to outwardly live something to understand it or to feel it privately.
i tend more for the first, I don't think it was a criticism, but more a notation that she managed to have an heterosexual, and long-term, relationship while writing of "male homosocial desire". She was indeed a researcher, not someone who was writing of her own personal experience, and so maybe she had a more critical insight.
Comments 3
"Commentators often pointed out the juxtaposition between Sedgwick's transgressive and often radical writing on the limits of human sexuality with the fact that she maintained a married, monogamous, heterosexual relationship for decades."
Yanno, if they were just pointing it out as an interesting notation about her life, I'd be okay with it. but if they were pointing it out as a criticism, as a way to discredit her thinking, her work, then it oisses me off to no end--we don't need to outwardly live something to understand it or to feel it privately.
Reply
Reply
Ah! Well said and good point!
Reply
Leave a comment