An "Open Mesh of Possibilities": Thinking Queerness with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Archive
QUEERNESS: ACROSS GENDER, ACROSS SEXUALITY
That's one of things that “queer” can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies
Sedgwick is perhaps best known as one of the founders of the field of Queer theory. Her concepts, readings, and pedagogical practices have shaped decades of students and scholars. As Queer theory emerged in academia in the U.S, growing conversations around Queer methods and Queer readings also shaped Sedgwick’s thinking. This case explores the different ways in which queerness animated Sedgwick’s academic writings over the years.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. 1985. Columbia University Press, 1992.
This book is Sedgwick’s second published monograph. In it, she coins the term “homosocial desire” to describe the social bonds that English literature often depicts men sharing. Drawing on methods from literary studies, feminist theory, and gay studies, Sedgwick investigates how “homosociality” is connected to shifting ideas about homosexuality, heterosexuality, and gender. By close reading multiple centuries of English literature, she argues that homosociality is a patriarchal force, privileging relationships between men even in social formations structured by homophobia.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 1990.
This book is considered one of the founding texts of Queer theory. In it, Sedgwick argues that sexual orientation became a defining trait of sexual desire in western culture at the end of the nineteenth century. In her renowned opening “Introduction: Axiomatic”, Sedgwick outlines the binaries that structure western constructions of sexuality: “homo/hetero, secrecy/disclosure, knowledge/ignorance, private/public, masculine/feminine, majority/minority...” among others. To support her argument, she analyzes the writings of nineteenth-century American and European authors such as Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry James, and Marcel Proust.
Handwritten notes on Billy Budd. No Date.
These notes on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor are for the second chapter of Epistemology. As a literary critic, Sedgwick develops her argument by analyzing the writings of nineteenth-century authors and philosophers like Melville, best known today as the author of Moby-Dick.
Letter to Doris Kretschmer. June 9, 1988.
Although writing about nineteenth-century texts, Sedgwick understood her research in Epistemology as elucidating homophobia in her present. She discusses events like the AIDS epidemic and the Supreme Court’s Bowers v. Hardwick decision, which upheld that states could criminalize sodomy, even if it was consensual. In this letter, Sedgwick describes her urgency to publish Epistemology of the Closet because “it is meant to be a timely political intervention among other things”.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Duke University Press, 1993.
This book is Sedgwick’s fourth monograph, and the first time she uses the terms “queer” and “queerness” to describe her work. Building on conversations around the meaning of “queer” in the growing field of Queer theory, Sedgwick offers her own influential definition of “the open mesh of possibilities,” which thinks about queer not as a fixed sexual identity but a movement “across” disparate parts of gender and sexuality. She explains how this definition shapes the three interrelated conceptual projects that she pursues in Tendencies.
Handwritten notes on Willa Cather. No Date.
These notes on the writings of twentieth-century American author Willa Cather are for the first project that Sedgwick outlines in Tendencies. In this section of her book, Sedgwick studies “desires and identifications that move across gender lines, including the desires of men for women and of women for men.” In studying the depiction of heterosexual desires and identifications in literature, Sedgwick explains that her readings are “queer” because they open heterosexuality up to “analysis and interrogation” rather than assuming that heterosexuality is an unchanging and ahistorical concept.
“Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Queer Performativity” Lecture Poster. No date.
This poster is for a lecture that Sedgwick gave at Princeton University on her idea of “queer performativity,” which is the second project of Tendencies. Her concept draws on Queer theorist Judith Butler’s notion of “gender performativity” and British language philosopher J. L. Austin’s concept of “speech acts.”
My body building pinup calendar ‘zine for my friends. Circa 1990s. Photographs taken by H.A. Sedgwick.
In outlining the third project of Tendencies, Sedgwick discusses how the physical toll of cancer treatment changed her relationship to her body, gender expression, and sense of self. After completing chemotherapy in 1991, Sedgwick began strength training to counter the treatment’s debilitating physical side effects. Her husband, H.A. Sedgwick, took these photographs of her in muscle-building poses, and she created this calendar with them to share with her friends.
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