Combining poetry, wit, polemic and dazzling scholarship with memorial and autobiography, these essays have set new standards of passion and truthfulness for current theoretical writing. The essays range from discussions of Diderot, Oscar Wilde and Henry James to queer kids, political correctness adn the poetics of spanking. What unites Tendencies is the vision of a new queer activism and thought which, however demanding and dangerous, can also be intent, inclusive and fun.
Tendencies
Author: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Publication date: 1993
Genre: Gay Studies Nonfiction
Publication date: 1993
Genre: Gay Studies Nonfiction
About the Work
Tendencies brings together the essays that have made Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick “the soft-spoken queen of gay studies” (Rolling Stone). Combining poetry, wit, polemic, and scholarship with memorial and autobiography, these essays set new standards of passion and truthfulness for current theoretical writing.
The essays range from Diderot, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James to queer kids and twelve-step programs; from “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl” to a performance piece on Divine written with Michael Moon; from political correctness and the poetics of spanking to the experience of breast cancer in a world ravaged and reshaped by AIDS. What unites Tendencies is a vision of a new queer politics and thought that, however demanding and dangerous, can also be intent, inclusive, writerly, physical, and sometimes giddily fun.
Challenges in Canada
1995—This book and others by an American scholar, ordered by Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto and timed to arrive for an author reading, were detained by Canada Customs for a month.
Objection—No reason was given.
Update—The books arrived two weeks after the reading.