Epistemology Of The Closet, Updated With A New Preface

By (author) Sedgwick Eve Kosofsky
Short description/annotation:
Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. Working from texts of European and American writers, this work analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries.
Description:
Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick''s critically acclaimed "Epistemology of the Closet". Working from classic texts of European and American writers - including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde -Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text.
Table of contents:
Acknowledgments 
Credits 
Preface to the 2008 Edition 
Introduction: Axiomatic 
I. Epistemology of the Closet 
2. Some Binarisms (I)
Billy Budd: After the Homosexual 
3· Some Binarisms (II)
Wilde, Nietzsche, and the Sentimental Relations
of the Male Body 
4· The Beast in the Closet
James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic 
5· Proust and the Spectacle of the Closet 
Index
Review quote:
"Close readings of Melville''s Billy Budd, Wilde''s Dorian Gray, and of Proust, Nietzsche, Henry James, and Thackeray bristle with keen observations relating entrenched fears of same-sex relationships to contemporary gay-bashing."
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"No book I have recently read is as successful as Sedgwick''s in making provocative connections between literary acts and social dynamics."
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"Pioneering and rewarding. Sedgwick has zeroed in on the taboo area of male sexuality, and the architecture she exposes is stunning."
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"An important contribution to lesbian and gay studies."
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"Brilliant as a work of literary criticism, a cultural study, a political analysis, and as a landmark in the development of lesbian and gay studies."

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“To read (and reread) Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet is a rewarding experience. This text will shatter the framework through which you think about life.”
Biographical note:
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is Distinguished Professor of English at City University of New York Graduate Center. Her books include Between Men, Tendencies, A Dialogue on Love, and Touching Feeling.