MDW BLOG

I don't go on many rants about queer theory on this blog, but when I heard about the death of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on Sunday night from breast cancer, I knew I had to do a memorial post.

Sedgwick was one of the academics behind the creation of queer theory during the late 80s and early 90s. Her book Epistemology of the Closet has had a profound impact on many fields including LGBT studies and Feminism. She's probably best known for her work on a ideas on the interaction between two views of homosexuality - a 'minoritizing' view, where only gay people as a distinct group have homosexual desires, and a 'universalizing' view, where all people have some degree of homosexual desire. Sedgwick wrote about how both of these views are at play in society and interact with each other. In a review of Epistemology of the Closet, Mark Edmundson summarizes Sedgwick's discussion on how these ideas affect 'gay panic' legal defenses:

The defense plays on the incoherence between minoritizing and universalizing conceptions of sexual identity. "Gay bashing," the juror may suppose, "is something only latent homosexuals do: Those people are sick and deserve judicial mercy." But also (secretly), "That's something I might do: Let's let them off easy." Of course, that thinking sets up scenarios in which anyone ("because we're all a little bit gay") can be identified by another as a homosexual ("someone who's really gay") making an advance, and be assaulted as a consequence. This incoherence leaves everyone, at times, open to blackmail, open to violence...

Anyone interested in queer theory or identity politics should definitely check out her work.

The Nation: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-2009
via Towleroad