Eve Sedgwick Has Died

[tishaLA]

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-2009
The Nation

I have only ever worn out one book. The first copy--which I still keep as an artifact of my 20s--became a palimpsest of sorts, its text underlined in four different colors of pencil, emblazoned with streaks of yellow and green neon highlighter. Little enigmatic notes crawl up and down the margins of dog-eared pages, and decomposing Post-it notes jut out untidily from the edges; the spine has long since given way. At a certain point, picking up this particular copy became too overwhelming an encounter with my old selves, and so I bought a fresh one, which I tried in vain to keep clean. That book is Epistemology of the Closet, and its author is the brilliant, inimitable, explosive intellectual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who died last night from breast cancer at the age of 58.

It is difficult to calculate the impact of Sedgwick's scholarship, in part because its legacy is still in the making, but also because she worked at a skew to so many fields of inquiry. Feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis and literary, legal and disability studies--Sedgwick complicated and upended them all, sometimes in ways that infuriated more anodyne scholars, but always in ways that pushed established parameters.

In one of her more audacious insights, Sedgwick proposed two ways of understanding homosexuality: a "minoritizing view" in which there is "a distinct population of persons who 'really are' gay," and a "universalizing view" in which sexual desire is unpredictable and fluid, in which "apparently heterosexual persons...are strongly marked by same-sex influences." Think of it, in shorthand, as the difference between Ellen Degeneres' "Yep, I'm gay!" and Gore Vidal's "There is no such thing as a homosexual or heterosexual person; there are only homo- or heterosexual acts." <...>

Sedgwick's work was marked throughout by an abiding love for gay people, gay men in particular. She once proposed that in a gay-affirmative world, there would be guide books on how to bring your kids up gay. "Advice on how to make sure your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishoners, your therapy clients, or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than one might think," she deadpanned in Epistemology. It's funny, and then, after you laugh, it hits you like a rock.

Sedgwick once wrote of what "a pleasure and privilege" it was to write her second book Between Men; she was always a pleasure and privilege to read.

[stillcool]

1. I like this..

Gore Vidal's "There is no such thing as a homosexual or heterosexual person; there are only homo- or heterosexual acts."

[closeupready]

2. I seem to remember her works from college, but

honestly, I can't recall specifics.

On the issue of 'no gays; only gay sex', I've often thought that if I had been raised in a culture that subscribed to that view (and some do, but obviously, most Western cultures subscribe to the minoritizing view, and most certainly, that is how I was raised), I would today be married with kids and my family would resemble a rather normal nuclear style family.

[tishaLA]

3. Epistemology of the Closet and Between Men are seminal works

Epistemology of the Closet was really the first book of queer literary theory and it inspired me to enter academia (I won't blame her, though). She offered fresh, innovative readings of Melville's Billy Budd, Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" (her chapter about it was "The Beast in the Closet"), Proust, etc. I remember being astonished while I read it--she was saying audacious things, writing in serpentine sentences, and expanding intellectual possibilities in ways I never thought imaginable. I've read the book so many times, picked fights with it, and loved it.

She wrote another major book, Tendencies, that has one of the greatest elegies to a friend who died of AIDS one can imagine ("White Glasses").

I haven't read Sedgwick in a couple years, but now I feel like I have to go back again and discover some of the many things I missed the last 30 times I read her.

[closeupready]

4. I have James' "Beast" in a collection - now, I will have to rummage around for it,

as I never read it, only "Turn of the Screw".

[roughsatori]

5. Kate Millet's Sexual Politics inspired and opened my world.

I shop-lifted Sexual Politics when I was in the 6th grade. I was not permitted to take that book from a library - so had to steal it to read. The first book that I had lovingly pilfered, during a lull in the summer of 5th grade, "The Kinsey Report: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." I was a strange child - precocious to the point of laughable absurdity. Millet's Sexual Politics led me to some of my most beloved authors. The irony that reading Millet on Henry Miller resulted in my reading every word in print of Henry Miller's was lost on me at the time. And Kate led me to DH Lawrence's poetry and essays on poetics which still inspire and spark. Jean Genet was the special gift that Millet presented to me. Millet made me NEED to need to understand Jean Genet - as a way to better know myself. Genet's Journal du voleur (A Thief's Journal) is an incredible melding of fact, fiction, Eros, crime, and reverie. Sedgewick, similarly, inspired you.

Your post regarding Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's passing brought a rush of memories - and a feeling of loss. The obituary you linked to was well written and bitter-sweet. Thanks for taking the time to post the link for the Nation obituary. The comments that people left at the Nation, in response to the obituary, were sickeningly too familiar. Epistemology of the Closet excited more than a few people. Due to Sedwick's work there was a resultant vibrancy in some academic worlds for the importance of aesthetics, psychology, and politics in the development of a Gay identity component. Sedgewick opened-up criticism for those of us who reveled in our own louche, outcast selves. Eve's examination, and blending, of the ideas of Foucault and Melanie Klein was exhilarating. Her ideas felt important and alive.

"Queer Theory" now reads as if from ancient history. In the USA there has been such a swing to the right that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's work is a sort of memento mori from a lost-time when Progressives were not mocked by self-proclaimed Liberals.

I apologize for this rambling, incoherent post.

Because of your post I will re-read Epistemology of the Closet. Thank you!

[xchrom]

6. +7

[Chovexani]

7. Wow, what a profound loss

Sedgwick's work really blew my mind in a lot of ways, especially at the time in my life when I first encountered it.

She will most definitely be missed.