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In its contributions to the study of material social differences, queer theoretical writing has mostly assumed that any ideas which embody 'difference' are valuable. More than this, where it is invoked in contemporary theory, queerness is often imagined as synonymous with difference itself. This book uncovers an alternative history in queer cultural representation. Through engagement with works from a range of queer literary genres from across the long twentieth century – fin-de-siècle aestheticism, feminist speculative fiction, lesbian middle-brow writing, and the tradition of the stud file – the book elucidates a number of formal and thematic attachments to ideas that have been denigrated in queer theory for their embodiment of sameness: uselessness, normativity, reproduction and reductionism. Exploring attachments to these ideas in queer culture is also the occasion for a broader theoretical intervention: Same Old suggests, counterintuitively, that the aversion they inspire may be of a piece with how homosexuality has been denigrated in the modern West as a misguided orientation towards sameness. Combining queer cultural and literary history, sensitive close readings and detailed genealogies of theoretical concepts, Same Old encourages a fundamental rethinking of some of the defining positions in queer thought.
This book explores the diverse literary, film and visionary creations of the polymathic and influential British artist Clive Barker. It presents groundbreaking essays that critically reevaluate Barker's oeuvre. These include in-depth analyses of his celebrated and lesser known novels, short stories, theme park designs, screen and comic book adaptations, film direction and production, sketches and book illustrations, as well as responses to his material from critics and fan communities. The book examines Barker's earlier fiction and its place within British horror fiction and socio-cultural contexts. Selected tales from the Books of Blood are exemplary in their response to the frustrations and political radicalism of the 1980s British cultural anxieties. Aiming to rally those who stand defiant of Thatcher's polarising vision of neoliberal British conservatism, Weaveworld is revealed to be a savage indictment of 1980s British politics. The book explores Barker's transition from author to filmmaker, and how his vision was translated, captured, and occasionally compromised in its adaptation from page to the screen. Barker's work contains features which can be potentially read as feminine and queer, positioning them within traditions of the Gothic, the melodrama and the fantastic. The book examines Barker's works, especially Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions, through the critical lenses of queer culture, desire, and brand recognition. It considers Barker's complex and multi-layered marks in the field, exploring and re-evaluating his works, focusing on Tortured Souls and Mister B. Gone's new myths of the flesh'.
queer theoretical work of exploring how queers have operationalised and embodied terms and ideas that are in tension with the values of contemporary queer theory. Over the next four chapters, I dwell in particular on more moments in queer culture, like Boyfriend Twin, which play on or invest in sameness in a way that is at odds with contemporary scholarly assumptions. I argue that aspects of past and present queer cultures can and do make us think again about the frameworks that queer theory has provided. Each of the chapters takes an idea that queer scholarship has
who is effectively killed by sex at the story’s end nevertheless speaks the truth of the novel and its thematic limits: ‘And sex was everywhere!’ (Rechy 1999: 5). The worlds Rechy presents repeatedly see people reduced to anonymous numbers or body parts, sexual activity reduced to a policed repertoire of acts, and their geographical spread reduced to gay bars, orgy rooms and cruising spots. Moreover, Rechy’s work comes from a broader genre in queer culture, which is that of the ‘stud file’ or the chronicle of sexual partners and activities: accounts of the ways of
history projects reflect the cities in which they were based: their gender divisions, their politics and their partying. Their distinctive kinds of history-making help us to understand further the differences between our cities and their queer cultures. We see discussions of community and nostalgia in Plymouth, a valuing of current gains over a darker past in Leeds and a celebration of the city’s clubs, campaigns and history-making in Brighton. The interviews I chose to discuss in this chapter lean towards Leeds, Brighton
pleasure. The typical critic seeks to analyze cultural work from the paranoid position of knowledge seeker, with the ability to ascertain and especially to expose. But he or she may miss the finer grains of relationships between cultural texts and their readers that are more ambivalent, more performative in significance: what knowledge does, rather than imparts. From the perspective of queer theory, the work of paranoid criticism may gloss over alternative genealogies, performative and textual relationships fostered in queer culture, due to its principal concern with
before their time, in the 1950s, San Remo was a nodal point for queer culture and “inefficient” use of time. Joe LeSueur, a close friend of the poet Frank O’Hara, recalled “going to parties, movies, and the New York City Ballet; drinking at the San Remo and the Cedar Street Tavern; sitting around with friends at home—that was how we filled so many nights” in the 1950s. 2 In a similar vein, around the figure of the choreographer James Waring, another forebear of the men in this study, Warhol recalls people not being “upwardly mobile”: “they were just happy to drift
fans and audiences. In Part III of the book, Barker's works are examined through the critical lenses of queer culture, desire, and brand recognition. In his chapter ‘Clive Barker's queer monsters: exploring transgression, sexuality, and the other’, Mark Richard Adams explores Barker's contributions to positive queer representations in the horror film, and the evident
nationally recognized queer city to rival Brighton. 59 Manchester’s student population was the densest in the country. In 1991, over 4.5 per cent of its central city population were students, ahead of Leeds at just below 4 per cent; by 2001 that figure was 9 per cent compared to Leeds’ and Brighton’s 5 per cent. 60 LGBT people who migrated to Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s often came out as students and contributed to its growing queer culture. Nigel Leach moved here to study around 1980 and came out in the middle of his youth
). It was meanwhile more straightforward for the incomers he mentioned to be visible in Plymouth. They were each distant from family and Colin, Peter, Prudence and Gay were also self-employed in queer contexts. They weren’t fearful of losing their jobs or being shunned at work as others were in the city. These factors, together with their grounding in the different queer cultures of Manchester and London, allowed them to be more outspoken in a city which was, for Jonathan (Jono) at least, ‘a bit of a culture shock’. 98