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A Genealogy of Queer Detachment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Matthew Burroughs Price
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Abstract

Despite their widespread attention to the conluence of queer sexualities and “decadence” in in- de- siècle writing, queer theorists have yet to overcome the two concepts' persistently destructive conlation. his essay explores the latent positive ainities of queerness and decadence in Walter Pater's Renaissance, which links them through what I call queer detachment. A balance of engagement with and withdrawal from history, this critical perspective anticipates queer theory's methodologies as well as other queer modernist productions. Examining Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood's chronicle of decadent Weimar Germany, I demonstrate how queer detachment becomes an increasingly politicized method of literary and social world making, a means of reengaging the politics and aesthetics of queer history. hese works, and others like them, encourage scholars to realize decadence's positivity, to conceptualize a queer theory that refuses to acquiesce to residual historical narratives and philosophical systems—without, for all that, refusing their value entirely.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 648 - 665
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

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