Between Gazes Camelia Elias

queer  queer theory assumes that sexual identities are a function of representations  (Homo)sexuality is different from:  sexual difference (essentialism): "chromosomal sex" (Eve K. Sedgwick)  gender difference (constructionism): "compulsory heterosexuality" (Gayle Rubin, Adrienne Rich)

theory  (Homo)sexuality has no determinate, or determinable:  essence/nature/biology  construction/culture/system  (Homo)sexuality is ‘perverse’:  queer  que(e)r(ie)s the heterosexual gender system:  “[it is] not criticism through the categories of gender [but a] criticism of them” (Eve K. Sedgwick) Gender Trouble (Judith Butler)

Thomas Mann & Gustav Mahler

Free indirect discourse  “In free indirect speech, the narrator takes on the speech of the character, or if one prefers, the character speaks through the voice of the narrator, and the two instances are then merged” (Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 1980)

 He wore an English suit with quilted sleeves that narrowed round the delicate wrists of his long and slender, though still childish, hands. And this suit, with its breast-knot, lacings and embroideries, let the slight figure something ‘rich and strange’, a spoilt exquisite air. (Mann)

Gay criticism  Why are there so few works engaging with male homosexuality?  Why are homosexuals hardly represented in works of art, in spite of the fact that many a notable writers and filmmakers are gay?  If male homosexuality is represented in film, why is this representation presented in an ambiguous way (most often than not)?  Why does gay love never end in unity but always in displacement, loss, marginalization, and death?

The third body  the ephebe (the adolescent youth, natural, inexperienced)  the he-man (the mature athlete) ---  (the intellectual, the teacher, the aesthete)  the implied gay subject  the incarnation of difference and enactor of representation

Gay spectator/subject  The gay spectator:  represents a site for identification with the narrative subject  a site for specular erotic pleasure in his object  the gay subject fulfills two functions:  enacts a general relationship of desire through traditional narrative forms  diegetic and extra-diegetic gazing  enacts a specific narrative function that is recognizable only to the gay spectator

The artist, intellectual, teacher  looks at and desires the object of his constructing gaze  the gaze construes, projects, fantasizes, and represents the object of desire  the gay subject rarely has intimate relations with the object of his gaze

Cultural separations  Mind and body  Voice and image  Subject and object  Self and other  Desire and consummation  Thought/feeling and action  Observation and surveillance

 “We don’t establish families, we just wander off looking horny, solitary, sad, or dead” (Waugh, 639)