English 190

Research Seminar: Homocinema

Other Readings and Media

Bersani, L.: Homos; Edelman, L.: No Future; Hocquenghem, G.: Homosexual Desire; Hocquenghem, G.: The Screwball Asses

Description

Under the assumption that male homosexual fantasy is not the peculiar coinage of a homosexual brain, but the common, even central daydream of the normal world, the course identifies three modes of broaching it in narrative cinema. In Hollywood classicism, this mode involves what Lee Edelman has called "the invisible spectacle," the formation of a homosexual closet intended for general heterosexual use. In a later development, when this cinema treats homosexuality explicitly, the work of closeting becomes a minoritizing of "the homosexual" as a individual problem. A third kind of relation, on which this course will concentrate, is undertaken outside the Hollywood system, and in particular in the international "art film" (Almodovar, Fassbinder, Genet, Oshima, Pasolini). It involves uncloseting not the homosexual, but homosexual fantasy itself in its radical potential to disrupt social and symbolic order. This (dark? utopian? at any rate intractable) vision is not necessarily compatible or even tolerable to liberal or gay politics, as we presently know them.

English 190 replaced English 100 and 150 as of Fall '09. English majors may fulfill the seminar requirement for the major by taking one section of English 190 (or by having taken either English 100 or English 150 before Fall '09). Please read the paragraph on page 2 of this Accouncement of Classes for more details about enrolling in, or wait-listing for, this course.

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