Genesis 1:7 || Meditate the Scripture daily verse by verse
Elit 48 c class 34
1. ELIT 48C Class 34
Composed or Comprised
You may never have a new
team comprised/composed
of more than 50% of any
prior team.
2. You may never have a new team
comprised/composed of more than 50%
of any prior team.
Composed means, more or less, “made up of” — and when you say
something is composed of {these things} you may or may not
be including all of the {things} of which it is made, opting for only the
items most relevant to making your point.
To comprise means “to contain” and the correct usage will usually
include ALL the parts making up the whole. Oh, and with
comprise, the whole should come before the parts.
Thus, the board comprises five members, whereas five members
compose (or make up) the board. It is also correct to say that the board
is composed (not comprised) of five members.
6. Lesbian criticism is concerned with issues of personal
identity and politics analogous to those analyzed by
feminists (see chapter 4). However, while feminism
addresses issues related to sexism and the difficulties
involved in carving out a space for personal identity and
political action beyond the influence of sexist
ideologies, lesbian critics address issues related to both
sexism and heterosexism. In other words, lesbian critics
must deal with the psychological, social, economic, and
political oppression fostered not only by patriarchal male
privilege, but by heterosexual privilege as well. (Tyson 322-
23)
Lesbian Criticism
7. Gay Criticism
The kinds of analyses that tend to engage the attention of gay
critics often fall under the heading of gay sensibility. How does
being gay influence the way one sees the world, sees oneself
and others, creates and responds to art and music, creates and
interprets literature, or experiences and expresses emotion? In
a heterosexist culture such as the one we inhabit at the turn of
the twenty-first century in America, gay sensibility includes an
awareness of being different, at least in certain ways, from the
members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and the
complex feelings that result from an implicit, ongoing social
oppression. In other words, part of seeing the world as a gay
man includes the ways in which one deals with being oppressed
as a gay man. Among others, three important domains of gay
sensibility, all of which involve responses to heterosexist
oppression, are drag, camp, and dealing with the issue of AIDS.
(Tyson 330)
8. Queer Theory
For queer theory, categories of sexuality cannot be defined by such
simple oppositions as homosexual/heterosexual. Building on
deconstruction’s insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a
fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible “selves,” queer
theory define individual sexuality as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic
collectivity of possible sexualities. Our sexuality may be different
at different times over the course of our lives or even at different
times over the course of a week because sexuality is a dynamic
range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality, bisexuality, and
heterosexuality are, for all of us, possibilities along a continuum of
sexual possibilities. And what these categories mean to different
individuals will be influenced by how they conceive their own
racial and class identities as well. Thus, sexuality is completely
controlled neither by our biological sex (male or female) nor by the
way our culture translates biological sex into gender roles
(masculine or feminine). Sexuality exceeds these definitions and
has a will, a creativity, an expressive need of its own. (Tyson 335)
9. Finally, lesbian, gay, and queer criticism often rely on
similar kinds of textual evidence. For example, in
addition to the more obvious forms of textual cues—such
as homoerotic imagery and erotic encounters between
same-sex characters—there are rather subtle textual cues
that can create a homoerotic atmosphere even in an
otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the examples
of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism provided earlier. No
single textual cue can stand on its own as evidence of a
homoerotic atmosphere in a text. Nor can a small number
of such cues support a lesbian, gay, or queer reading. But
a preponderance of these cues, especially if coupled with
other kinds of textual or biographical evidence, can
strengthen a lesbian, gay, or queer interpretation even of
an apparently heterosexual text. (Tyson 339)
10. Homosocial bonding—
The depiction of strong emotional ties between same-sex
characters.
Gay or lesbian “signs”—
“feminine” male characters or “masculine” female characters.
coded signs created by the gay or lesbian subculture itself.
Same-sex “doubles”—
same-sex characters who look alike, act alike, or have parallel
experiences.
Transgressive sexuality—
A text’s focus on transgressive sexuality, including transgressive
heterosexuality (such as extramarital romance).
11. Typical questions:
1. What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific
gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed
in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
2. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific
lesbian, gay, or queer works?
3. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or
lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
4. How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by
writers who are apparently homosexual?
5. How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an
unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay or queer presence? That
is, does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay or queer desire
or conflict that it submerges?
12. More Questions
6. What does the work reveal about the operations
(socially, politically, psychologically) homophobic?
7. How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality
and sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality
does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the
words homosexual and heterosexual?
8. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the
perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what
elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)?
9. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine
(active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how
do the characters support these traditional roles?
10. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters
who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to
those elements/characters?
13. Queer Reading of Gatsby
Specifically, I will argue that the novel’s treatment of sexual
transgression and its proliferation of gay and lesbian signs
work together to create a homoerotic subtext that disrupts and
destabilizes the heterosexual narrative, creating, in the
process, a sexually ambiguous novel. And as we shall
see, this homoerotic subtext finds its most complete
embodiment in the characterization of narrator Nick
Carraway, who is, I believe, unaware of his gay orientation.
Put another way, The Great Gatsby’s sexual ambiguity results
from the delivery of a heterosexual plot through the medium of
a closeted gay sensibility. In addition, I will suggest that the
novel’s sexual ambiguity mirrors the conflicts Fitzgerald
apparently experienced concerning his own sexuality. (Tyson
342-43)
15. Applications
1. Do gay or lesbian “signs” appear in The Great Gatsby?
2. It is quite easy to apply queer theory to Jordan.
3. “I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes: there are
underlying tones of homosexuality, and the homosexual
experience found throughout the poem.
4. In Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, there is a quality of
homoeroticism.
5. On the topic of Nick’s relationship with Gatsby, instead of
it being a one sided, hidden homosexual love of Gatsby by
Nick, I believe it to be a mutual homosocial relationship
between the two.
16. Allen Ginsberg
Born in New Jersey in 1926 to a poet/schoolteacher
father and a Russian émigré mother
Educated at Columbia University
Unofficially educated by William Burroughs
Experienced a mystical vision of the poet William Blake
Moved to San Francisco in 1954
17. The story of Allen Ginsberg’s early life is as
colorful and as interesting as Ginsberg’s poetry.
From his humble beginnings in the shadow of
New York City in Newark, New Jersey, to his off-
and-on education at Columbia, Ginsberg’s
journey as a social outsider who ultimately
finds a place for himself is a quintessentially
American story.
18. HOMEWORK
Read Allen Ginsberg pp. 490-492
Howl and “A Footnote to Howl” pp.
492-500
Post #32
QHQ
Or paraphrase 8-10 lines from Howl.
