Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- The Sexuality of American History
- Queer Literary Movements
- 9 Trans-ing Transcendentalism
- 10 Sentimental Literature and the Erotics of Identification
- 11 Queer Modernism and Misfit Identity
- 12 Imperialism and the Queer Harlem Renaissance
- 13 The Mystical Sexuality of the Beats and the Berkeley Renaissance
- 14 The New York School’s Queer Happiness
- 15 Chicana and Latina Lesbian Feminists and the Radical Making of Anthological Archives of Willfulness
- 16 Queer Literature after Queer Theory
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
10 - Sentimental Literature and the Erotics of Identification
from Queer Literary Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- The Sexuality of American History
- Queer Literary Movements
- 9 Trans-ing Transcendentalism
- 10 Sentimental Literature and the Erotics of Identification
- 11 Queer Modernism and Misfit Identity
- 12 Imperialism and the Queer Harlem Renaissance
- 13 The Mystical Sexuality of the Beats and the Berkeley Renaissance
- 14 The New York School’s Queer Happiness
- 15 Chicana and Latina Lesbian Feminists and the Radical Making of Anthological Archives of Willfulness
- 16 Queer Literature after Queer Theory
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
Summary
This chapter considers queer relations of identification and desire in nineteenth-century sentimental American literature, especially as they relate to the (re)production of the increasingly privatized, middle class, white, family. It considers how texts queer the substitutions of others for mothers (and fathers, and brothers, and sisters) in order to maintain and queer the normative family. The chapter moves from paradigmatic examples to ones that appear to revel in queer visions of identificatory erotics. It then draws upon queer of color critique to examine how white supremacy defines the human and/as normative gender and sexuality, such that Black and other people of color are placed as queer others in order to preserve a fantasy of white gender and sexual purity. This racialized version of queer as non-normative complicates any ideal of a solely celebratory or even neutral taxonomizing of identifications, desires, and their accompanying kinship structures.
- Type
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature , pp. 192 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024