Behind Sedgwick there is only Sedgwick.

. . . Just a little confessional moment, thoughts to unload on y’all before I actually finish the reading and write my “real” post . . .

My life as an academic — as a lover and luster of books and writing about books, a girl with a curious and peculiar craving to tease out and gaze upon the maze of Culture and its practices — seems to me to have always (already) been shadowed by the knowledge / memory / affect of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, her “legacy” (what a weird word) and her theories. Despite her omnipresence in my critical mind, there is one essay that stands out to me, that I can name as generating my first moment of Sedgwick lust, as well as the first time (and one of the only times) I could ever say about an academic, “I want to be like her when I grow up.”

In “A Poem Is Being Written,” collected in Tendencies, there is the quintessential Sedgwickian argument: one of provocation, passion, and her movement between sharp brilliance and vulnerable personal. Using excerpts from poems she wrote as a child, Sedgwick, in exploring the syntax of desire in poetry, creates a link between spanking and enjambment. I laugh with shock and pleasure every time I remember the bridge she makes in this essay.

For me, reading Sedgwick has never required that I “believe” her. Her arguments are, for me, not about the truth or solidity of her claims, but in fact about their fallibilities, their failures, about her process — and that she goes there, takes risks, makes leaps in her thinking and her feeling that bring the unexpected together. And that to me is a good thing.

Of late, Sedgwick and other “founding” queer theorists, have come under fire for a variety of reasons — too elite, too white, too literary, and so on. I think the structure of Sedgwick’s theories are also considered problematic. I remember sitting in the office of a star scholar (all five minutes I was given, apologies for the bitterness) and being told that “originality is overrated.” Being told, essentially, that all my desires to make provocative arguments, a la Sedgwick, are overrated. I can understand this. Provocation only for the sake of provocation sometimes results in simplistic or rote arguments. And Sedgwick has made such a shift in the way we do literary studies that the structure of her argumentation is, by now, perhaps too often second nature. Articles such as “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl” forever changed what we as literary critics were allowed to theorize within these “pure” canonical texts. When we write about literature we are expected to come up with something original to say, and the more provocative the better. We are expected, in other words, to perform originality.

I’m not entirely sure why this is a bad thing. To move beyond initial and preliminary arguments (thanks WRIT 140) and into new territory . . . isn’t that what we’re here to do? What else are we supposed to be doing if not that?

Perhaps (to get back on my favorite soapbox) instead of dismissing theorists for what they lack or for the structure, form, and/or content of their thinking, we should think — why not? — more positively. One lesson we could learn from Sedgwick is how NOT to dig a niche of originality. We make the provocative, original arguments, we take the big risks, in order to get the big job. We reach the stability of tenure through the combustibility of the provocative. And too often we stay there, in the same provocation, in the same original spot. Sounds kinda counter-intuitive to me. If we are to perform the original, if we are to provoke, we should KEEP provoking. Every where. Always. And not just in our specialized little fields.

And for that very reason I admire Sedgwick. She has provoked in so many different fields: queer theory, literary studies, autobiography, performance studies, affect theory, memoir, cultural studies. I guess what I am gesturing toward — and suggesting for discussion online or in class — is the figure Star Theorists cut, and the debts that we owe to the entire figure and her history (in its complexity and relativity [loosely quoting Wilde 723]), not only her critical writing. Here I am also gesturing to the larger figure of Wilde, one that exceeds and intersects with the boundaries of textual production. Here I am saying that the personal is critical. How does such a statement inflect our discussions on ethics and ethicality, of the complications and background of these theoretical texts?

I still want to be like Sedgwick when I grow up.

SEDGWICK FOREVER!

– Mary Contrary