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Better Together
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Queer studies owes its status as an academic discipline in large part to the literary criticism and theoretical writings of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (including, most famously, Epistemology of the Closet). In A Dialogue on Love, she applies her skills to the analysis of a far more personal text: herself. This stunningly intimate memoir is an exploration of Sedgwick's journey through therapy for depression, beginning 18 months after a diagnosis of breast cancer. She places her therapist's notes in dialogue with her own words, which take the 17-century Japanese form of haibun, traditionally reserved for travel narratives; a description of another work structured in this way applies equally to her own writing: "Spangled with haiku is more what it feels like, [the] very sentences fraying
into implosions
of starlike density or
radiance, then out
into a prose that's never quite not the poetry." A Dialogue on Love is an engaging, brilliantly constructed portrait of the unique intimacy between therapist and patient, exploring the intricate relationships between childhood precocity, positioning within the family, fantasy, sex, the body, depression, and attitudes toward death. Through these issues, Sedgwick comes to a highly personal, yet expansive, definition of sexuality inclusive of fantasy, autoeroticism, and cultural intimacy. --Julia Steinmetz
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
As a founder of the academic discipline of "queer studies," Sedgwick's bailiwick is postmodern discourse on sexuality, though she has previously avoided disclosing much about her personal life. Having embarked on therapy for depression while recovering from breast cancer, Sedgwick (Epistemology of the Closet, etc.) finally confronts the connection between her own sexual nature and her life's work, while also facing her feelings about death and family. In a narrative structured around her sessions with a heterosexual male therapist, she spends a good deal of time questioning whether he can appreciate her intellect or ever understand her worldview, particularly her deep infatuations with gay men and her complex sadomasochistic fantasies. The sessions lead her to several realizations: that she has an attraction to the dying and the dead; that she is in love with her mother, who, according to a running family joke, is a latent lesbian; that, although she has been married for 25 years, she does have authentic links to "queer" experience; and that she is worthy of acceptance by othersAas well as by her therapist. Including excerpts from her therapist's notes on their sessions and snippets of her own poetry, in addition to lots of chatty commentary, Sedgwick's reflections can come across as tediously self-indulgent. Although it strives to reveal depths of intimacy, her memoir reads more like an intellectual exercise than a straightforward account of psychic painAand often leaves the reader at arm's length with a disquieting feeling of voyeurism that is likely to limit this memoir's appeal to Sedgwick's loyal following. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory by Stephen Barber on