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Queer theory is relevant because it's the place where people have put together some notions about gender and sexuality which allow for thinking about the particular configurations of identification and desire in slash without having to submit them to some sort of tedious taxonomy of 'straight' vs 'gay', 'male' vs 'female' etc.
Best places to start are, um, whoever coined the term 'compulsory heterosexuality' (?Adrienne Rich? can look it up) as a grounding for your launch into the mind of the divine Judith Butler (Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter are the big ones here but you can get away with reading her very short article on gender insubordination - again I can give you publication details if you're interested - or, hell, if you PM me your address I can abuse the Department photocopier & postage system to mail you a copy)
You might also want to read Eve Sedgwick's Tendencies and Epistemologies of the Closet. She writes a lot about m/m desire and is a huge queer theorist and activist despite, intriguingly, being apparently straight (married, monogamously, to a man - who'dathunk it?) She sort of invented queer theory as an entity, and is rumoured to be a slash writer herself (don't know which pairings, though (or indeed whether it is true).
(Sorry to hear your PhD application was turned down btw, but as you say, soon you will have an MA and you will be able to wave it in their faces and laugh at them! Laugh, I say!) |
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