Lesbian and Gay literary theory emerged as a distinct field only by the 1990s with the publication of ‘The Lesbian and Gay studies Reader’ in 1993 by Henry Abelove and others. Actually Feminism, at the course of time marginalized or ignored lesbianism. So the conflict between heterosexual feminists and lesbians opened up. Thus lesbian feminism existed. Adrienne Rich with her, “Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence”, introduced ‘Lesbian Continuum’. Thus sexuality which was seen as something merely ‘natural’ and unchanging began to change as a construction or a subject to be changed. In this way, the comprehensive term Queer theory entered.
Teresa De Lauretis organized the first queer theory conference in 1990 at the University of California. Queer theory is broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside heterosexuality and which challenge the notion that heterosexual desire is normal. The works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler are often considered the founding texts of queer theory.
Innovations in queer theory have made it evident that Performativity is a function of the choices that gay and lesbian individuals make every day and in all walks of life. In this way, we can understand that Oscar Wild’s life experience is as valuable for queer theory as his literary works.
The queer theory not only examines the communities surrounding the queer people, but also the communities they form. Same sex living communities have significant priority in the formation of queer theories. Deconstructing the binary opposition of Post-Structuralism too influenced queer theory. The hierarchy in the pair of heterosexual and homosexual was also questioned, when the film star Rock Hudson a gay died of AIDS. He was one among the early celebrities to have been diagnosed with AIDS in 1985.
According to Eve Sedgwick gayness may be openly declared to family and friends but not to banks and Insurance companies, as everyone has the right for concealment and openness. Here, both heterosexual and homosexual do not have any fixed essences. So, the post modernist concept of identity should be availed to them.
As far as the gay and lesbian texts are concerned, they may be written by a gay or lesbian or they may be written about gays or lesbians and sometimes they may express the ‘vision’ of gays and lesbians. Similarly the lesbian and gay critics usually identify lesbian or gay episodes in mainstream work and discuss them as in the case of the relationship between Jane and Helen in ‘Jane Eyre’, is discussed. Some other critics expose ‘homophobia’ of mainstream literature and criticism, where homosexual aspects are ignored purposefully as it happened to the love lyrics of W.H. Auden. Some even setup or extended metaphorical sense of ‘lesbian and gay’ in their critical analysis so that it connotes a moment of crossing a boundary. Actually such moments mirror the self identification as lesbian or gay that establishes certain norms and boundaries.
However, strong homo-erotic tenderness is seen widely in the First World war poetry. Mark Lilly points out that a frequent motif in the poems is to see ‘same-sex love as superior to men’s love for women’. In ‘Passing the love of women’, written by Studdert Kennedy it is said,
‘But I knows a Stronger love than theirs
And that is the love of men’
Similarly, Lilly detects an element of ‘necrophilia’ in Herbert Read’s ‘My Company’
‘A man of mine
Lies on the wire
And he will rot
And first his lips
The worm will eat
It is not thus I would hev him kissed
But with the warm passionate lips
Of his comrade here.’
Similar poems of wound, hospitals are also there, by the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman about the American Civil war. The wound is erotically charged in First World War poetry because it allows tender physical contact between males. Thus, the war became a ‘safe’ area in which feelings usually suppressed can be openly expressed. Here Lilly also talks about the similar examples of foot ball field, where men kiss and embrace each other passionately in public.
It is said the army itself exploited these feelings at the start of war with the settling up of ‘Pals’ regiments, in which large numbers of men from the same district enlisted and served in units together. Thus, this kind of poetry has official sanction and gets access to publication in news papers and poetry journals. The Continuum of feelings expressed in this poetry tends ultimately to ‘deconstruct’ the notion of gayness as a distinct one with a separate identity.
-------Thulasidharan V