G O D C L U B

I just recieved an email that Eve Sedgwick died on Sunday from a long battle with breast cancer. She was 58 years old. I am very emotional right now about it, which is sort of weird because I did not know her, but her writings were integral to the formation of my identity and also the foundation of my academic and political ideologies. I am saddened because it was my dream to work with her at CUNY. She was an amazing woman and groundbreaking writer.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sedgwick, here is a little synopsis or overview of her work and why she is important.

She is considered influential to gay and lesbian studies and is credited as one of the founders of queer theory. Her first book, written in 1985, was Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Following this, in 1990, she wrote the canonical queer theory text Epistemology of the Closet. I wikipedia-ed a synopsis on the latter book, which is my favorite, in order to give a concise overview for all of you on what the book is about. Here it is:

In Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick argues that "virtually any aspect of modern Western culture, must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition." According to Sedgwick, homo/heterosexual definition has become so angrily argued over because of a lasting incoherence "between seeing homo/heterosexual definition on the one hand as an issue of active importance primarily for a small, distinct, relatively fixed homosexual minority... and seeing it on the other hand as an issue of continuing, determinative importance in the lives of people across the spectrum of sexualities." This contradiction between what Sedgwick refers to as a "minoritizing versus a universalizing" view of sexual definition is made even more angrily argued over by yet another set of incoherent definitional terms: that "between seeing same-sex object choice on the one hand as a matter of liminality or transitivity between genders, and seeing it on the other hand as reflecting an impulse of separatism — though by no means necessarily political separatism — within each gender." Sedgwick is not interested in judging which of the two poles of these contradictions should be considered more correct. Rather, she makes a compelling argument for the "centrality of these nominally marginal yet conceptually intractable set of definitional issues to the important knowledges and understandings of twentieth-century Western culture as a whole." (Epistemology 1-2).

To find out more about her, go to her wikipedia page.


Eve Sedgwick is incredibly important to me beyond words. I first read Epistemology of the Closet when I was in my first semester of sophomore year at Albion College. It was in my literary theory class and I distinctly remember falling in love with her after completion of the text. This book has informed all of my writing and analysis since and has affected the way I look at myself in relation to my gay identity and the heteronormative spaces I occupy. I can't believe she isn't here anymore. It was always a dream of mine to at least meet her one day and tell her how important her writings have been to me.