Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma

by Laura Westengard

In Gothic Queer Culture, Laura Westengard proposes that contemporary U.S. queer culture is gothic at its core. Using interdisciplinary cultural studies to examine the gothicism in queer art, literature, and thought—including ghosts embedded in queer theory, shadowy crypts in lesbian pulp fiction, monstrosity and cannibalism in AIDS poetry, and sadomasochism in queer performance—Westengard argues that during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a queer culture has emerged that challenges and responds to traumatic marginalization by creating a distinctly gothic aesthetic.

Gothic Queer Culture examines the material effects of marginalization, exclusion, and violence and explains why discourse around the complexities of genders and sexualities repeatedly returns to the gothic. Westengard places this queer knowledge production within a larger framework of gothic queer culture, which inherently includes theoretical texts, art, literature, performance, and popular culture.

By analyzing queer knowledge production alongside other forms of queer culture, Gothic Queer Culture enters into the most current conversations on the state of gender and sexuality, especially debates surrounding negativity, anti-relationalism, assimilation, and neoliberalism. It provides a framework for understanding these debates in the context of a distinctly gothic cultural mode that acknowledges violence and insidious trauma, depathologizes the association between trauma and queerness, and offers a rich counterhegemonic cultural aesthetic through the circulation of gothic tropes.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Gothic, Goth, LGBT, Horror, History

288 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Squirrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction is great. The introduction is compelling. The repetition of the introduction is tolerable because it reinforces the overlap of queer, Gothic, and trauma.
The rest is significantly less impressive. Mostly I wanted to write "go further" in the margins of all of the chapters. That, and I've never experienced as much semantic satiation as I have reading this book. It's repetition to the point of meaninglessness.
The next best chapter, the one on sadomasochism, is an illustration in point. It's an interesting idea:the way in which trauma and sadomasochism interlace. The author seeks to eke out how the theatricality of SM allows for more control over trauma, but I'm not sure that she really gets it. Some of the problem is that she compresses lots of different ideas and practices into the rubric of sadomasochism without fully groking the culture. The works of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch are not current kink practices which are not the experiences as Gayle Rubin had at the Catacombs. The author puts them all under the term "sadomasochism" and then, bundled up into this neat linguistic package, proceeds to bludgeon us with the term throughout the chapter.
In some ways the sadomasochism label helps; the connection between Gothic sensibilities, queerness, and trauma do meet at the work of M. Lamar. Very clearly so. There is also a kind of sadism to his performances that is notable. This discussion of Lamar's work could have very easily taken up an entire chapter itself. Another chapter could also have been utilized with Cassils' and Duckers' art, especially as so much space was given up to do a trans 101 section at first.
The author could have also dived deeper into pleasure, and the implications on the audience of their likely arousal from these performances. Namely: I think the author could have said more about how both these performances and 19th c Gothic literature offer safe, "fun" exploration of what can be deeply wounding life events.
There's also a bunch more that the author could have pushed about ideas of consent and negotiation with these performances, but I suspect that she has a fairly shallow understanding of sadomasochism outside of a kind of prurient interest, in much the same way that 18th and 19th c writers had for the traumas that they carefully contain within their fiction. It's just a tool for getting an affect on the reader.
The other chapters are rather thin, with the few salient points smothered in vague language. There are some interesting points about literally underground Greenwich Village nightlife, especially when I juxtapose the chapter with the movie, Bell, Book, and Candle. But otherwise, no, I don't see the real connection between lesbian pulp covers and ideas of burial and entrapment. That chapter felt the most shoehorned into this collection.
Ultimately I don't regret reading this book. The problem is more a feeling that I could have written it myself with both more clarity and more information.

[Arianna]

I really wanted to get through this, because the topic is fascinating to me- but there is so much wordiness. Phrases are unnecessarily complex. Perhaps I’ll return to it at some point.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the title, not based in queer theory and mourns ties of queer community to anti capitalist struggle. Not sure if I know enough to judge if it’s explicitly materialist tho. Loved!

[Flossie · Rating 5 out of 5]

YAASSSSS LAURA YASSSSS

[april violet]

I want to point out that this is an academic work and the title refers to gothic literary tropes.