Christien Garcia - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks Epistemology of the Closet

Christien Garcia

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The deconstructive and poststructuralist methods Sedgwick uses in her examination of the homo/heterosexual definition are closely tied to the critical skills of creative thinking and interpretation. Deconstruction is a postmodern mode of analysis that seeks to undo binaries and hierarchies of meaning in order to reveal the underlying assumptions of a text or belief. Similarly, poststructuralism seeksin a necessarily paradoxical wayto dismantle the sign systems that make meaning possible, thus offering new ways of thinking. Sedgwick uses deconstructive and poststructuralist techniques to complicate and build upon the work of Michel Foucault, whose work on relations of power, discourse, and sexuality is itself exemplary of postmodern practices of creative thinking and interpretation. Specifically, Sedgwick expands, and in a sense inverts, Foucaults famous thesis that homosexuality is an invention of modern disciplinary power. In Epistemology of the Closet, she shows how it is, in fact, the conceptual distinction between gay and straightas unstable as it isthat produces the patterns and relations of modern thoughti.e., that homosexual definition is the basis, rather than merely the product, of disciplinary meaning. This playing with the sequentiality of homosexual definition and modern thought (what came first, the chicken or the egg?) is a good example of Sedgwicks formidable skill in postmodern modes of critical thinking and interpretation.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (19502009) was an American scholar, poet, and artist. Sedgwick is known for applying her training in literary criticism to investigate questions of desire, intimacy, and power, and she is perhaps most famous for her foundational contributions to the field of Queer Theory. Her textured analyses of literary texts and social relations have earned her a prominent place in the arenas of cultural studies, critical theory, and gender and sexuality studies. Her books include