Moe Meyer
Related: camp - cultural criticism
The Politics and Poetics of Camp (1994) - Moe Meyer
The Politics and Poetics of Camp edited by Moe Meyer (Routledge, 1994). This is an excellent collection of scholarly essays about Camp, not camp—the former being (in Meyer's definition) "a suppressed and denied oppositional critique embodied in the signifying practices that processually constitute queer identities," the latter being the "fossilized remnant" left behind when post-Sontag uses of the term have erased the queer at the moment of appropriating Camp. Meyer takes this tack in part to correct the tendency of those who have stepped forward recently to pronounce camp dead because a) since Stonewall, queer signifying codes have become less and less necessary— perhaps even detrimental, according to those who regard queens as self-hating "Auntie Toms," and b) mainstream consumer culture has pretty much appropriated every last queer signifier by now [see "Is Camp Dead?" in the zine Inquisitor (issue #3)]. By reclaiming the discourse of Camp from straights Meyer hopes to revive it as an effective queer political strategy of subversive parody. --Joshua Glenn in http://www.hermenaut.com/a28.shtml
The Politics and Poetics of Camp is a radical reappraisal of the meaning and discourse of camp. The contributors look at both the meaning and the uses of camp performance, and ask: is camp a style, or a witty but nonetheless powerful cultural critique? The essays investigate camp from its early formations in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to its present manifestations in queer theatre and literature. They also take a fascinating look at the complex relationship between queer discourse and decidedly un-queer pop culture appropriations on film and on the stage. The Politics and Poetics of Camp is an incisive, uncontainable and entertaining collection of essays by some of the foremost critics working in queer theory, from a number of disciplinary perspectives.
your Amazon recommendations