Queer Modernism Pt.1

from the syllabi

A jump, slight, minuscule, from the initial plan for the month/season. Minuscule because I stayed in place.
It’s always going to be queer modernism, isn’t it, I admit to myself as I hop and start my current read about my forever obsession.
Contemporary Queer Modernism, edited by Melanie Micir, is an interdisciplinary collection of academic writings on the titular topic. It is an incredibly expansive, inspiring, and important tome that connects queer and modernist studies, though, to re-use a quote from Micir’s introduction: ‘‘(...) is queer modernism simply another name for modernism?¹’’.

I am only a few texts in, and I find myself wanting to focus on each of their specificities.
Imaginary friends as: ‘‘(...) salutary facilitators of queer maturation²,’’ or the search for the modernist equivalents of coming out of/being in the closet (a phrase which only came into use in the 1960s/70s), or the temporality of queer modernism and their posthumous re-writing of the future,
or,
or,
or.

There’s also a reread waiting for me. The One who is Legion by Natalie Clifford Barney, a book that tried to break my brain, but made perfect sense once I closed it. With that sense in mind, I need to read it again.

What awaits, hopefully, finally, is Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini – a recommendation by a friend who wanted me to join her in her suffering upon reading this book. An invitation I happily accepted.

*cover art: Marie Laurencin, 1910-11, Les jeunes filles (Jeune Femmes, Young Girls), oil on canvas, 115 x 146 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

1. original quote from Heather Love

2. Crowell, Ellen. Dream Friend: Sexology, Child Study, and the Queer Imaginary Companion.