Title
Queer Commodities: Contemporary US Fiction, Consumer Capitalism, and Gay and Lesbian Subcultures
Document Type
Book
Abstract
This book investigates the connections and tensions between gayand lesbian sexualities and consumer culture in novels by fivecontemporary American writers: Edmund White, Samuel Delany,Jane DeLynn, Michelle Tea, and Lynn Breedlove. The relationshipof gays and lesbians to consumer capitalism has been one ofthe most vigorously debated issues in queer communities in thelate twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The 1990s saw theconsolidation of the gay and lesbian niche market, with numerouscorporations actively targeting queer consumers, as well as queerentrepreneurs devising and selling signifiers of gay and lesbianidentity. While many gays and lesbians welcome such recognitions,and while so-called mainstream gay and lesbian communityforums, such as online and print media, tend to celebrate the commodificationof same-sexuality (and, of course, to exemplify it),these developments have been a source of urgent concern for manyscholars and activists, who argue that the commercialization ofgay and lesbian life is a betrayal of, or a diversion from, the politicalproject of sexual liberation.
RIS ID
74130
Publication Details
Davidson, G. R. (2012). Queer Commodities: Contemporary US Fiction, Consumer Capitalism, and Gay and Lesbian Subcultures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.