Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse

William Harris

Reading & Signing: Queer Externalities

@ Outwrite

ABOUT: "Queer Externalities"

In television shows such as Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and movies like Brokeback Mountain, as well
as gay young adult novels and other media coverage of queer
people-including the outing of several prominent Republicans-queer
lives are becoming more visible in the media and in U.S. culture more
generally. How does the increasing visibility of queer subjects within
mainstream culture affect possibilities for radical and transformative
queer activism? Provocative and challenging, W. C. Harris argues that
rather than simply being a cause for celebration, this "mainstreaming"
of queer lives may have as many negative effects as positive ones for
contemporary gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Harris
builds on the work of queer and political theorists such as Eve
Sedgwick, David Halperin, Michael Warner, and Wendy Brown to examine
the side effects that can be generated when queers assimilate, and
argues for a reinvigorated queer essentialism in order to claim a
separate and visible political and activist space within U.S. culture.

"Queer
Externalities is everything a queer intervention should be: gutsy,
irreverent, and thoroughly enjoyable! W. C. Harris never fails to
surprise, provoke, and entertain." - Donald E. Hall, author of Reading
Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies