This panel has been approved for the the Northeast Modern Language
Association convention in Buffalo, New York, April 7-8, 2000.
Abstracts are due September 15, 1999.
Please send inquiries and completed abstracts to:
Rekha Rosha
166 Killarney Drive
Burlington VT 05401
This panel takes its start from the argument Kaja Silverman makes in her
work _Male Subjectivity at the Margins_. She writes, "The concept of death
[. . .] is inadequate to the task of representing the
necessary interminability of the struggle which must be waged against the
positivities of normative male subjectivity, a struggle which - because it
cannot lead to permanent change - can have neither issue nor end-point.
Hence, as I suggested earlier, the arrestation at the site of suffering [.
. .]" (286).
If the male body arrested at the site of suffering constitutes an
important departure from normative
constructions of classic masculinity, does it not arrive at the margins of
this model of masculinitity and thus at homosexuality? If so, where
does that leave the male homosexual body? In other words, must the male
homosexual body
always be in pain, always suffering? This panel, _Suffering and the Male
Homosexual Body_, will examine images of male homosexuality and suffering in literature.
This panel might ask: how does the image of a wounded
homosexual male body, such as the male body ravaged by age in _The Picture
of Dorian Gray_, or the protagonist in Larry Kramer's_The Normal Heart_ ravaged
by AIDS, work together to fix a specific image of the gay male body?
Furthermore, how does the injured male homosexual body provide the ground
of interpretation that makes male homosexuality intelligible? This panel
is open to American, and British literature.
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