Seven speculations on queers and class

Combining a critique of both recent work in gay studies and certain contemporary cultural practices within the gay community with a number of personal anecdotes related to the author's personal and professional life as a novelist and teacher, "Seven Speculations on Queers and Class" argues, through a reading of a variety of texts, the necessity of understanding what Jeffrey Weeks has termed "the class applications of the homosexual categorization." There are seven "Speculations." The "First Speculation" is a reading of (middle) class biases at work in a review of the author's first novel. The second is a brief analysis of Thomas E. Yingling's Hart Crane and the Homosexual Text and its erasure of the question of the working class. The third discusses fashion and class. The fourth is an examination of recent debates in gay and lesbian studies around the issue of "difficult" language and canon formation. The fifth examines Queer Nation's middle-class biases. The sixth suggests how the nominations "fag," "homosexual," and "queer" might suggest specific class positions. The seventh examines the question of Cultural Studies and Gay and Lesbian Studies.