aka my to-do list, am I right?<\/p>\n
Anyway, this is a request for help with three possible<\/em> long-term projects. Email me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com if you have any thoughts.<\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> What are the best novels you\u2019ve read with depictions of attempts to make amends, or attempts to extend forgiveness? I\u2019m looking for everything\u2013botched attempts, ill-conceived attempts, gritted-teeth attempts, attempts that succeed beyond the penitent\u2019s wildest dreams, attempts whose success only creates new problems, etc etc. Send me whatever comes to mind.<\/p>\n An overlapping but slightly different question would be, What are the best novels you\u2019ve read with depictions of penance?<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong> I\u2019m also looking for books on humiliation. Novels, theory, whatever. I\u2019ve read Wayne Koestenbaum\u2019s and it was not my thing. I\u2019m specifically interested in ways humiliation differs from other forms of pain or punishment.<\/p>\n 3.<\/strong> This is the one where I suspect a lot of good work has already been done. For a long time I\u2019ve been so struck by the fact that John Cardinal Newman is the latest figure discussed in Alan Bray\u2019s beautiful The Friend<\/em>, on the history of English same-sex friendship, and the earliest figure discussed in Frederick S. Roden\u2019s Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture<\/em>. There\u2019s a transformation that happens there, from a discourse of friendship to a discourse of sexual desire. It even sometimes seems, if you hold this thing up to the light, that what we call \u201chomosexuality\u201d is what\u2019s left when a culture retreats from its previous practices of devoted and caregiving same-sex friendship: The people who still need and seek out that stuff are the people who may also have other motives. And so the retreat from friendship creates the necessary conditions for the emergence of \u201cthe homosexual\u201d as a type of person\u2013thus leading to the stigmatization of devoted same-sex friendship itself.<\/p>\n But I realize I pretty much only know about the English and American history, and I don\u2019t know enough about that. The \u201chomosexuality\u201d discourse also emerged in Germany, yes?, and maybe elsewhere?, in that same tilting, duck-or-rabbit? 19th-century era.<\/p>\n Also, obviously, that big paragraph above is the kind of neat summary that never really fits the historical territory. So I guess what I\u2019m asking is, What should I read if I want to understand the ways in which that \u201cretreat from friendship -> emergence of \u2018the homosexual'\u201d narrative is true, and the ways in which it\u2019s false?<\/p>\n Again, eve_tushnet@yahoo.com , throw me your thoughts. THANKS\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" aka my to-do list, am I right? Anyway, this is a request for help with three possible long-term projects. Email me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com if you have any thoughts. 1. What are the best novels you\u2019ve read with depictions of attempts to make amends, or attempts to extend forgiveness? I\u2019m looking for everything\u2013botched attempts, ill-conceived attempts, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n