Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire

Gender and Culture Series

by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Nancy K. Miller (Editor), Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Editor)

Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most influential texts in gender studies, men's studies and gay studies," this book uncovers the homosocial desire between men, from Restoration comedies to Tennyson's Princess.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Theory, LGBT, Literary Criticism, Feminism, Academic

244 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1985

About the author

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academician specializing in literary criticism and feminist analysis; she is known as one of the architects of queer theory. Her works reflect an interest in queer performativity, experimental critical writing, non-Lacanian psychoanalysis, Buddhism and pedagogy, the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein, and material culture, especially textiles and texture. Drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of Michel Foucault, Sedgwick uncovered purportedly hidden homoerotic subplots in writers like Charles Dickens, Henry James and Marcel Proust. Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete or damaged if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition, coining the terms "antihomophobic" and "homosocial."

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first books that opened the new theoretical school of queer theory. As such, it made a lot of people mad back in the day and it is still pissing people off today. Sedgwick claims that the patriarchy has been using women to get closer to men. This is where she loses many people. This is where she lost several people in my grad class (you would think a bunch of English majors would read and pay attention). If people would read on they would see that she goes on to say that using women to do that does not make a man gay. It is of making new bonds or strengthening existing ones. It does not mean you do not love the woman you married, but there is still a "bros before ho's" connotation to it. And it is not true of all men, but good grief! If you look around you can see that a lot has not changed since the Middle Ages and that women can still be used as bargaining chips. This makes the patriarchy uncomfortable because homosocial bonding (aka, bros) is all fine and dandy. But the second the homosocial becomes homosexual, everything goes to hell in a hand basket before the offender even knows what happened. This is a very watered-down and condensed summary of Sedgwick's work, and does not do her brilliance justice.

[Emma Sea]

My patience for this kind of needlessly convoluted academic writing has worn thin over the years.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive study, not only of homosexuality in literature, but "homosocial" desire articulated through love triangles which include the female subject within non-canonical texts. I think I've found some inspiration for my thesis ;-)

[joshua sorensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

men create intricate rituals which allow them to touch the skin of other men

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need to read this again to let it sink in properly, but a couple of my tutors have very much subscribed to Sedgwick's line of thought, in part if not in whole, and it all made a lot of sense to me. It's easy to apply it to the Arthurian legends, or to the 'Sagas of Warrior-Poets' in Norse studies...

My perennial problem with literary theory is that people make it sound far too complicated when they write books like this, but this isn't too bad, at least.

[Patrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was obviously written with a real passion, genuine enthusiasm, and good intentions. Also, it was one of the first of its kind, so kudos, I’ll give Kosofsky that.

However, the writing style is simply atrocious. As for your possible reaction to the argumentation in the book: it can go either way--you will either accept Kosofsky’s interpretation and like the book, or you will see many of her concepts as farfetched, and remain skeptical.

[Holly Interlandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The theories presented in this book have affected me so much that I can't help applying them to everything I see and/or read. Highly intriguing, and TRUE.

[sawah · Rating 3 out of 5]

my partner looked at the title of this and said “that was me last night” so i think homosociality is going ok

[Amira Khali]

fundamental. ill have to come back to it when im not writing my thesis tho

[Matthew White Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think what most people find offensive about Sedgwick’s theory is that women exchanged as objects of economic exchange (Patriarchy) is rooted in the desire to strengthen homosocial bonds between men. I find many heterosexual readers of Sedgwick’s work are appalled by this because they assume Sedgwick is calling them gay (spoiler alert, she isn’t). Sedgwick’s theory is a counter argument to your conventional homophobic discourse; that homosexuality is deviant or derivative from heterosexuality. Sedgwick’s theory repositions the homosocial as an essential cultural brick to a very layered wall. I think that what most readers find shocking while reading Between Men is this refocusing on the emphasis of non genital male-to-male relationships (not that these relations never become genital, she notes they have the potential to do so).

Overall, this is an incredible work of genius that’s well communicated through extensive literary analysis and historical citing.

[yoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I shouldn't pretend like I read the whole thing--but this is where the central pivotal idea of my thesis was discovered: triangular structures of power. She says that women are fungible (great word!) and that only the men matter with lots of examples that are less useful if you haven't read the source books. Since I hadn't there was a lot of skimming.

But of the 50% I did read, I would say it's pretty good. Start with the introduction and proceed as you feel necessary. Sedgwick has an annoying habit of bringing up points and then leaving us to make connections and figure out their significance. Just a heads up, friends.

[Luke Widlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its responsibility and accountability is still incredibly relevant. In fact, I would never go as far to think that Sedgwik's typology of homosociality will ever go out of vogue. However, this text does not lend itself to the widest array of usage considering that the author does use incredibly specific (and interesting) examples to explore her concept.

The current and future LIT educator in me will totally consider photocopying the intro and some portions of the text to offer students as necessary reading for queer lit theory. The "meat" of this text may not be for the casual reader, especially if they are disinterested in Classical or Victorian white male writing.

[Bookshire Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would enjoy this more if I could have read it casually, not having to make detailed notes in order to understand as much as possible.
The thoughts and concepts here are brilliant but I got lost so many times in the analysis, which sometimes seemed very far-fetched. I'm missing a lot of theoretical bacground to be able to appreciate it more.
The language of the book is very difficult and every word is important for understanding, so I found myself, after long years of reading both fiction and non-fiction almost exclusively in English, searching for definitions in a dictionary - and many times I came back empty-handed.

[TapMyShoulder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bros being hoes

[Taneli Viitahuhta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sedgwick's theory of paranoid cognitive model evolves from here to "Touching Feeling". Once you get the grips of her argument, it's hard not to see homosocial desire as shaping the world. This model of relationship leads to paranoid cognition, as lapsing to oscillation between homophobia and homosexual desire is the shunned, or abject, side of this desire. Her way of demonstration is crucial, because for the bourgeois era literature has been the best way to give shape to inner dialogue and consciousness of self and the social.

Theoretically this book is nearly groundbreaking, rhetorically it is robust. My poor knowledge of 17th and 18th century English literature made it slow read for me. Book to come back to.

[•Paula•]

Only read excerpts for uni

[Olga Rojas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si pudiese ponerle más me quedaba sin estrella en el cielo pa darle
la reina de mis sentraña
la reina de mis teorías
te pongo una estatua en medio caí

[Valorie Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this and Sedgwick's other book Epistemology of the Closet. Of the two, Epistemology is better. It is a newer book, and it's clear that Sedgwick's ideas are more developed, more considered, and a little more "modern." There are times in Epistemology that Sedgwick refers to Between Men for further reading, but never is it completely necessary to understand the book. While this book is a fine academic work, you're better off reading just Epistemology.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. I was drawn to this book mostly because I knew there was a chapter on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and that novel needs a good analysis of the race-sex-class dynamics Dickens used. More generally, it's an interesting book. What I didn't expect, but was pleased to find, was how much time Sedgwick spends writing about the role of women in the texts she chooses. I thought that enriched her analysis, although I do think the book would have benefited from a clearer discussion of the role misogyny plays in these texts.

2. Sadly, I've only read a couple of the texts she uses (although I know a bit about some of the others, and nothing at all about one or two). However, this didn't impede my understanding and I never felt like I should run to Wikipedia to look up a synopsis. Sedgwick lays out the information very clearly. Her actual analysis is something of a vocabulary lesson - but it is always interesting. And, hey, new words are good for you.

3. But was it necessary to bring in Freud?

[Nguyễn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sure we love our bros but that's because we fought other dudes together, we drank together, and the love sometimes is huge and more important than erotic love, but that's because we are fellows, we are comrades. Nowadays when you state that you love your bros it's instantly interpreted as homosexual desire.
If there's one thing i would like to tell these so-call 'gender theorists', it is that their emotional landscape is so desolated, and they don't understand love at all, love which is far far greater than sexual desire. That also explains their distaste for concepts like nationality or race (racism makes sense if you ask me).
Wonder how Western 'social studies' have become so perverted, universities have become wasteland full of horny whores and feminine guys with uncontrolable dicks and masturbation addicts?

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am reading this in sections for uni so far the intro and ch 2

I am less than impressed. Seems to be a lot of anachronistic thinking with gibberish that is meant to be so dense it hides that there is no real ideas

[Caroline]

On missing Frank Kermode: "The graphic schema on which I am going to be drawing most heavily in the readings that follow is the triangle."

[tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is what Donna Tartt is thinking about when she writes twinks.

[Amy ☁️ (tinycl0ud) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“...in the presence of a woman who can be seen as pitiable or contemptible, men are able to exchange power and to confirm each other's value even in the context of the remaining inequalities in their power. The sexually pitiable or contemptible female figure is a solvent that not only facilitates the relative democratisation that grows up with capitalism and cash exchange, but goes a long way—for the men whom she leaves bonded together—toward palliating its gaps and failures.”

I read snippets of this book long ago and decided it was time to read it fully now that I have, what do you call it, ~life experience~.

The main argument put forth here is that “in any male-dominated society, there is a special relationship between male homosocial (including homosexual) desire and the structures for maintaining and transmitting patriarchal power”. Sedgwick analyses a variety of European and English texts across the centuries to show how male homosocial relations underpin and make up patriarchal institutions.

‘Homosocial’ is used not exactly in opposition to homosexual (as we see in the later chapters) but to denote a specific kind of male-male relationship that requires the structures of heterosexuality to cement the bonds between men. Women function as the ‘conduit’ or ‘solvent’ which allows men to dominate one another, impress one another, or tie their lives together (via marriage). The term used here is ‘triangulation’; when in the case of cuckoldry, this triangular structure denotes a hierarchy wherein the man who cuckolds the other is “clearly in ascendency.” This book also seems to be implying that it’s not just in the past, but that even now, so long as we live in inherited systems, male homosocial bonding desire will always be at the core of men’s behaviour—who they date/marry, how they court, how many times a week they visit the gym, how they flex their achievements, etc.

This wasn’t too challenging but the text takes some effort to get through. I found it quite accurate even now iykwim ◡̈

[Joshua Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very difficult book for me to review. I nearly gave it a two, but I ultimately decided not to penalize the book too much for my own failings. This book is a discussion of the way that men in literature (and by extension, in the society that provided the fodder for that literature) interacted with each other - and how women have historically taken the role of a conduit facilitating those homosocial relationships in some form or another.

The biggest thing that prevented me from getting more out of this book is that I simply don't know enough gender theory or queer theory to have experience reading this type of material. That made many of the chapters obscure and challenging. Not all of them are as heavily relient on theory (or so it seemed to me) and as a result those slightly more narrative sections went a little faster and smoother and both entertained and taught me more. Further, this book uses specific literary works as case studies and snapshots of particular eras to document and expound on the way in which homosocial relationships were mediated by women - but there wasn't enough exposition about those works to fully situate the arguments, and unless you had read them previously it certainly feels like much would be missed. Of course it is a perfectly valid response to say "read the books!" but that seems unrealistic and also unnecessary - I suspect that a little more real estate spent contextualizing the arguments would have paid dividends.

[Ronnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book I decided to check out because I needed some of it for a paper last semester and then decided to read the whole thing for some reason; another book of literary essays that wrote about books that I have never read. For me, the most useful parts of the book were the Introduction and the Coda.

While a lot of what Sedgwick said in here was an extremely interesting way to read the relationships men have with women, and how those relationships ultimately lead back to their relationships with other men (often the more important relationship) in 19th century literature (and, in fact, can be applied to a lot of modern literature as well). That being said, I can't say I wholesale agree with all of her theories. Still interesting reading. Would probably be more interesting if I'd actually read any of these novels.

[Iraultza · Rating 2 out of 5]

pf qué decir... La idea inicial está bien (tampoco es nada nuevo), básicamente que los hombres emplean a las mujeres como objetos mediante los que acercarse a otros hombres (homosocial desire)... El resto es historia. No conecto NADA con su forma de escribir, cuando leí la Epistemología del armario fue igual, los análisis, pues bueno, estarán bien, pero no se me queda nada, es como quien escucha llover... En fin. No lo recomiendo...

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ideas and arguments here are definitely really important in terms of how men relate to one another--historically, but also today. In particular, the basic argument that male relationships are largely built around sexual desire, repression, and rivalry is a good insight.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a book like this, one read is certainly not enough. It’s a tremendous milestone in ‘studies’; an important call for a different sort of view of masculinity and homo- and heterosexuality in nineteenth-century Britain, and in the present.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but dense.