Queer/Early/Modern

Series Q

by Carla Freccero

In Queer/Early/Modern , Carla Freccero, a leading scholar of early modern European studies, argues for a reading practice that accounts for the queerness of temporality, for the way past, present, and future time appear out of sequence and in dialogue in our thinking about history and texts. Freccero takes issue with New Historicist accounts of sexual identity that claim to respect historical proprieties and to derive identity categories from the past. She urges us to see how the indeterminacies of subjectivity found in literary texts challenge identitarian constructions and she encourages us to read differently the relation between history and literature. Contending that the term “queer,” in its indeterminacy, points the way toward alternative ethical reading practices that do justice to the aftereffects of the past as they live on in the present, Freccero proposes a model of “fantasmatic historiography” that brings together history and fantasy, past and present, event and affect. Combining feminist theory, queer theory, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and literary criticism, Freccero takes up a series of theoretical and historical issues related to debates in queer theory, feminist theory, the history of sexuality, and early modern studies. She juxtaposes readings of early and late modern texts, discussing the lyric poetry of Petrarch, Louise Labé, and Melissa Ethridge; David Halperin’s take on Michel Foucault via Apuleius’s The Golden Ass and Boccaccio’s Decameron ; and France’s domestic partner legislation in connection with Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron . Turning to French cleric Jean de Léry’s account, published in 1578, of having witnessed cannibalism and religious rituals in Brazil some twenty years earlier and to the twentieth-century Brandon Teena case, Freccero draws on Jacques Derrida’s concept of spectrality to propose both an ethics and a mode of interpretation that acknowledges and is inspired by the haunting of the present by the past.

Genres: Queer, Queer Studies, Psychoanalysis, Theory

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[anna marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book needs a content warning 4 sexual violence [like, especially in the chapter called queer spectrality or something], transphobia [both described and from the author] and colonialism + racism.
plus its just not v good. super over the top using like, so many words that mean nothing to say nothing in the disguise of something. and then also like... boring.....
but helpful for my essay lol :/
wouldn't recommend it though unless u r looking for something that is boring and focuses on france quite a lot lmao

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review forthcoming. Suffice it to say that I feel Freccero presents a useful intervention into the fields of both queer theory and early modern studies. There are some critiques of the text that I have, but the project as a whole is excellent.

update 10/5 with full review

Freccero begins with a question. Not the first line of the book, but the title itself. What does it mean to be Queer? What is Early about Early Modern studies? Dare we even call it modern? These are all useful questions to begin with, especially given how alien the word queer can appear to our perception of Early Modern/Renaissance Europe. Isn't queer a newer term, and a slur in and of itself? How do we reconcile the fact that what we call queer studies may fundamentally not cover whole swaths of human history, because queer, gay, lesbian, and other identity categories simply did not exist before?

Freccero begins to answer these questions in her book, but does not venture a total view, but instead proposes some approaches and beginnings. Her discourse is informed by the writings of Jacques Derrida and the field of psychoanalysis more generally, and thus may rub some people the wrong way. Her use of Derrida creates new possible meanings for older texts, rather than devolving into relative meaninglessness. Her methods are based thoroughly in history, and she says at one point that one cannot study the Renaissance without knowing and contextualizing it in history. The book does not become locked up in history however, as Freccero is able to reach back and uncover what is queer about history, about literature, about theory.

The first half of the book focuses on queer understandings of the past and how it relates to the present. Freccero examines French literary theory in her opening chapter, and applies it to the lyric works of Petrarch and Louise Labe in order to unearth queer desires. She explores history and politics through a queer lens, and animates the past with a new vitality.

In the second half of the book, which is one, long chapter, Freccero turns her attention to Queer futures. What does this mean in the context of early modern studies? For Freccero, a queer future is best understood through haunting; to understand the ghosts of the past and to allow them to speak is a queer lens. She discusses at length various historiographies, new ways to see a queer past and to make it relevant to the queer present. This is not just a figuration of desire, nor an understanding that gay people did exist back then, but a concrete method of understanding research and reading more generally. The contents of the last chapter deal with harsh, sexually explicit and violent issues, but I don't feel Freccero oversteps here. The past is traumatic, and her work is engaging with a particularly violent part of history, the first European conquests of the Americas. This section is dated in other ways as well (Freccero talks about the Brandon Teena case and uses quotations around their pronoun, likely a product of its time more than flagrant transphobia, but still a relevant thing to understand). This scholarship is not "timeless", and none are more generally, but it is important to understand that Freccero's work can still guide us in our reading of the past.

Freccero's Queer/Early/Modern is an excellent read, with a few problems here and there. I find the book to be a useful intervention into the field of Early Modern Studies, but also a possible praxis for other writers more generally. How we engage with the past matters, and it is important to remember that we are not engaging with the past purely. We are writing our own experiences on our studies, on our reading, on others people's lives. Moreover, when studying the past, the past has a tendency to take something over in us - it is a mutual relationship. When we stare at the past, the past stares back at us - even if it seems like a watery version of ourselves. Freccero's work is useful for understanding this, specifically in relation to the phenomenal fields of queer studies.

[isabela baldini]

li o capítulo "queer spectrality"

[Abbey Piatt Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book. hauntology is goofy as fuck tho

[Twyrink · Rating 2 out of 5]

Freccero’s Queer/Early/Modern may be interesting to students of queer studies; her approach, however, seems highly questionable (psychoanalysis as a historical method? really? next time I will scrutinize James I with CBT) and her narrative hard to understand (Lévi-Strauss as a “poet of incest” is… a choice).

I want to summarize Always Already Queer (French) Theory in one queer Russian saying “to stretch an owl onto the globus” (=to make far-fetched conclusions). Maybe it’s fascinating to scholars who are engulfed in the discussions of what’s queer, but to a bystander like me it felt like parts of the bigger conversation I’m not aware of. I pity the proverbial “owl”, though.

Queer Nation: Early/Modern France is quite insightful and provides an interesting perspective to think about early modern state/nationbuilding. Though I have many questions about “the fraudulence of the French Salic Law” (I will read on that question). “Begetting royal sons on the kingdom is either a surprisingly generative form of onanism or else a kind of masculine sodomitic relation that bears fruit.” [P. 58] is also a choice of wording.

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, my only complaint is that this book is too short.

[6655321 · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is the underdeveloped nub of a good idea here (generally about discursive slipperiness with subjectivities vis contemporary understandings of gender/sexuality and how "progressivist" accounts make a universal subject out of "Western" sexuality). However, it just never goes anywhere (Freccero poses a good question) and the ending chapter's discussion of Brandon Teena (continuously putting "his" and "Brandon Teena" in quotes) has this sort of uncomfortable "well this case was more complicated than the (narrow, perscriptivist) conception of trans so we should just always act as thought this is a spectral queer potentiality (series of Derrida quotes)" before moving to questions of colonization and gender/sexuality (which are good questions but Freccero doesn't seem to have a lot of relevant reading or illumination to add to a subject that feels tacked on to the end of a question that isn't really answered in any meaningful was & yes i understand that absolute answers are impossible but that doesn't abolish the responsibility to look at either microhistorical narratives or to taxonomize the emergence of particular identities and apply that to a question instead of posing questions and talking about spectrality).

[Maggie Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

These essays really opened my eyes to the possibilities of slipperiness in contemporary writing, how we can push boundaries artistically and, in turn, encourage decategorization on a social level. I like how accessible Freccero makes her application of Queer Theory--I think this book appeals to a broad audience.