Zowie...

Some of the readings for "Gender and Popular Music" are (to me, at least) pretty dense at times. Tomorrow's is a real zinger. It's called "Acting camp: Moe Meyer, from the Introduction to The Politics and Poetics of Camp." It's our introduction to queer theory in the course. Sounds interesting, right?

I got so frustrated trying to get through the seven pages of the article that I eventually had to make a compilation of its most impressive passages in order to put myself in a more positive frame of mind. By feeling superior because I'm ridiculing his verbosity... or something

queer identity is more accurately identified as the praxical response to the emergence of social constructionist (sex/gender as ideologically interpellated) models of identity and its, by now overly rehearsed, oppositional stance to essentialist (sexual orientation as innate) models, thus historically situating queer identity in an epistemological rift that predates the advent of AIDS.

a much wider application of the depth model of identity which underwrites the epistemology deployed by the bourgeoisie in their ascendancy to and maintenance of dominant power

parody is an intertextual manipulation of multiple conventions, 'an extended repetition with critical difference's that 'has a hermeneutic function with both cultural and even ideological implications'.

A similarly intimidating article (with references to Freud and Lacan, even!) from a few weeks ago was co-written by our professor when she was younger than me. It made me feel terribly stupid.