Fwd: JUDITH JACK HALBERSTAM - "The Killer in Me is the Killer in You: Homosexuality & Fascism"

[rich]

I think we can safely say Pynchon indulges in the Nazi/Homosexual
trope fairly often, even in IV where our tatooed Nazi is apparently
more into being w/ men

rich



 *JUDITH JACK HALBERSTAM
*(Dept. of  English /Gender Studies, USC)

*"The Killer in Me is the Killer in You: Homosexuality & Fascism"
*
October 19, 6 –8 pm
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor


'In Sasha Baron Cohen's most recent camp spoof, Brüno, the very gay and very
swish Austrian fashionista compares himself several times to Hitler and
jokes that he is "the second most misunderstood Austrian in history." The
intersection of Nazi and homosexual that Cohen invokes has a long and vexed
history that stretches from the well-known homosexuality of Nazi storm
troopers to eroticized images of Nazi soldiers by Tom of Finland. Leo
Bersani notes the glorification of Nazism in the work of Jean Genet, and
Dagmar Herzog notes in Sex After Fascism  that "popular assumptions of
Nazism as a homosexual movement have remained remarkably durable." In this
talk, I will return to a very important essay by Stuart Marshall from 1991
titled: “The Contemporary Political Use of Gay History: The Third Reich ”
from How Do I Look, and try to account for both gay Nazis and the Nazi
persecution of homosexuals. At stake is a complex understanding of queer
history that neither whitewashes the past nor colludes in homophobic
renderings of it.’


Judith Halberstam is Professor of English and Director of The Center for
Feminist Research at USC. Halberstam teaches courses in queer studies,
gender theory, art, literature and film. Halberstam is the author of Female
Masculinity, The Drag King Book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the
Technology of Monsters and a new book from NYU Press titled In a Queer Time
and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives.



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