goinghome
you must not tamper with arrangements
This is a 2017 scholarly essay up on Researchgate. I searched the title on Msolo which returned nothing. Perhaps it was missed. I looked to add it to one of the List of the Lost threads but they're read-only now. It stands by itself though.
The writer is Frederic Rukes, of the University of Cologne.
All online https://www.researchgate.net/public...re_and_Negativity_in_Morrissey_and_The_Smiths
The writer is Frederic Rukes, of the University of Cologne.
Abstract
Two of the terms most frequently used by scholars and music journalists alike to describe former The Smiths singer Morrissey's persona are ambiguous and ambivalent-an evaluation that applies among other things to his attitude towards gender and sexuality. While Morrissey refuses to classify himself in any predefined categories of gender and sexuality, his own and his band's musical canon is rife with narratives of queer desire and instances of sexual intimacy, which often allow for both a gay and a straight viewpoint. It is precisely this ambiguity that offers the possibility of an interpretation offside a compulsory heterosexuality and-normativity, therefore opening it to a queer audience. It is furthermore among the reasons why lyrics by Morrissey and The Smiths, as I will argue, qualify as queer texts. In order to establish and defend such a view, this paper will draw on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's approach of a queer reading and her work on homosocial desire in literature, Harold Beaver's examination of homosexual signs, and Teresa de Lauretis definition of queer texts. One of the pillars of de Lauretis's classification is that of non-closure of a narrative and is thus closely linked to queer negativity and non-futurity. Morrissey and The Smiths' oeuvre offers a significant set of songs that embrace these ideas. Deriving from Jack Halberstam's concept of the queer art of failure, Lee Edelman's critique of reproductive futurism, Judith Butler's reflections on the term queer, and José Esteban Muñoz's conceptualisation of a queer utopia I will show how Morrissey uses different formulas of negativity and longing to generate power from, thus transforming them into critique of regimes of the normal. It is in this diverse and subversive expression of queer negativity and desire that Morrissey disrupts normativity and its underlying stigmatising and discriminating potential.
All online https://www.researchgate.net/public...re_and_Negativity_in_Morrissey_and_The_Smiths