One thought on “Synthesis 3: ‘Meditation: “Prodesse quam conspici”‘

  1. alexislothian

    I had to read your synthesis through a few times to unpack the dense complexity with which you are linking texts and themes from the course! I think, in the end, that what you describe as the question of the collective vs the “disambiguate” is one of the central concerns for many if not most scholars in queer theory — how to be engaged in a struggle for social justice (which we may or may not call politics) while also acknowledging what is lost when we submit to speaking in the single voice of a political group. And the critiques of what is left out can take on such a familiar slant, as you point out, though what they articulate may be no less necessary. Even the unity of subjectivity, of the body (as Chen shows) creates sometimes violent erasures. For you it seems that poetry offers a way out or through, though I am not sure I understand the turn to Hopkins in your synthesis.

    I saw correspondences between your and Tim’s last syntheses that seemed interesting to me, in the way you both created meta-commentaries on the stakes of queer studies through the readings. Perhaps you might find his piece interesting.

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