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REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY
Queer Camp and dyke noir
Cynthia Morrill
THE TROUBLE WITH MASQUERADE
Some recent postmodernist cultural theories have claimed subcultural lesbian and
gay Camp as a model for a particular type of gender performance analyzed
through the tropics of masquerade theory. 1 Critics link the material performative
practices of lesbian and gay “role playing” (i.e. lesbian butch-femme relations,
gay leathermen and drag queens) with the feminist description of psychoanalytic
theories about female masquerade and its twisted sister, female mimicry. 2 This
effort to circumscribe Camp as a type of masquerade has elided earlier critiques
which sought to define Camp as a particular activity or strategy that signaled the
material form of a twentieth-century “gay sensibility.” 3 To some extent, these
earlier discussions were intended to mark the specificity of lesbian and gay
identity for the purposes of unifying the then emergent lesbian and gay civil
rights movement. By contrast, the current discussion tends to focus upon Camp
as a type of performance. Questions about what defines Camp have been
reformulated into questions regarding the execution of Camp. In large part, the
feminist critique of Camp has answered the question of “how Camp is done”
through an analysis that combines psychoanalytic theory with a discussion of the
operations of parody, pastiche, and irony. 4 As a consequence of similar
discussions about the operations of postmodernism, Camp has become
appreciated as an eminently postmodern form. Indeed, Camp has become
recognized as an example par excellence of a postmodern denaturalization of
gender categories.
The apprehension of a confluence of interests between “camp-as-masquerade”
and postmodernism, and the current critical perception of a seeming “triumph of
image and spectacle over meaning and ‘the real’” (Modleski 101), appears to
mark the victory of Camp and postmodernism alike. To a limited extent, the
feminist application of psychoanalytic masquerade and mimicry theory can be
seen as an interrogation of the “successful” battle strategy of Camp. However,
while some critics have celebrated “camp-as-masquerade” as a limited victory
over the restrictions of naturalized gender categories made visible through
lesbian and gay male role playing, other critics have expressed reservations. 5 But