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64 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP Sontag, Susan. 1964. “Notes on Camp.” 1966. Against Interpretation. New York: Noonday Press, 275–292. Weeks, Jeffrey. 1981. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. London: Longman. Wilde, Oscar. 1889. “Pen, Pencil and Poison.” In Ellmann 1982, 320–340. ——1891. “The Critic as Artist.” In Ellmann 1982, 340–408. ——1893. “The Disciple.” 1980. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. 15 vols. New York: AMS Press. ——1894. “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young.” In Ellmann 1982, 433–434. ——1989a. “A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated.” The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. New York: Harper and Row, 1203–1204. ——1989b. Oscar Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of the Mind in the Making. Eds Philip E.Smith II and Michael S.Helfand. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3 UNDER THE SIGN OF WILDE An archaeology of posing Moe Meyer “Camp” was a new word when it first appeared in J.Redding Ware’s 1909 dictionary of Victorian slang, Passing English of the Victorian Era. Ware’s book, considered extremely competent for its day, was written both as a companion for and an extension of the foremost English slang dictionary of the nineteenth century, John S.Farmer’s Slang and Its Analogues, published between 1890 and 1904. Ware was concerned with documenting the jargon of his decade. New slang words came and went so fast (he called it “passing English” to describe its fleeting nature) that many had escaped even Farmer’s masterwork and were lost forever. Ware’s project was to produce a contemporary supplement to Slang and Its Analogues, documenting only new slang that had emerged since its publication (Partridge 114). Because the term “Camp” is not found in Farmer’s dictionary, a conclusion is that it was a new word that entered the English language only during the first decade of this century. Ware defined Camp as “Actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis. Probably from the French. Used chiefly by persons of exceptional want of character” (61). The conventional and accepted interpretation of Ware’s definition concludes that the word “Camp” has a French etymology (see for example Booth 33, 39–40; Brien 873– 874; Goodwin 39; Rodgers 40; and Ross 145). Against this, I will propose an alternative reading of Ware’s definition informed by Thomas A.King’s study of the politics of Camp gestures in chapter one of this volume. King has argued that Camp gesture signals an ontological challenge that displaces bourgeois notions of the Self as unique, abiding, and continuous, while substituting instead a concept of the Self as performative, improvisational, discontinuous, and processually constituted by repetitive and stylized acts. He proposes that bourgeois identification of Camp (homosexual) gesture is based upon a logic that is recognizable for its unique contradictions: first, the gesture must be judged as excessive according to the standards of acceptable and conventional bourgeois male deportment; and second, that the gestural excess signifies a lack of Self (and thus lack of membership in the social body). Accordingly, I read Ware’s definition not as suggesting that the word “Camp” is from the French, but that the actual and specific gestures he describes have been imported from France. If, as King proposes, specific gestures identified
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First published 1994 by Routledge 1
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CONTENTS List of plates vi List of
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11 Richard Halverson as Lady Enid a
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to tha
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2 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
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1 PERFORMING “AKIMBO” Queer pri
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114 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION practitio
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116 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION This meta
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118 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION specifica
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120 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION great tra
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122 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION In her pr
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124 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION Dynes emp
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126 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION Case, Sue
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Plate 9 Claire Moed as Sir Oliver S
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Plate 11 Richard Halverson as Lady
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Plate 14 Liberace in long cape with
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Plate 16 Liberace was Count Dracula
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THE CAMP TRACE IN CORPORATE AMERICA
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The key value, however, among these
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eternal youthfulness; and the way h
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7 TAKING OUT THE TRASH Camp and the
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homosocialism 35-6, 43-4 Hutcheon,
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