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Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and Women's studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. Heavily influenced by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Lauren Berlant, queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behaviour with respect to homosexual behaviour, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and deviant categories.

Queer theory[link]

Queer theorist Michael Warner attempts to provide a definition of a concept that typically circumvents categorical definitions: "Social reflection carried out in such a manner tends to be creative, fragmentary, and defensive, and leaves us perpetually at a disadvantage. And it is easy to be misled by the utopian claims advanced in support of particular tactics. But the range and seriousness of the problems that are continually raised by queer practice indicate how much work remains to be done. Because the logic of the sexual order is so deeply embedded by now in an indescribably wide range of social institutions, and is embedded in the most standard accounts of the world, queer struggles aim not just at toleration or equal status but at challenging those institutions and accounts. The dawning realisation that themes of homophobia and heterosexism may be read in almost any document of our culture means that we are only beginning to have an idea of how widespread those institutions and accounts are.^[2]

Queer theory's main project is exploring the contesting of the categorisation of gender and sexuality; identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorised and labeled – because identities consist of many varied components and that to categorise by one characteristic is wrong. Queer theory said that there is an interval between what a subject “does” (role-taking) and what a subject “is” (the self). So despite its title the theory's goal is to destabilise identity categories, which are designed to identify the “sexed subject” and place individuals within a single restrictive sexual orientation.

Overview[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Queer theory is derived largely from post-structuralist theory, and deconstruction in particular. Starting in the 1970s, a range of authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to bear on issues of sexual identity, and especially on the construction of a normative "straight" ideology. Queer theorists challenged the validity and consistency of heteronormative discourse, and focused to a large degree on non-heteronormative sexualities and sexual practices.

The term "queer theory" was introduced in 1990, with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich and Diana Fuss (all largely following the work of Michel Foucault) being among its foundational proponents.

History[link]

Before the phrase “Queer Theory” was born, the term ‘Queer Nation’ appeared on the cover of the short-lived lesbian/gay quarterly Outlook in the winter 1991 issues. Writers Allan Berube and Jeffrey Escoffier drove home the point that Queer Nation strove to embrace paradoxes in its political activism, and that the activism was taking new form and revolving around the issue of identity.^{[3][dead link]} Soon enough Outlook and Queer Nation stopped being published, however, there was a mini-gay renaissance going on during the 1980s and early 1990s. There were a number of significant outbursts of lesbian/gay political/cultural activity. Out of this emerged queer theory.

Teresa de Lauretis is the person credited with coining the phrase "Queer Theory". It was at a working conference on lesbian and gay sexualities that was held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in February 1990 that de Lauretis first made mention of the phrase.^[4] She later introduced the phrase in a 1991 special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, entitled “Queer Theory, Lesbian and Gay Sexualities.” Similar to the description Berube and Escoffier used for Queer Nation, de Lauretis asserted that, “queer unsettles and questions the genderedness of sexuality.” ^[5]

Barely three years later, she abandoned the phrase on the grounds that it had been taken over by mainstream forces and institutions it was originally coined to resist.^[6] Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, and David Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality inspired other works. Teresa de Lauretis, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick arranged much of the conceptual base for the emerging field in the 1990s. Along with other queer theorists, these three outlined a political hermeneutics, which emphasized representation. These scholars asked questioned if people of varying sexual orientations had the same goals politically and did those in the sexual minority feel that they could be represented along with others of different sexualities and orientations. “While some critics insist that queer theory is apolitical word-smithery, [de Lauretis, Butler, and Sedgwick] take seriously the role that signs and symbols play in shaping the meanings and possibilities of our culture at the most basic level, including politics conventionally defined.” ^[3]

In the late 1980s, social constructionists conceived of the sexual subject as a culturally dependent, historically specific product.^{[citation needed]}

Background concepts[link]

Queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality. Due to this association, a debate emerges as to whether sexual orientation is natural or essential to the person, as an essentialist believes, or if sexuality is a social construction and subject to change.^[7]

The queer theory has two predominant strains:

• Radical deconstructionism: interrogates categories of sexual orientations.
• Radical subversion: disrupts the normalizing tendencies of the sexual order.

The essentialist feminists believed that genders "have an essential nature (e.g. nurturing and caring versus being aggressive and selfish), as opposed to differing by a variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces".^[8] Due to this belief in the essential nature of a person, it is also natural to assume that a person's sexual preference would be natural and essential to a person’s personality.

Identity politics[link]

Queer theory was originally associated with radical gay politics of ACT UP, OutRage! and other groups which embraced "queer" as an identity label that pointed to a separatist, non-assimilationist politics.^[8] Queer theory developed out of an examination of perceived limitations in the traditional identity politics of recognition and self-identity. In particular, queer theorists identified processes of consolidation or stabilization around some other identity labels (e.g. gay and lesbian); and construed queerness so as to resist this. Queer theory attempts to maintain a critique more than define a specific identity.

Acknowledging the inevitable violence of identity politics, and having no stake in its own ideology, queer is less an identity than a critique of identity. However, it is in no position to imagine itself outside the circuit of problems energized by identity politics. Instead of defending itself against those criticisms that its operations attract, queer allows those criticisms to shape its – for now unimaginable – future directions. "The term," writes Butler, "will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized." The mobilization of queer foregrounds the conditions of political representation, its intentions and effects, its resistance to and recovery by the existing networks of power.^[9]

The studies of Fuss anticipates queer theory.^[10]

Eng, Halberstam and Esteban Munoz offer one of its latest incarnations in the aptly “What is Queer about Queer studies now?”.^[11] Using Butler’s critique of sexual identity categories as a starting point, they work around a “queer epistemology” that explicitly opposes the sexual categories of Lesbian and Gay studies and lesbian and gay identity politics. They insist that the field of normalization is not limited to sexuality; social classifications such as gender, race and nationality constituted by a “governing logic” require an epistemological intervention through queer theory" (Green 2007). "So, the evolution of the queer begins with the problematization of sexual identity categories in Fuss (1996) and extends outward to a more general deconstruction of social ontology in contemporary queer theory" (Green 2007).

"Edelman goes from deconstruction of the subject to a deconstructive psychoanalysis of the entire social order; the modern human fear of mortality produces defensive attempts to “suture over the hole in the Symbolic Order”.^[12] According to him, constructions of “the homosexual” are pitted against constructions of “The Child” in the modern West, wherein the former symbolizes the inevitability of mortality (do not procreate) and the latter an illusory continuity of the self with the social order (survives mortality through one’s offspring). The constructs are animated by futuristic fantasy designed to evade mortality" (Green 2007).

"Fuss, Eng. et al and Edelman represent distinct moment in the development of queer theory. Whereas Fuss aims to discompose and render inert the reigning classifications of sexual identity, Eng. et al observe the extension of a deconstructive strategy to a wider field of normalization, while Edelman’s work takes not only the specter of “the homosexual”, but the very notion of “society” as a manifestation of psychological distress requiring composition" (Green 2007).

Role of biology[link]

Queer theorists focus on problems in classifying individuals as either male or female, even on a strictly biological basis. For example, the sex chromosomes (X and Y) may exist in atypical combinations (as in Klinefelter's syndrome [XXY]). This complicates the use of genotype as a means to define exactly two distinct sexes. Intersexed individuals may for many different biological reasons have ambiguous sexual characteristics.

Scientists who have written on the conceptual significance of intersexual individuals include Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ruth Hubbard, Carol Tavris, and Joan Roughgarden.^{[citation needed]}

Some key experts in the study of culture, such as Barbara Rogoff, argue that the traditional distinction between biology and culture as independent entities is overly simplistic, pointing to the ways in which biology and culture interact with one another.^[13]

The HIV/AIDS discourse[link]

Much of queer theory developed out of a response to the AIDS crisis, which promoted a renewal of radical activism, and the growing homophobia brought about by public responses to AIDS. Queer theory became occupied in part with what effects – put into circulation around the AIDS epidemic – necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing in "queer".

To examine the effects that HIV/AIDS has on queer theory is to look at the ways in which the status of the subject or individual is treated in the biomedical discourses that construct them.^[14]

1. The shift, affected by safer sex education in emphasizing sexual practices over sexual identities^[15]
2. The persistent misrecognition of HIV/AIDS as a "gay" disease ^[16]
3. Homosexuality as a kind of fatality^[17]
4. The coalition politics of much HIV/AIDS activism that rethinks identity in terms of affinity rather than essence^[18] and therefore includes not only lesbians and gay men but also bisexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, people with AIDS, health workers, and parents and friends of gays; the pressing recognition that discourse is not a separate or second-order "reality"^[19]
5. The constant emphasis on contestation in resisting dominant depictions of HIV and AIDS and representing them otherwise^{[20][dead link]}. The rethinking of traditional understandings of the workings of power in cross-hatched struggles over epidemiology, scientific research, public health and immigration policy^[21]

The material effects of AIDS contested many cultural assumptions about identity, justice, desire and knowledge, which some scholars felt challenged the entire system of Western thought,^[22] believing it maintained the health and immunity of epistemology: "the psychic presence of AIDS signifies a collapse of identity and difference that refuses to be abjected from the systems of self-knowledge."^[23] Thus queer theory and AIDS become interconnected because each is articulated through a postmodernist understanding of the death of the subject and both understand identity as an ambivalent site.

The role of language[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

For language use as associated with sexual identity, see Lavender linguistics.

Queer theory is likened to language because it is never static, but is ever-evolving. Richard Norton suggests that the existence of queer language is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels from an external mainstream culture.

Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured through the use of language. Heteronormativity was the main focus of discourse, where heterosexuality was viewed as normal and any deviations, such as homosexuality, as abnormal or "queer". Even before the founding of ‘queer theory’ the Modern Language Association (MLA) came together for a convention in 1973 for the first formal gay-studies seminar due to the rise of lesbian and gay writers and issues of gay and lesbian textuality. The convention was entitled “ Gay Literature: Teaching and Research.” In 1981, the MLA established the Division of Gay Studies in Language and Literature.

Media and other creative works[link]

Many queer theorists have produced creative works that reflect theoretical perspectives in a wide variety of media. For example, science fiction authors such as Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler feature many values and themes from queer theory in their work. Patrick Califia's published fiction also draws heavily on concepts and ideas from queer theory. Some lesbian feminist novels written in the years immediately following Stonewall, such as Lover by Bertha Harris or Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, can be said to anticipate the terms of later queer theory.

In film, the genre christened by B. Ruby Rich as New Queer Cinema in 1992 continues, as Queer Cinema, to draw heavily on the prevailing critical climate of queer theory; a good early example of this is the Jean Genet-inspired movie Poison by the director Todd Haynes. In fan fiction, the genre known as slash fiction rewrites straight or nonsexual relationships to be gay, bisexual, and queer in a sort of campy cultural appropriation. Ann Herendeen's Pride/Prejudice,^[24] for example, narrates a steamy affair between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, the mutually devoted heroes of Jane Austen's much-adapted novel. And in music, some Queercore groups and zines could be said to reflect the values of queer theory.^[25]

Queer theorists analyze texts and challenge the cultural notions of "straight" ideology; that is, does "straight" imply heterosexuality as normal or is everyone potentially gay? As Ryan states: "It is only the laborious imprinting of heterosexual norms that cuts away those potentials and manufactures heterosexuality as the dominant sexual format."^[26] For example, Hollywood pursues the "straight" theme as being the dominant theme to outline what masculine is. This is particularly noticeable in gangster films, action films and westerns, which never have "weak" (read: homosexual) men playing the heroes, with the recent exception of the film Brokeback Mountain. Queer theory looks at destabilizing and shifting the boundaries of these cultural constructions.

New Media artists have a long history of queer theory inspired works, including cyberfeminism works, porn films like I.K.U. which feature transgender cyborg hunters and "Sharing is Sexy", an "open source porn laboratory", using social software, creative commons licensing and netporn to explore queer sexualities beyond the male/female binary.^{[citation needed]}

Queer theology[link]

Queer Theology is a term for the field of theology being undertaken from the perspective of Queer Theory.

The term is a neologism, originating in the 1990s.^[27] A "pro-feminist gay theology" was proposed by J. M. Clark and G. McNeil in 1992, and a "queer theology" by Robert Goss in Jesus acted up: A gay and lesbian manifesto (1993).^[28]

Criticism[link]

Typically, critics of queer theory are concerned that the approach obscures or glosses altogether the material conditions that underpin discourse.^[29] Tim Edwards argues that queer theory extrapolates too broadly from textual analysis in undertaking an examination of the social.^[29] Adam Green argues that queer theory ignores the social and institutional conditions within which lesbians and gays live.^[30] For example, queer theory dismantles social contingency in some cases (homosexual subject positions) while recuperating social contingency in others (racialized subject positions). Thus, not all queer theoretical work is as faithful to its deconstructionist roots.

Queer theory's commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay" subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse.^[31] Thus, queer theory cannot be a framework for examining selves or subjectivities—including those that accrue by race and class—but rather, must restrict its analytic focus to discourse.^[32] Hence, sociology and queer theory are regarded as methodologically and epistemologically incommensurable frameworks ^[32] by critics such as Adam Isaiah Green. Thus Green writes that Warner, in an introductory section,^[33] Michael Warner (1990s) draws out the possibility of queer theory as a kind of critical intervention in social theory (radical deconstructionism); despite this, he weaves back and forth between the reification and deconstruction of sexual identity. Green argues that Warner begins the volume by invoking an ethnic identity politics, solidified around a specific social cleavage and a discussion of the importance of deconstructing notions of lesbian and gay identities; but, despite its radical deconstructionism, it constructs the queer subject or self in largely conventional terms: as lesbian and gay people bound by homophobic institutions and practices. So, one of the leading volumes of queer theory engages the subject via conventional sociological epistemologies that conceive of subject positions constituted through systems of stratification and organized around shared experience and identity. In other way, for Barnard,^[34] any consideration of sexuality must include inextricability with racialized subjectivities. Adam Green argues that Barnard implicitly rejects the queer theoretical conceptions of sexuality on the grounds that such work fails to account for particularity of racialized sexualities. He reasons that the failure arises because queer theorists are themselves white, and therefore operate from the particularity of a white racial standpoint. Barnard aspires to recuperate an analysis of race in queer theory, proposing that the deconstructionist epistemology of queer theory can be used to decompose a white queerness (first) in order to recover a racialized queerness (second). Thus, Adam Green argues that Barnard’s attempt to bring social contingency into queer theory violates the core epistemological premise of queer theory; in fact, by proposing that queer theory capture racialized subject positions, Barnard reinstates what it means to be a person of colour. His critique of the white subject position of queer theorists is itself a testimony to the stability of the social order and the power of social categories to mark a particular kind of experience, of subjectivity and, in turn, of queer author. He backs down the road of a decidedly sociological analysis of subject position and the self. Finally, Jagose^[35] Green observes that Jagose aims toward an analysis of social cleavages, including those accruing by race and ethnicity. Thus, on the one, Jagose underscores the strong deconstructionist epistemological premise of the term queer and queer theory more generally. Yet, she goes on to analyze identities and sexualities “inflected by heterosexuality, race, gender and ethnicity”. Thus Adam Green states that by advocating the incorporation of social contingency in this way, Jagose offers neither the critical edge of queer theory nor the clarity of standpoint theory. However, on the topic of race, Jagose asserted that for a black lesbian, the thing of utmost importance is her lesbianism, rather than her race. Many gays and lesbians of color attacked this approach, accusing it of re-inscribing an essentially white identity into the heart of gay or lesbian identity (Jagose, 1996).^[36]

The criticism of queer theory can be divided in three main ideas^[37]:

• It has a failing itineration, the “subjectless critique” of queer studies
• The unsustainable analysis of this failing self
• The methodological implication that scholars of sexuality end up reiterating and consolidating social categories

Foucault's account of the modern construction of the homosexual, a starting point for much work in Queer Theory, is itself challenged by Rictor Norton, using the Molly House as one counter-example of a distinctly homosexual subculture before 1836.^[38] He critiques the idea that people distinctly identifying in ways now associated with being gay did not exist before the medical construction of homosexual pathology in his book The Myth of the Modern Homosexual.^[39]

Queer theory underestimates the Foucauldian insight that power produces not just constraint, but also, pleasure, according to Barry Adam (2000) and Adam Isaiah Green (2010). Adam suggests that sexual identity categories, such as "gay", can have the effect of expanding the horizon of what is imaginable in a same-sex relationship, including a richer sense of the possibilities of same-sex love and dyadic commitment.^[40] And Green argues that queer is itself an identity category that some self-identified "queer theorists" and "queer activists" use to consolidate a subject-position outside of the normalizing regimes of gender and sexuality.^[41] These examples call into question the degree to which identity categories need be thought of as negative, in the evaluative sense of that term, as they underscore the self-determining potentials of the care of the self – an idea advanced first by Foucault in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality.

The role of queer theory, and specifically its replacement of historical and sociological scholarship on lesbian and gay people's lives with the theorising of lesbian and gay issues, and the displacement of gay and lesbian studies by gender and queer studies, has been criticised by activist and writer Larry Kramer.^{[42][dead link][43][44]} Kramer reports on a retrograde book by Richard Godbeer, a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Miami, called The Overflowing of Friendship. Kramer criticizes Godbeer’s account of 18th century Colonial times. Kramer writes, “Godbeer is hell-bent on convincing us that two men in Colonial America could have exceedingly obsessive and passionate relationships (he called them, variously, ‘sentimental,’ ‘loving,’ ‘romantic’) . . . [men would] spend many a night in bed together talking their hearts out, without the issue of sex arising in any way.” ^[45] Kramer does not agree with this theory and believes that the notion the same-sex sexual relationships and experiences existed.

Another criticism is that queer theory, in part because it typically has recourse to a very technical jargon, is written by a narrow elite for that narrow elite. It is therefore class biased and also, in practice, only really known and referenced at universities and colleges (Malinowitz, 1993).^[36]

An initial criticism on queer theory is that precisely ‘queer’ does not refer to any specific sexual status or gender object choice For example Halperin (1995) ^[36] allows that straight persons may be ‘ queer,’ which some believe, robs gays and lesbians of the distinctiveness of what causes them to be marginalized. It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a sexual identity (Jagose, 1996).^[36]

Additionally, since queer theory refuses any reference to standard ideas of normality, cannot make crucial distinctions. For example, queer theorists usually argue that one of the advantages of the term ‘queer’ is that it includes transsexuals, sado-masochists, and other marginalized sexualities. How far does this extend? Is transgenerational sex (pedophilia) permissible?^{[citation needed]}

Post–queer theory[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The problems of capturing identity and a subject in queer theory have not gone unnoticed. Fifteen years into the development, there is now a significant literature that demonstrates epistemological, methodological and political shortcomings attendant to its deconstructionist project.

At the end of the 2000s, some academics have proposed a post–queer theory to resolve the inadequacies of queer theory, namely to have real-life impact on the queer and broader communities.

Future directions: phenomenology and queer theory[link]

In response to the criticisms that queer theory has failed to address the real-life experiences of queer persons, several theorists have argued for a return to experience-based theorizing, though not of the kind seen in 1970s second-wave feminist theory. In order to avoid the trappings of a naive reading of experience and the inadequacies of identity politics, theorists, including Sara Ahmed,^[46] David Ross Fryer,^[47] and Sara Heinamaa,^[48] have posited phenomenology as a starting point for doing queer theory.

See also[link]

Theorists[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Adam, B. 2000. "Love and Sex in Constructing Identity Among Men Who Have Sex With Men." International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 5(4):325–29.
• Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology, 2006
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble, 1990.
• Edelman, Lee. No Future, 2004
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, volume I: La Volonté de savoir, 1976.
• Fryer, David. Thinking Queerly, 2010.
• Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, 1995.
• Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place, 2005
• Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory, 1996.
• Miskolci, Richard. "Queer Theory and Sociology: the challenging analysis of normalization", 2009.
• Preciado, Beatriz. "Manifesto Contra-sexual", 2002.
• Probyn, Elspeth. Outside Belongings, 1996.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men, 1985.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet, 1990.
• Turner, William B. A Genealogy of Queer Theory, 2000.
• Wiegman, Robyn. Object Lessons, 2012.
• Wilchins, Riki. Gender Theory, Queer Theory, 2004.
• Rayter, Scott. He Who Laughs Last: Comic Representations of AIDS, 2003.

External links[link]

• Trikster – Nordic Queer Journal

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Colin Wilson
Pictured in Cornwall
Born	(1931-06-26) 26 June 1931 (age 81) Leicester, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Author
Nationality	English
Period	1956-present
Genres	Non-fiction and fiction
Literary movement	Angry Young Men
Notable work(s)	The Outsider The Occult
Influences Bernard Shaw, G. I. Gurdjieff, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Abraham Maslow, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, Jean-Paul Sartre
Influenced Gary Lachman, Robert Anton Wilson,
www.colinwilsonworld.co.uk

Colin Henry Wilson (born 26 June 1931) is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism.

Early biography[link]

Born and raised in Leicester, England,^[1] Wilson left school at 16. He worked in factories and at various occupations, and read in his spare time.^[2] Gollancz published the then 24-year-old Wilson's The Outsider in 1956; the work examines the role of the social "outsider" in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent van Gogh; Wilson discusses his perception of social alienation in their work. The book became a best-seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain.^[3]

The inside cover's blurb reads:

The Outsider is the seminal work on alienation, creativity and the modern mind-set. First published over thirty years ago, it made its youthful author England's most controversial intellectual.

Wilson became associated with the "Angry Young Men" of British literature. He contributed to Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and wrote a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men.^[4][5] Some viewed Wilson and his friends Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd as a sub-group of the "Angries", more concerned with "religious values" than with liberal or socialist politics.^[6] Critics on the left swiftly labeled them as fascist; commentator Kenneth Allsop called them "the law givers".^[6][7]

[edit] Life and works after The Outsider

After the initial success of Wilson's first work, critics universally panned Religion and the Rebel (1957). Time magazine published a review, headlined "Scrambled Egghead", that pilloried the book.^[8]

Other non-fiction writing[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2010)

Wilson has written non-fiction books on metaphysical and occult themes. In 1971, he published The Occult: A History featuring interpretations on Aleister Crowley, George Gurdjieff, Helena Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Mesmer, Grigori Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Paracelsus (among others). He also wrote a markedly unsympathetic biography of Crowley, Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast, and has written biographies on other spiritual and psychological visionaries, including Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Rudolf Steiner, and P. D. Ouspensky.

Originally, Wilson focused on the cultivation of what he called "Faculty X", which he saw as leading to an increased sense of meaning, and on abilities such as telepathy and the awareness of other energies. In his later work he suggests the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits, which he personally analyzes as an active member of the Ghost Club.

He has also written non-fiction books on crime, ranging from encyclopedias to studies of serial killing. He has an ongoing interest in the life and times of Jack the Ripper and in sex crime in general.

Fiction[link]

Wilson explored his ideas on human potential and consciousness in fiction, mostly detective fiction or science fiction, including several Cthulhu Mythos pieces.

Like his non-fiction work, much of Wilson's fictional output from Ritual in the Dark (1960) onwards has concerned itself with the psychology of murder — especially that of serial killing. However, he has also written science fiction of a philosophical bent, including the Spider-World series.

In The Strength to Dream (1961) Wilson attacked H. P. Lovecraft as "sick" and as "a bad writer" who had "rejected reality" — but he grudgingly praised Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Out of Time" as capable science-fiction. August Derleth, incensed by Wilson's treatment of Lovecraft in The Strength to Dream, then dared Wilson to write what became The Mind Parasites — to expound his philosophical ideas in the guise of fiction.^{[citation needed]} In the preface to The Mind Parasites, Wilson concedes that Lovecraft "Far more than Hemingway or Faulkner, or even Kafka, is a symbol of the outsider-artist in the 20th century." and indulges in a mental experiment: "what would have happened if Lovecraft had possessed a private income--enough, say, to allow him to spend his winters in Italy and his summers in Greece or Switzerland?" answering that in his opinion "He would undoubtedly have produced less, but what he did produce would have been highly polished, without the pulp magazine cliches that disfigure so much of his work. And he would have given free rein to his love of curious and remote erudition, so that his work would have been, in some respect, closer to that of Anatole France or the contemporary Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges"^[9] Wilson also discusses Lovecraft in Order of Assassins (1972) and in the prefatory note to The Philosopher's Stone (1969). His short novel The Return of the Lloigor (1969/1974) also has roots in the Cthulhu Mythos - its central character works on the real book the Voynich Manuscript but discovers it to be a mediaeval Arabic version of the Necronomicon - as does his 2002 novel The Tomb of the Old Ones.

Adaptions[link]

Tobe Hooper directed the film Lifeforce, based on Wilson's novel The Space Vampires.^[10] After its release, Colin Wilson recalled that author John Fowles regarded the film adaptation of Fowles' own novel The Magus as the worst film adaptation of a novel ever. Wilson told Fowles there was now a worse one, the film adaption of Lifeforce.

Bibliography[link]

• The Outsider (1956)
• Religion and the Rebel (1957)
• "The Frenchman" (short story, Evening Standard 22 August 1957)
• The Age of Defeat (US title The Stature of Man) (1959)
• Ritual in the Dark (1960)
• Encyclopedia of Murder (with Patricia Pitman, 1961)
• Adrift in Soho (1961)
• "Watching the Bird" (short story, Evening News 12 September 1961)
• "Uncle Tom and the Police Constable" (short story, Evening News 23 October 1961)
• "He Could not Fail" (short story, Evening News 29 December 1961)
• The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination (1962)
• "Uncle and the Lion" (short story, Evening News 28 September 1962)
• "Hidden Bruise" (short story, Evening News 3 December 1962)
• Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963)
• The World of Violence (US title The Violent World of Hugh Greene) (1963)
• Man Without a Shadow (US title The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme) (1963)
• "The Wooden Cubes" (short story, Evening News 27 June 1963)
• Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964)
• Brandy of the Damned (1964; later expanded and reprinted as Chords and Discords/Colin Wilson On Music)
• Necessary Doubt (1964)
• Beyond the Outsider (1965)
• Eagle and Earwig (1965)
• Sex and the Intelligent Teenager (1966)
• Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966)
• The Glass Cage (1966)
• The Mind Parasites (1967)
• Voyage to a Beginning (1969)
• A Casebook of Murder (1969)
• Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969)
• The Philosopher's Stone (1969) ISBN 978-0-213-17790-4
• The Return of the Lloigor (first published 1969 in the anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos; revised separate edition, Village Press, London, 1974).
• Poetry and Mysticism (1969; subsequently significantly expanded in 1970)
• "The Return of the Lloigor" (short story in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth, 1969; later revised and published as a separate book)
• L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)
• The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (with E. H. Visiak and J.B. Pick, 1970)
• Strindberg (1970)
• The God of the Labyrinth (US title The Hedonists) (1970)
• The Killer (US title Lingard) (1970)
• The Occult: A History (1971)
• The Black Room (1971)
• Order of Assassins: The Psychology of Murder (1972)
• New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)
• Strange Powers (1973)
• "Tree" by Tolkien (1973)
• Hermann Hesse (1974)
• Wilhelm Reich (1974)
• Jorge Luis Borges (1974)
• Hesse-Reich-Borges: Three Essays (1974)
• Ken Russell: A Director in Search of a Hero (1974)
• A Book of Booze (1974)
• The Schoolgirl Murder Case (1974)
• The Unexplained (1975)
• Mysterious Powers (US title They Had Strange Powers) (1975)
• The Craft of the Novel (1975)
• Enigmas and Mysteries (1975)
• The Geller Phenomenon (1975)
• The Space Vampires (1976)
• Colin Wilson's Men of Mystery (US title Dark Dimensions) (with various authors, 1977)
• Mysteries (1978)
• Mysteries of the Mind (with Stuart Holroyd, 1978)
• The Haunted Man: The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (1979)
• "Timeslip" (short story in Aries I, edited by John Grant, 1979)
• Science Fiction as Existentialism (1980)
• Starseekers (1980)
• Frankenstein's Castle: the Right Brain-Door to Wisdom (1980)
• The Book of Time, edited by John Grant and Colin Wilson (1980)
• The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff (1980)
• The Directory of Possibilities, edited by Colin Wilson and John Grant (1981)
• Poltergeist!: A Study in Destructive Haunting (1981)
• Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus (1981)
• The Quest for Wilhelm Reich (1981)
• The Goblin Universe (with Ted Holiday, 1982)
• Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz (1983)
• Encyclopedia of Modern Murder, 1962-82 (1983)
• "A Novelization of Events in the Life and Death of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin," in Tales of the Uncanny (Reader's Digest Association, 1983; an abbreviated version of the later The Magician from Siberia)
• The Psychic Detectives: The Story of Psychometry and Paranormal Crime Detection (1984)
• [A Criminal History of Mankind][1] (1984), revised and updated (2005)
• Lord of the Underworld: Jung and the Twentieth Century (1984)
• The Janus Murder Case (1984)
• The Bicameral Critic (1985)
• The Essential Colin Wilson (1985)
• Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985)
• Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence of Life After Death (1985)
• The Personality Surgeon (1985)
• An Encyclopedia of Scandal. Edited by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman (1986)
• The Book of Great Mysteries. Edited by Colin Wilson and Dr. Christopher Evans (1986)
• An Essay on the 'New' Existentialism (1988)
• The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness (1986)
• Spider World: The Tower (1987)
• Spider World: The Delta (1987)
• Marx Refuted - The Verdict of History, edited by Colin Wilson (with contributions also) and Ronald Duncan, Bath, (UK), (1987), ISBN 0-906798-71-X
• Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987)
• The Musician as 'Outsider'. (1987)
• The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1987)
• Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict (with Robin Odell, 1987)
• Autobiographical Reflections (1988)
• The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988)
• Beyond the Occult (1988)
• The Mammoth Book of True Crime (1988)
• The Magician from Siberia (1988)
• The Decline and Fall of Leftism (1989)
• Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection (1989)
• Existentially Speaking: Essays on the Philosophy of Literature (1989)
• Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence (1990)
• Spider World: The Magician (1992)
• Mozart's Journey to Prague (1992)
• The Strange Life of P.D. Ouspensky (1993)
• Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1993)
• Outline of the Female Outsider (1994)
• A Plague of Murder (1995)
• From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996)
• An Extraordinary Man in the Age of Pigmies: Colin Wilson on Henry Miller (1996)
• The Unexplained Mysteries of the Universe (1997) ISBN 0-7513-5983-1
• The Atlas of Sacred Places (1997)
• Below the Iceberg: Anti-Sartre and Other Essays (reissue with essays on postmodernism, 1998)
• The Corpse Garden (1998)
• The Books in My Life (1998)
• Alien Dawn (1999)
• The Devil's Party (US title Rogue Messiahs) (2000)
• The Atlantis Blueprint (with Rand Flem-Ath, 2000)
• Illustrated True Crime: A Photographic History (2002)
• The Tomb of the Old Ones (with John Grant, 2002)
• Spider World: Shadowlands (2002)
• Dreaming To Some Purpose (2004) - autobiography
• World Famous UFOs (2005)
• Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals (2006)
• Crimes of Passion: The Thin Line Between Love and Hate (2006)
• The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men (2007)
• Manhunters:Criminal Profilers & Their Search for the World's Most Wanted Serial Killers (2007)
• 'The Death of God' and other plays (edited by Colin Stanley) (2008)
• Super Consciousness (2009)
• Existential Criticism: selected book reviews (edited by Colin Stanley) (2009)

Unpublished works:

• The Anatomy of Human Greatness (non-fiction, written 1964; Maurice Bassett plans to publish this work electronically)
• Metamorphosis of the Vampire (fiction, written 1992-94)^[11]

Further reading[link]

• Bendau, Clifford P. Colin Wilson: The Outsider and Beyond (1979), San Bernardino: Borgo Press ISBN 0-89370-229-3
• Campion, Sidney R. The Sound Barrier: a study of the ideas of Colin Wilson (2011), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-81-0
• Dalgleish, Tim The Guerilla Philosopher: Colin Wilson and Existentialism (1993), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-47-0
• Dossor, Howard F. Colin Wilson: the bicameral critic: selected shorter writings (1985), Salem: Salem House ISBN 0-88162-047-5
• Dossor, Howard F. Colin Wilson: the man and his mind (1990) Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books ISBN 1-85230-176-7
• Dossor, Howard F. The Philosophy of Colin Wilson: three perspectives (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-58-6
• Greenwell, Tom Chepstow Road: a literary comedy in two acts (2002) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-78-0
• Lachman, Gary Two essays on Colin Wilson (1994), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-52-7
• Moorhouse, John & Newman, Paul Colin Wilson, two essays (1988), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-11-X
• Newman, Paul Murder as an Antidote for Boredom: the novels of Laura Del Rivo, Colin Wilson and Bill Hopkins (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-57-8
• Robertson, Vaughan Wilson as Mystic(2001), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-74-8
• Salwak, Dale (ed) Interviews with Britain's Angry Young Men (1984) San Bernardino: Borgo Press ISBN 0-89370-259-5
• Shand, John & Lachman, Gary Colin Wilson as Philosopher (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-59-4
• Smalldon, Jeffrey Human Nature Stained: Colin Wilson and the existential study of modern murder (1991) Nottingham: Paupers'Press ISBN 0-946650-28-4
• Spurgeon, Brad Colin Wilson: philosopher of optimism, (2006), Manchester: Michael Butterworth ISBN 0-9552672-0-X
• Stanley, Colin (ed) Around the Outsider: essays presented to Colin Wilson on the occasion of his 80th birthday, (2011), Winchester: O-Books ISBN 978-1-84694-668-4
• Stanley, Colin (ed) Colin Wilson, a celebration: essays and recollections (1988), London: Cecil Woolf ISBN 0-900821-91-4
• Stanley, Colin The Colin Wilson Bibliography 1956-2010 (2011) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-64-0
• Stanley, Colin Colin Wilson's 'Outsider Cycle': a guide for students (2009). Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-96-9
• Stanley, Colin 'The Nature of Freedom' and other essays (1990), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-17-9
• Tredell, Nicolas The Novels of Colin Wilson (1982) London: Vision Press ISBN 0-85478-035-1
• Trowell, Michael Colin Wilson, the positive approach (1990), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-25-X
• Weigel, John A Colin Wilson (1975) Boston: Twayne Publishers ISBN 0-8057-1575-4

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Colin Wilson

• Colin Wilson World - admirer-run site with some Wilson contributions^{[dead link]}
• The Colin Wilson Page - This was the first Colin Wilson site, first set up in 1996. It is no longer available, but is still archived by the Wayback Machine.^{[dead link]}
• Abraxas - Wilson-related journal^{[dead link]}
• 'Suddenly Awakened', for Poetic Mind.
• The Phenomenology of Excess A multimedia Colin Wilson site, approved by its subject
• Audio Interview by William H. Kennedy Sphinx Radio, 9/28/08
• Interview by Gary Lachman, Fortean Times, October 2004
• Colin Wilson's August 2005 interview @ The New York Times
• Creel Commission Interview with Colin Wilson.
• The Sons of TC Lethbridge - Colin's collaboration with the prog-rock band 'The Sons of TC Lethbridge'.^{[dead link]}
• Harry Ritchie, 'Look back in wonder', The Guardian (Review section) (Saturday, 12 August 2006)
• Entry in The Literary Encyclopedia by Colin Stanley
• Colin Wilson interviewed on poetry and the peak experience
• Colin Wilson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Lyrics
• Paupers' Press (the home of Colin Wilson Studies).

Richard Blanco (born Spain) is an American poet.

Life[link]

He immigrated with his Cuban exile family to Miami where he was raised and educated.

He graduated from Florida International University in Civil Engineering (1991) and Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (1997), where he studied with Campbell McGrath.

Since 1999, he traveled and lived in Guatemala, and Brazil. He taught at Georgetown University, American University, and Central Connecticut State University.^[1][2] He lives in Miami.^[3]

His work has appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares,^[4] Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly Review, New England Review, and Americas Review. Blanco is part of the online Letras Latinas Oral History Project archives.

Awards[link]

• 1988 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
• John Ciardi Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference
• Florida Artist Fellowship^[5]
• Residency Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Works[link]

• "Last Lines; Mother Picking Produce; What Las Palmas Mean:; Last Night in Havana; Tia Olivia Serves Wallace Stevens a Cuban Egg". Beltway Poetry Quarterly 5 (1). Winter 2004. http://washingtonart.com/beltway/blanco.html. 
• "Somewhere to Paris", Poetry Foundation
• "Abuela's Voices: A Chronicle". Ploughshares. Spring 2004. http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=7912. ^{[dead link][dead link]}

• City of a Hundred Fires. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8229-5683-9. 
• Directions to the Beach of the Dead. University of Arizona Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-8165-2479-2. 
• Nowhere But Here. Hill-Stead Museum. 2004. ISBN 978-0-9744245-1-4. 

Anthologies[link]

• Michael Collier, ed. (2000). The Best American Poetry 2000. University Press of New England. 
• David Lehman, ed. (April 2003). Great American Prose Poems. Scribner Book Company. ISBN 978-0-7432-4350-6. 
• The Breadloaf Anthology of New American Poets. Bread Loaf Writers' Conference/Middlebury. March 1, 2000. ISBN 978-0-87451-964-8. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Richard Blanco", TRES Review, Jack Anders Summer 2004

Monique Wittig (July 13, 1935 – January 3, 2003) was a French author and feminist theorist^[1] who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964. Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.^[2]