Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of PleasureAgainst queer theory's long-suffering romance with mourning and melancholia and a national agenda that urges homosexuals to renounce pleasure if they want to be taken seriously, Acts of Gaiety seeks to reanimate notions of "gaiety" as a political value for LGBT activism by recovering earlier mirthful modes of political performance. The book mines the archives of lesbian-feminist activism of the 1960s–70s, highlighting the outrageous gaiety—including camp, kitsch, drag, guerrilla theater, zap actions, rallies, manifestos, pageants, and parades alongside "legitimate theater”-- at the center of the social and theatrical performances of the era. Juxtaposing figures such as Valerie Solanas and Jill Johnston with more recent performers and activists including Hothead Paisan, Bitch and Animal, and the Five Lesbian Brothers, Sara Warner shows how reclaiming this largely discarded and disavowed past elucidates possibilities for being and belonging. Acts of Gaiety explores the mutually informing histories of gayness as politics and as joie de vivre, along with the centrality of liveliness to queer performance and protest. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Valerie Solanass Theater of the Ludicrous | 31 |
Marriage Protests 1969 and 2009 | 72 |
Jill Johnstons Joker Citizenship | 105 |
The Maladapted Hothead Paisan a Lesbian Comedy of Terrors | 139 |
The Tragic Consequences of Homoliberalism in the Five Lesbian Brothers Oedipus at Palm Springs
| 163 |
Afterword | 189 |
Notes | 195 |
| 231 | |
| 249 | |
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activists acts of gaiety aesthetic Andy Warhol archives artists audience Bongi called collective create critical critique cultural DiMassa Dolan dramatic Duke University Press dyke event feel female feminism Five Lesbian Brothers Fluxus forms Fran gay liberation gay marriage gays and lesbians gender heterosexual Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist homoliberalism homonormativity homosexuals Hothead Paisan humor Ibid identity Jill Johnston joker Judith Lauren Berlant Lavender Menace Lesbian and Gay lesbian feminism lesbian feminist Lesbian Nation LGBT movement liberation movement mainstream male Mary Harron Michfest mode musical neoliberal Oedipus at Palm oppression organizations Palm Springs performance play pleasure produce protest queer theory radical riot grrrl Routledge same-sex marriage script SCUM Manifesto SCUMMY sexual minorities sexual politics social Solanas’s staged Terri theater theatrical Ti-Grace Atkinson tion Valerie Solanas Village Voice wedding WITCH woman women women’s liberation WOW Café York zap actions zine