Certainly, University of Michigan professor David Halperin is fully aware of all the ho-humming that putting the words poetics+gay+culture together inevitably gives way to, but he handles the objections easily in his genre study in progress.
In the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference’s keynote address at the University Wisconsin, Halperin told the audience that individual traits don’t lead to an understanding of shared culture; therefore, we refer to discourse, genre and convention. Halperin’s study of gay male culture concerns itself with generic classifications and thereby, poetics.
So as not to misrepresent Halperin any further than I may already have, I’ll just say that his use of genre criticism and discourse theory to theorize gay male culture is absolutely fascinating.
Keep your eyes peeled for How To Be Gay: Male Homosexuality as a Cultural Practice (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press).
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