There is but one required class in the 1-year Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at UChicago. Namely, "Perspectives in Social Sciences Analysis." "Perspectives" intends to survey the nine different approaches - NOT disciplines - of the social sciences. These discipline-spanning perspectives have distinctive theoretical features, analogies, pioneers and lineages, and the like. They include historical narrative, rational choice, Marxism, structural functionalism, etc. By presenting this lay of the land, the program indoctrinates us with its particular, highly Chicagoan, meta-method and meta-perspective. More on this later.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
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