Reviewed by:

• Before Queer Theory: Victorian Aestheticism and the Self by Dustin Friedman
• Travis M. Foster

In his 2009 Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz calls for queer theory to germinate conceptualizations of negativity “starkly different from the version of the negative proposed by the queer antirelationist” (New York UP; 13). In Dustin Friedman’s Before Queer Theory, such germination arises in the meeting of a philosopher (Hegel) and a literary movement (Victorian aestheticism)—a collaboration that not only facilitates the theorization of negativity but also gives queers access to new experiences of freedom grounded in the encounter with art. In such a rich meeting ground, Friedman links negativity to the refusal of social belonging and the generative possibilities to emerge when the self fails to align within those forms of coherence prescribed by queer antagonistic worlds. It is a compelling and generative argument that will reward not merely Victorianists but also scholars interested in queer studies, aesthetics, and phenomenology.

The book’s conceptual linchpin is Hegel’s Negativität, which, as Friedman glosses it, names a process through which “consciousness, upon encountering an obstacle, destroys and subsequently rearrange[s] itself to accommodate that obstacle” (4). This process, for the Victorian aesthetes, describes the ideal effect of an encounter with art—particularly the sort of erotic art (sexy sculptures, exquisite figure paintings) that makes its viewers, in the broadest of senses, horny for the forbidden. This effect, moreover, can far more readily be accessed by queers than non-queers because queer desires are unsanctioned desires—desires for which we may have no template—and queer erotic aesthetic experiences quicken through the conflict between what’s desired and what’s forbidden. Hence, as with the more familiar antirelational thesis of queer theory, this notion depends on the social ostracization of queer experiences, expressions, and desires. This is because a certain friction must be in place in order for the encounter to be sufficiently jarring to bring the viewer an experience of obstructed desire, and that friction comes about through the rubbing of the subject’s desire against the society’s denouncing of the same. Unlike the antirelational thesis, however, what Friedman calls the “erotic negativity” of the Victorian aesthetes takes the shattering of the self as a first step toward the assembly of the self or, at least, a reassembly of the self newly and gloriously aslant: “They understood art to be a realm where the commonsense rules of logic are suspended and where the supposedly absolute limits of real-world structures of oppression can be imagined along different lines” (4, 21).

Given what I’ve summed so far, readers will not be surprised that Walter Pater looms large in these pages—with not only the “Conclusion” to The Renaissance, but also essays like [End Page 186] “Diaphaneitè,” “Winckelmann,” and “On Wordsworth” presenting themselves as forgotten cousins politely requesting invitations onto our queer theory syllabi. Pater’s work is the focus of the book’s first two chapters and Friedman introduces the subsequent three chapters— on Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s work under the pseudonym Michael Field—by charting the depth of Pater’s influence. That influence, as Friedman terms it, has been to demonstrate “how, for queers, artistic representations of same-sex desire break down static notions of the self to create a new vision of the autonomous subject” (23). In later work such as the novel Marius the Epicurean, Friedman argues, Pater aimed to develop a “‘queer style’” that would make accessible queer aesthetic experience beyond a specifically queer audience, eliciting “the same ability to transcend tired dialectical stalemates that occur in the mind of the queer aesthete when he encounters homoeroticism in art” (55). Likewise, the Oscar Wilde to emerge in these pages turns queer experience— both his own and his characters’—into an invitation for readers to think about subjectivity and language. Particularly in the novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”, Wilde emerges as a...

审核人：

• 在酷儿理论之前：维多利亚时代的美学与自我达斯汀弗里德曼
• 特拉维斯·福斯特

何塞·埃斯特班·穆尼奥斯 (José Esteban Muñoz)在他 2009 年的《巡航乌托邦：酷儿未来的过去和彼时》中呼吁通过酷儿理论来萌发否定性概念，“与酷儿反关系主义者提出的否定性版本截然不同”（纽约 UP；13）。在达斯汀弗里德曼的酷儿理论之前，这种萌芽产生于哲学家（黑格尔）和文学运动（维多利亚时代的唯美主义）的相遇——这种合作不仅促进了否定性的理论化，而且让酷儿们获得了基于与艺术相遇的新自由体验。在如此丰富的聚会场所，弗里德曼将否定性与拒绝社会归属感以及当自我未能与酷儿对立世界规定的那些连贯形式保持一致时出现的生成可能性联系起来。这是一个令人信服的生成论点，不仅会奖励维多利亚时代的学者，还会奖励对酷儿研究、美学和现象学感兴趣的学者。

这本书的概念关键是黑格尔的否定性，正如弗里德曼所解释的那样，它命名了一个过程，通过该过程“意识在遇到障碍时会破坏并随后重新安排[s]自身以适应该障碍”（4）。对于维多利亚时代的美学家来说，这个过程描述了与艺术相遇的理想效果——尤其是那种色情艺术（性感雕塑、精美的人物画），在最广泛的意义上，它让观众在最广泛的意义上，为禁忌而欲罢不能。此外，与非酷儿相比，酷儿更容易获得这种效果，因为酷儿欲望是未经批准的欲望——我们可能没有模板的欲望——而酷儿色情审美体验通过渴望与禁止之间的冲突而加速。因此，就像人们更熟悉的酷儿理论的反关系论点一样，这个概念取决于对酷儿经历、表达和欲望的社会排斥。这是因为必须存在某种摩擦，才能使相遇足够刺耳，从而给观众带来欲望受阻的体验，而这种摩擦是通过主体的欲望与社会对它的谴责之间的摩擦而产生的。然而，与反关系论点不同的是，弗里德曼所谓的维多利亚时代美学家的“色情消极性”将自我的粉碎作为迈向自我组装的第一步，或者至少是重新组装自我，重新组装： “他们将艺术理解为一个领域，在这个领域中，逻辑的常识规则被暂停，并且可以沿着不同的路线想象现实世界压迫结构的所谓绝对限制”（4, 21）。

鉴于我到目前为止所总结的内容，读者不会对沃尔特·佩特在这些页面中显得格外显眼而感到惊讶——不仅是文艺复兴时期的“结论” ，还有像[End Page 186] 这样的文章“Diaphaneitè”、“Winckelmann”和“On Wordsworth”自称是被遗忘的表亲，礼貌地请求邀请加入我们的酷儿理论教学大纲。佩特的作品是本书前两章的重点，弗里德曼介绍了随后的三章——奥斯卡王尔德、弗农李、凯瑟琳布拉德利和伊迪丝库珀以迈克尔菲尔德笔名的作品——通过描绘佩特影响的深度。正如弗里德曼所说，这种影响一直在证明“对于酷儿来说，同性欲望的艺术表现如何打破自我的静态观念，以创造自主主体的新视野”（23）。在后来的作品如小说马吕斯伊壁鸠鲁弗里德曼认为，佩特的目标是发展一种“‘酷儿风格’”，让酷儿审美体验超越特定的酷儿观众，激发出“同样的能力，超越酷儿审美者遇到时出现在脑海中的疲惫的辩证僵局。艺术中的同性恋”（55）。同样，出现在这些页面中的奥斯卡王尔德将酷儿体验——包括他自己的和他的角色的——变成了对读者思考主观性和语言的邀请。尤其是在中篇小说《WH先生的画像》中，王尔德成为了...