Dr Ben Nichols (IASH Fellow): Work in Progress talk. Quality Control: Literary Aesthetics and Lesbian & Gay Liberation
In this paper, I'll give an overview of my current project on the role of literary judgment in gay liberation. While historical accounts of Anglo-American liberation have often focused on the activism, campaigning work and legislative breakthroughs of LGBT people in the postwar years, cultural institutions like LGBT bookshops, publishing houses and literary periodicals have also had a significant role to play in determining what counts as an effective and meaningful subculture. Focusing on literary reviews and criticism, I will note how commentators have often judged the political value of literary works by LGBT people on the basis of their adherence to received notions of good literary quality. For these commentators, aesthetic quality has been an index of social equality. But where does this leave works deemed to be aesthetically poor? I will sketch an initial case study on the genre of the "coming out" story. Even though they are widely maligned as boring because of their reliance on stock plots and scenarios, I suggest that coming-out stories and the reactions they inspire might nevertheless be able to tell us something about producing culture for and from within a minority population.