| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
Embracing the CatastropheGay Body Seeks AcceptanceUniversity of WisconsinSuperior This article examines the constitution of gay male identity through embodied performances in Steamworks, a gay male bathhouse in Chicago. Motivated by Kabat-Zinn's (1990) Buddhist conceptualizations of catastrophe and mindfulness, I reflectively track the ways in which desirability influences disconnection and identity negotiation as it occurs within a pervasive, generalized, and highly influential conceptualization of the idealized gay male body. Personal narratives scan experiences at Steamworks in which my bodyless than the "ideal"matters to me and to others culturally. I use Butler's (1990) notion of performativity to propose stylized and normative ways in which subjectivity comes to be through uses of the body.
Key Words: subjectivity gay culture bathhouse performativity narrative aestheticized body Butler mindfulness Boystown
Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 2,
259-281 (2007) This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||

