Since I deserted academia rather peremptorily over a year ago, I consider
myself an unreliable witness with regard to its vices; anything I said might
quite reasonably be taken as an attempt at constructing or bolstering an
alibi. Still. The position as I recall it was that "the" margins were
fascinating areas of neglected exotica; the rhetorical move was to underline
their marginality, make as much as possible of the failure of the alleged
mainstream to perform the rituals of recognition that would bind them into
the canon, and then to perform the rituals of recognition over them oneself
in full academic garb: be the discoverer of new lands populated by men whose
heads do grow beneath their shoulders.
On the topic of the homosocial, I am fairly well acquainted with homophobic
paranoia, having attended a boys-only independent school throughout my teens.
The male friendships that most sustained me were continually in danger of
being stigmatised. Boys caught crossing the line were openly bullied and
ostracised. The teacher who ran the Christian Union addressed an assembly one
morning and told us all that homosexual desires were sinful and must be
thwarted and renounced...
Dominic
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