Epistemology of the Closet by Eva Kosofsky Sedgwick

'Epistemology of the closet' is an informative and interesting book. It is informative as it looks into the very physiognomy of 'closet,' and it is interesting because it assays the work of some great authors such as Proust, Joyce, Lawrence, and Wilde. Even though when one is familiar with these writers, it is exciting to look at their works in the context of 'Closet.'

'Closet' is not something that happens naturally. In countless personal gay narratives, one often hears, 'oh I thought I were the only one,' 'this is only happening to me.' These are genuinely felt and lived experiences. It needs a lot of effort to learn that this happens because all everything is understood and assigned meanings in rigid, normative binaries; therefore, whatever lies outside these binaries is 'closeted.' So what seems unique, singular, abnormal, strange, to most gay men is not innocent, it is strategically constituted.

The author explores the 'closet' by examining the homo/ heterosexual binaries, how one is constructed to reinforce the other. The more distinct these binaries are, the easier it is to assign people different identity markers. Prior to the end of 19th century, men were men, but since then, they have been transformed into homo and Heterosexual men, whereas no such distinction existed before. According to Eva Kosofsky, the construction of 'homosexual man' has been a presiding term of the 20th century, one that has the same, primary importance for all modern Western identity and social organization as do the more traditionally visible cruxes of gender, class, and race. This new binary has affected the western culture through its ineffaceable marking of myriad categories prevalent in our times; secrecy/disclosure/m knowledge/ignorance, health/illness, art/kitsch, discipline/terrorism, for instance.

As I read this book, I also thought that it is also in the modern/industrial phase, when agrarian societies losing their firm grip on how the societies are structured. The progress in modern science is making it possible to imagine the world differently. It is also this phase that effected democracy. Gender-based equality – an unimaginable proposition before – is being advocated. The empires – big and small – everywhere are brought down. The mushrooming of cities and industrial units changed the world drastically. The changed world, at least in the western geographies, produced other markers of identities, other ways of being in the world. For instance, for multiple reasons, modern cities do not control human bodies and desires in the way agrarian societies do. Therefore, even today, the industrially developed world is far more evolved when it comes to the rights of minority sexual minorities; whereas in the pre-industrial societies, the term 'closet' is still irrelevant because the homosexual man has not arrived there. Not yet.

Again, no matter, how much one is tempted to denounce Marx; it is amazing to see how good his theories of base and super-structures are in explaining the world. On one hand, I feel glad reading, for instance, about the episteme of the 'closet.' it gives the impression that mankind is evolving in a linear fashion. However, the more one reads and reflects and looks at the discourse producing machinery, it is unsettling to note that how easy it is to produce – very specific and largely pragmatic, not necessarily motivated by any sense of righteousness, ethics, or the greater good for humanity – knowledge systems so that people behave.

In the end, I must add that the chapters on Proust and Wilde can still be enjoyed even if one has not read them. In fact, on my second reading of these chapters, I tried to read them as if I were not familiar with their works and I found them still accessible. The book, of course, demands patience. The content in it is, after all, the work of a lifetime.