In and Against Nature: Goethe on Homosexuality and Heterotextuality

This seminal essay applies queer theory and deconstructive thought to Goethe’s thinking on male-male desire, concluding that “like pederasty, the text should be a pharmakon, both natural and unnatural, meaning both itself and the Other–in a word, heterotextual.” It appeared in the important collection, Outing Goethe and His Age, which brought queer theory to eighteenth-century German studies.

“In and Against Nature:  Goethe on Homosexuality and Heterotextuality,” Outing Goethe and His Age, ed. Alice Kuzniar (Stanford:  Stanford UP,  1996) 94-110.