Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives

Stephen M. Engel; Timothy S. Lyle

Published by New York University Press 2021

Disrupting Dignity

Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives

Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle

In the series LGBTQ Politics

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479852031.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Why LGBTQ+ people must resist the seduction of dignity

In 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the “equal dignity” of marriage recognition, the concept of dignity became a cornerstone for gay rights victories. In Disrupting Dignity, Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle explore the darker side of dignity, tracing its invocation across public health politics, popular culture, and law from the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis to our current moment.

With a compassionate eye, Engel and Lyle detail how politicians, policymakers, media leaders, and even some within LGBTQ+ communities have used the concept of dignity to shame and disempower members of those communities. They convincingly show how dignity—and the subsequent chase to be defined by its terms—became a tool of the state and the marketplace thereby limiting its more radical potential.

Ultimately, Engel and Lyle challenge our understanding of dignity as an unquestioned good. They expose the constraining work it accomplishes and the exclusionary ideas about respectability that it promotes. To restore a lost past and point to a more inclusive future, they assert the worthiness of queer lives beyond dignity’s limits.

Author / Editor information

Engel Stephen M. :

Stephen M. Engel is Professor of Politics at Bates College and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation. He is the author of Fragmented Citizens: The Changing Landscape of Gay and Lesbian Lives, American Politicians Confront the Courts: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power, and The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement.Lyle Timothy S. :

Timothy S. Lyle is an Assistant Professor of English at Iona College. Researching at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, their latest published work appears in African American Review, MELUS, Callaloo, College Language Association Journal, and Journal of West Indian Literature.

Stephen M. Engel is Professor of Politics at Bates College in Maine and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation. He teaches courses in US constitutional law, American Political Development, and LGBTQ+ politics. He is the author of multiple books including Fragmented Citizens: The Changing Landscape of Gay and Lesbian Lives and American Politicians Confront the Courts: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power.

Timothy S. Lyle (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of English at Iona College. They specialize in contemporary African American literature and culture, focusing on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. They have published work on Tyler Perry in Callaloo and Continuum, on Janet Mock in the College Language Association Journal, Callaloo, and MELUS, and on HIV/AIDS narratives in African American Review and The Journal of West Indian Literature.

Reviews

Disrupting Dignity provides one such peek into what is to be gained by refusing dignity, and my expectation is that it will serve as a valuable resource for future scholarship and political praxis oriented toward that queer world of possibility.

Matthew Dean Hindman:
In undertaking such an ambitious, cross-disciplinary, and sweeping conceptual analysis, Engel and Lyle implicitly claim that dignity’s effects are felt everywhere; it enculturates us to accept neoliberalism’s constraints, adhere to predominant understandings of propriety regarding sexual conduct, and tread lightly within a legal system that responds to a limited range of LGBTQ+ interests.

F. Hollis Griffin, author of Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age:
In crisscrossing the humanities and social sciences, Engel and Lyle have put together a truly interdisciplinary project that speaks to many different audiences. Disrupting Dignity makes an original argument in demonstrating the rhetorical violence that ‘dignity,’ specifically, does to the queer worldmaking that happens in gay male sexual spaces.

Julie Novkov, co-author of American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship:
This pathbreaking book weaves together narratives from public health, popular culture, and constitutional law to understand dignity. In Engel and Lyle’s wide-ranging analysis, dignity is bared, not as an uplifting concept that promotes queer recognition and equality, but rather as a device of neoliberal discipline that divides political subjects into insiders and transgressive outsiders. Provocative and insightful, the book takes readers on a journey through criticism to a reimagination of dignity.

Susan Burgess, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Ohio University:
This clever book critically explores the political underbelly of dignity, disrupting the cornerstone of modern LGBT rights and liberties. Creatively weaving legal, political, and cultural narratives into a powerful critique, Engel and Lyle offer a wake-up call to those who have succumbed to the seductive strains of dignity. A must-read for anyone envisioning new parameters for the LGBT movement in the coming political time.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I Dignity’s Disciplining Power The Politics of Public Health from AIDS to PrEP
1 Fucking with Dignity Bathhouse Closures and the State’s Degradation of Queer Kinship during the Early AIDS Crisis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2 Do You Swallow? Possibilities for Queer Transgression in New Contexts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
Part II Promoting Sameness or Embracing Difference Distinct Visions of Dignity in Popular Culture
3 Isn’t Straight Still the Default? The Politics of Restraint in Love, Simon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
4 Doing the Most Pose and the Value of Queer Excess Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
5 Liberal Rulings for Conservative Ends Manipulating Dignity from Decriminalization to Marriage Equality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
6 Is Dignity a Dead End? Alternative Notions of Dignity and the Promise of Our Anti- racist Constitution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
Conclusion Doing Dignity Differently An Anti- stigma Approach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	393
About the Authors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405