Sedgwick published several foundational books in the field of queer theory, including
Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985),
Epistemology of the Closet (1990), and
Tendencies (1993). Sedgwick also coedited several volumes and published a book of poetry
Fat Art, Thin Art (1994) as well as
A Dialogue on Love (1999). Her first book,
The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (1986), was a revision of her doctoral thesis. Her last book
Touching Feeling (2003) maps her interest in affect, pedagogy, and performativity.
Jonathan Goldberg edited her late essays and lectures, many of which are segments from an unfinished study of Proust. According to Goldberg, these late writings also examine such subjects as Buddhism,
object relations and affect theory, psychoanalytic writers such as
Melanie Klein,
Silvan Tomkins,
D.W. Winnicott, and
Michael Balint, the poetry of
C. P. Cavafy, philosophical
Neoplatonism, and
identity politics.
Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) According to Sedgwick,
Between Men demonstrates "the immanence of men's same-sex bonds, and their prohibitive structuration, to male-female bonds in nineteenth-century English literature." The book explores the oppressive effects on women and men of a cultural system where male-male desire could become intelligible only by being routed through nonexistent desire involving a woman. Sedgwick's "male homosocial desire" referred to all male bonds. Sedgwick used the sociological neologism "homosocial" to distinguish from "homosexual" and to connote a form of male bonding often accompanied by a fear or hatred of homosexuality, rejecting the then-available lexical and conceptual alternatives to challenge the idea that hetero-, bi- and homosexual men and experiences could be easily differentiated. She argued that one could not readily distinguish these three categories from one another, since what might be conceptualized as "erotic" depended on an "unpredictable, ever-changing array of local factors." The very title of her article attracted much attention from the media, most of it very negative. When
Tenured Radicals was published in April 1990, Sedgwick's little known speech at the Modern Language Association suddenly became famous. Sedgwick felt Kimball's criticism of her in
Tenured Radicals was highly unfair, given she had not actually written the article, which was published only in the summer of 1991, and therefore he dismissed her article only on the basis of the title. Sedgwick used Austen's description of Marianne Dashwood, whose "eyes were in constant inquiry", whose "mind was equally abstracted from everything actually before them" as she was "restless and dissatisfied" and unable to sit still. She then compared
Sense and Sensibility with the 1881 document "Onanism and Nervous Disorders in Two Little Girls" where the patient X has a "roving eye", "cannot keep still" and is "incapable of anything". In Sedgwick's viewpoint, the description of Patient X, who could not stop masturbating and was in a constant state of hysteria as the doctor tried to keep her from masturbating by such methods as having her hands tied together, closely matched Austen's description of Marianne Dashwood. Sedgwick argued that the pleasure that Austen's readers take from Marianne's suffering is typical of Austen scholarship, which was centered around what Sedgwick called the central theme of "A Girl Being Taught a Lesson". As a prime example of what she called the "Victorian sadomasochistic pornography" of Austen scholarship, she used Tanner's treatment of Emma Woodhouse as a woman who has to be taught her place. Sedgwick ended her essay by writing that most Austen scholars wanted to de-eroticize her books, as she argued there was an implicit lesbian sexual tension between the Dashwood sisters, and scholars needed to stop repressing the "homo-erotic longing" contained in Austen's novels.
Tendencies (1993) In 1993, Duke University Press published a collection of Sedgwick's essays from the 1980s and early 1990s. The book was the first entry in Duke's influential "Series Q", which was initially edited by Michele Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, and Sedgwick herself. The essays span a wide range of genres, including elegies for activists and scholars who died of AIDS, performance pieces, and academic essays on topics such as sado-masochism, poetics and masturbation. In
Tendencies, Sedgwick first publicly embraces the word 'queer', defining it as: "the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or ''can't be'' made) to signify monolithically." According to trans theorist Jay Prosser,
Tendencies is also relevant, for it is here that Sedgwick "has revealed her personal
transgendered investment lying at and as the great heart of her queer project." He goes on to quote Sedgwick: Nobody knows more fully, more fatalistically than a fat woman how unbridgeable the gap is between the self we see and the self as whom we are seen... and no one can appreciate more fervently the act of magical faith by which it may be possible, at last, to assert and believe, against every social possibility, that the self we see can be made visible as if through our own eyes to the people who see us... Dare I, after this half-decade, call it with all a fat ''woman's'' defiance, my identity? – as a gay man.
A Dialogue on Love (1999) In 1991, Sedgwick was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently wrote the book
A Dialogue on Love. Sedgwick recounts the therapy she undergoes, her feelings toward death, depression, and her gender uncertainty before her mastectomy and chemotherapy. Sedgwick uses the form of an extended, double-voiced
haibun to explore possibilities within the psychoanalytic setting, particularly those that offer alternatives to
Lacanian-inflected psychoanalysis, and new ways for thinking about sexuality, familial relations, pedagogy, and love. The book also reveals Sedgwick's growing interest in Buddhist thought, textiles, and texture.
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003) Touching Feeling is written as a reminder of the early days of queer theory, which Sedgwick discusses briefly in the introduction in order to reference the affective conditions—chiefly the emotions provoked by the
AIDS epidemic—that prevailed at the time and to bring into focus her principal theme: the relationship between feeling, learning, and action.
Touching Feeling explores critical methods that may engage politically and help shift the foundations for individual and collective experience. In the opening paragraph, Sedgwick describes her project as the exploration of "promising tools and techniques for non dualistic thought and pedagogy." Sedgwick integrates works by Henry James, JL Austin, Judith Butler, Silvan Tompkins, and others, incorporating different levels of emotions and how they come together in our collective lives.
Touching Feeling focuses on not only Sedgwick's illness, but illness in general and how we deal with it. == Awards and recognitions ==