Conclusion: Towards a Queer Community

Abstract

The opening line of “Episode of Hands” (CP 173) describes an “unexpected interest,” a queer moment of connection that is set up against the normative background. Throughout this chapter and throughout the book I have been arguing that the key principle behind Crane’s queer aesthetic is relationality and a desire for community; impulses that are often quite at odds with the majority of criticism about Crane which seeks to emphasize his obscurity and difficulty – a kind of expected unexpectedness if he is to be considered to be a modernist writer. In this final section I want to draw together those ideas by suggesting that the recent turn towards affect and reparative reading practices within queer theory can help to understand the type of unexpectedness in Crane’s work that I have been highlighting. Such a reading acknowledges queer criticism about Sapphic modernism, but also situates Crane within a queer modernist community in a way that has not yet been made apparent in contemporary modernist studies. Considering these new developments within queer theory can therefore provide a valuable way of reflecting upon the queer reading practices within my discussion, and suggest ways in which my analysis of Crane’s work might offer different possibilities for understanding literary modernism.