'To Keep Feelings in Circulation': Private/Public Sexuality and Queer Ambivalence in an Age of Assimilation

Abstract

The concept of ambivalence in U.S. queer studies has tended to be less a subject of enquiry in itself and more a component of, or catalyst for, broader arguments about how heteronormative culture shapes, restricts,and challenges queer subjectivities. In this article I explore threeforms of ambivalence in order to argue that the foregrounding of publicly ambivalent positions is essential for renegotiating what it means to be queer in an age of respectability politics and conditional mainstream acceptance.