Camp Grounds

Style and Homosexuality

David Bergman

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780870238789
• eBook ISBN:
  9781685752538
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

The concept of camp has never been easy to define. Derived from the French verb camper, "to pose," it has been variously interpreted as a style that favors exaggeration, an ironic attitude toward the cultural mainstream, and a form of aestheticism that celebrates artifice over beauty. At the same time, camp has been long associated with homosexual culture, or at least with a self-conscious eroticism that questions traditional gender constructions.

The sixteen essays on camp included in this book explore further the relationship between style and homosexuality, showing how camp has made its way into every aspect of our cultural lives: theater, popular music, opera, film, and literature. Beginning with an overview of what camp is, where it came from, and how it operates, the chapter addresses topics ranging from the "high camp" of Whitman and Proust to the "low camp" of drag queen culture and gay fanzines. Together they carry forward a conversation that began more than twenty-five years ago, before Stonewall and AIDS, when Susan Sontag published her memorable "Notes on Camp."

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Front Matter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Body
• Introduction
• Part I: General Camp
• Chapter 1: Camp and the Gay Sensibility
• Chapter 2: Role Models
• Chapter 3: Uses of Camp
• Chapter 4: The Loneliness of Camp
• Chapter 5: Strategic Camp: The Art of Gay Rhetoric
• Part II: Applied Camp
• Chapter 6: Walt Whitman Camping
• Chapter 7: High Culture and High Camp: The Case of Marcel Proust
• Chapter 8: Degenerate Personality
• Chapter 9: “The Kinda Comedy that Imitates Me”
• Chapter 10: The Critic as Performance Artist
• Chapter 11: “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”
• Figure 1
• Chapter 12: “It’s My Part and I’ll Die If I Want To!”
• Figure 2
• Figure 3
• Figure 4
• Chapter 13: “Kinky Escapades, Bedroom Techniques, Unbridled Passion, and Secret Sex Codes”
• Figure 5
• Figure 6
• Figure 7
• Figure 8
• Figure 9
• Figure 10
• Figure 11
• Part III: Style and Homosexuality
• Chapter 14: Fake It Like a Man
• Chapter 15: Homosexual Expression and Homophobic Censorship
• Chapter 16: Roland Barthes
• Back Matter
• Contributors
• Back Cover