ABSTRACT
Ware defined Camp as “Actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis. Probably from the French. Used chiefly by persons of exceptional want of character” (61). The conventional and accepted interpretation of Ware’s definition concludes that the word “Camp” has a French etymology (see for example Booth 33, 39-40; Brien 873-874; Goodwin 39; Rodgers 40; and Ross 145). Against this, I will propose an alternative reading of Ware’s definition informed by Thomas A.King’s study of the politics of Camp gestures in chapter one of this volume. King has argued that Camp gesture signals an ontological challenge that displaces bourgeois notions of the Self as unique, abiding, and continuous, while substituting instead a concept of the Self as performative, improvisational, discontinuous, and processually constituted by repetitive and stylized acts. He proposes that bourgeois identification of Camp (homosexual) gesture is based upon a logic that is recognizable for its unique contradictions: first, the gesture must be judged as excessive according to the standards of acceptable and conventional bourgeois male deportment; and second, that the gestural excess signifies a lack of Self (and thus lack of membership in the social body).
