ABSTRACT
In the last decade, Camp, or queer parody, has become an activist strategy for organizations such as ACT UP and Queer Nation, as well as a focus in utopian movements like the Radical Faeries. As practiced by these contemporary groups, Camp is both political and critical. Defying existing interpretations that continue to define Camp as apolitical, aestheticized, and frivolous, the contributors to this volume, prompted by its recently foregrounded political usages, attempt a reappraisal of the phenomenon. These writers suggest that Camp is not simply a “style” or “sensibility” as is conventionally accepted. Rather, what emerges is a suppressed and denied oppositional critique embodied in the signifying practices that processually constitute queer identities. Accordingly, the contributors to this volume operate from shared beliefs concerning the construction of Camp. These are: Camp is political; Camp is solely a queer (and/or sometimes gay and lesbian) discourse; and Camp embodies a specifically queer cultural critique.1 Additionally, because Camp is defined as a solely queer discourse, all un-queer activities that have been previously accepted as “camp,” such as Pop culture expressions, have been redefined as examples of the appropriation of queer praxis. Because un-queer appropriations interpret Camp within the context of compulsory reproductive heterosexuality, they no longer qualify as Camp as it is defined here. In other words, the un-queer do not have access to the discourse of Camp, only to derivatives constructed through the act of appropriation.2
