ABSTRACT
When earlier gatherings of musicologists began to pose questions around lesbian, gay, queer, gender, and sexual issues, the authors had a number of preconceptions–but, because shared musicological discussion of sexuality was relatively new and there were few published texts, they were not necessarily the same preconceptions. Queer investigations, even those that try to establish new boundaries or foci, tend to open out into smoother rather than more striated spaces-rhizomatic rather than rooted–and our capacity for rebellion, resistance, adaptation, and transformation is always embedded in those spaces, always a part of our work. On the other hand, queerness, difference, and ambiguity all still occur at levels beyond our own immanent physical experiences. One of the goals of academic analysis and understanding is awareness–which has roots in various intellectual and existential traditions. Behind Prior are his friends, who quarrel amiably over politics and history: he briefly silences them to speak into a larger future.
