ABSTRACT
The criminal prosecution of sodomy was, in part, an attempt to stabilize an economic order. Institutionalized homophobia reflected not only a capitalist disdain for nonreproductive activities, but a capitalist envy that such activities attained what reproduction could only simulate: the gold standard of pure enjoyment (jouissance). Homophilia, however, runs the risk of idealizing same-sex desire as well. In his gothic novel Vathek and its associated Episodes, the gay writer William Beckford instead recommends a queer position that interrogates the narcissism from which all such fantasies arise. The visions of “luscious” boys and “Oriental” luxury that he serves up are highly consumable but, he reminds us, unsustainable.
