Duke University Press issued a statement (here) about the death yesterday of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
I think everything we do as critical thinkers about gender and sexuality draws on her work, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Her ceaseless inquiry into the architecture of identity radically shifted our discourse. Now, all contemporary work in these areas builds on and/or reacts to her ideas. Sedgwick’s work reframed the way we conceptualize these identities. It created the space us to contemplate how the law interacts with and creates identities of sexuality and gender. Whether we’re debating cases such as Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins or Oncale, or scholarship by the many people working on gender and sexuality in the law, Sedgwick’s work colors our understandings. Her death is a great loss, but it is also a call to continue to challenge the law’s radically problematic constructions of gender and sexuality.
-Darren Rosenblum
