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Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experience, edited by Ken Plummer. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992. 281 pp. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-415-06420-1. $15.95 paper. ISBN: 0-415-06421-X.
As Plummer says in his introduction, homosexuality is not what it used to be. In fact it has become an industry, and Plummer is one of its most industrious practitioners. As the number of books on homosexuality escalates--over 9,000 were listed in print in 1989, and the number continues to grow--the nature of the writing has changed. In Plummer's words, it has been rescued from the scientific "experts" questing for the "truth" of the homosexual person, and instead has become the voices "of people with these experiences." It is some of these voices which Plummer has gathered together in this collection.
Gay and lesbian studies is where black studies was a decade or so ago--almost a closed corporation. You cannot write about it unless you experience it, and so for the most part this is a collection of gays and lesbians writing for other gays and lesbians. The difficulty is further compounded by the rise of gay and lesbian studies on college campuses...