Description
Book SynopsisWhy LGBTQ+ people must resist the seduction of dignity
In 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the equal dignity of marriage recognition, the concept of dignity became a cornerstone for gay rights victories. In Disrupting Dignity, Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle explore the darker side of dignity, tracing its invocation across public health politics, popular culture, and law from the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis to our current moment.
With a compassionate eye, Engel and Lyle detail how politicians, policymakers, media leaders, and even some within LGBTQ+ communities have used the concept of dignity to shame and disempower members of those communities. They convincingly show how dignityand the subsequent chase to be defined by its termsbecame a tool of the state and the marketplace thereby limiting its more radical potential.
Ultimately, Engel and Lyle challenge our understanding of dignity as an
Trade Review
This clever book critically explores the political underbelly of dignity, disrupting the cornerstone of modern LGBT rights and liberties. Creatively weaving legal, political, and cultural narratives into a powerful critique, Engel and Lyle offer a wake-up call to those who have succumbed to the seductive strains of dignity. A must-read for anyone envisioning new parameters for the LGBT movement in the coming political time. -- Susan Burgess, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Ohio University
This pathbreaking book weaves together narratives from public health, popular culture, and constitutional law to understand dignity. In Engel and Lyle’s wide-ranging analysis, dignity is bared, not as an uplifting concept that promotes queer recognition and equality, but rather as a device of neoliberal discipline that divides political subjects into insiders and transgressive outsiders. Provocative and insightful, the book takes readers on a journey through criticism to a reimagination of dignity. -- Julie Novkov, co-author of American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship
In crisscrossing the humanities and social sciences, Engel and Lyle have put together a truly interdisciplinary project that speaks to many different audiences. Disrupting Dignity makes an original argument in demonstrating the rhetorical violence that ‘dignity,’ specifically, does to the queer worldmaking that happens in gay male sexual spaces. -- F. Hollis Griffin, author of Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age
In undertaking such an ambitious, cross-disciplinary, and sweeping conceptual analysis, Engel and Lyle implicitly claim that dignity’s effects are felt everywhere; it enculturates us to accept neoliberalism’s constraints, adhere to predominant understandings of propriety regarding sexual conduct, and tread lightly within a legal system that responds to a limited range of LGBTQ+ interests. -- Matthew Dean Hindman * Journal of American Political Thought *
Disrupting Dignity provides one such peek into what is to be gained by refusing dignity, and my expectation is that it will serve as a valuable resource for future scholarship and political praxis oriented toward that queer world of possibility. * Perspectives on Politics *
