[Commlist] Carry on Camping: A One-Day Conference

*Carry on C**amping: The Politics of Subversion*

*A One-Day Conference*

*University of Brighton, Edward Street, Friday 6 September 2019*

*
*

*Registration Open 
<https://shop.brighton.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/arts-humanities/academic-conferences/carry-on-camping-the-politics-of-subversion>*


Keynote: Elizabeth Wilson <http://www.elizabethwilson.net/>

Keynote: Professor Richard Dyer 
<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/professor-richard-dyer>


Camp has enjoyed many definitions throughout decades of academic 
discussion and debate. For Susan Sontag it is a ‘sensibility’: ‘the 
essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and 
exaggeration’(1964: 515). For Richard Dyer (1977), as argued in an essay 
titled ‘It’s being so camp as keeps us going’, camp is a form of queer 
resistance, a way of looking at objects rather than any inherent 
qualities in those objects themselves. Fabio Cleto (1999) also sees camp 
as an unstable, but powerful, progressive critical tool; while for David 
Halperin, camp is connected to irony as a strategy of subversion. 
‘Camp,’ Halperinwrites, ‘is a reminder of the artificiality of emotion, 
of authenticity as a performance’(2012: 288). In both academic and 
popular terms, camp is clearly a quality that evades easy definition.

Throughout its history, camp has performed many countercultural 
functions, as a means of articulating alternative self-identification, 
of securing group coherence, of challenging dominant conventions, 
meanings and power structures. At the same time, camp has been a 
recognisable component of broad popular entertainment. Many classic 
entertainers such as Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Liberace embody 
recognisable aspects of camp performance. In the UK, camp served as a 
way of sneaking queer discourses into mainstream culture, with comedians 
such as Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd and the programme /Round the 
Horne /bringing the gay language of Polari to a BBC audience. British 
television of the subsequent era was full of performers like Larry 
Grayson, Kenny Everett and John Inman, while later generations grew up 
with Julian Clary, Graham Norton and 
drag-queen-turned-teatime-entertainer Paul O’Grady. The revival of 
/Mystery Science Theatre 3000/, the popularity of /Rupaul’s Drag Race/, 
the critical acclaim surrounding Lady Gaga, suggests that camp retains a 
significant role in contemporary culture.

Sontag’s essay ‘Notes on Camp’ was both notorious and controversial//on 
its publication in 1964 and remains so. Fifty-five years later, and more 
than half a century since the decriminalization of homosexuality in 
England, in an age of gay marriage, how significant is camp? Do the 
functions that it once served remain important to gender and cultural 
politics? If films from /Carry on Camping/ to /Pulp Fiction/ can be 
described as camp, can the term retain its meaning? When the work of a 
filmmaker like John Waters becomes repackaged as mainstream musical 
theatre, has camp become too commodified? Or do such questions 
misunderstand the very complexities and contradictions which make camp 
so fascinating?

This conference, to be held at the University of Brighton on Friday 6 
September 2016, will investigate camp in both its historical and 
contemporary manifestations, and interrogate its relevance today.

Contact: Ewan Kirkland – (e.kirkland /at/ brighton.ac.uk)

Conference fee: £30/ concessions: £10

Lunch and refreshments will be provided

Conference website: 
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/carryoncampingthepoliticsofsubversion/



References:

Cleto, F. (ed). 1999. /Camp: queer aesthetics and the performing 
subject: a reader. /Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Dyer, R. 2002. It’s Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going. In: Richard Dyer, 
/The Culture of Queers/. London: Routledge, 49-62

Halperin, D. M. 2012. /How to be Gay./ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 
University Press

Sontag, S. 1964. Notes on “Camp”. /Partisan Review/. 31(4), 515-530


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