"Is the Rectum a Grave?" is a 1987 essay by scholar Leo Bersani. It is an early text in queer theory (although Bersani never considered himself a queer theorist), and provides a non-utopian view of sexuality. The essay was republished in 2009 alongside others by Bersani.
Bersani published "Is the Rectum a Grave?" during the 1987 height of the AIDS epidemic. [1] The title was inspired by two declarations of Simon Watney, an AIDS activist: That AIDS has produced "a new machinery of repression, [by] making the rectum a grave"; and that the public health response to AIDS has refigured gay men's rectums as impenetrable and "Off Limits". [2] The first sentence of Bersani's essay remains famous: "There is a big secret about sex: most people don't like it." [3]
The essay is not utopian; it refutes the desire to view pre-AIDS gay social life as idyllic, saying they were economies of desire with ingrained social orders that excluded many. [4]
"Is the Rectum a Grave?" and Bersani's 1995 book, Homos, are seen by cultural critic Robyn Wiegman as part of the "inaugural" foundations of an explicitly anti-social perspective in queer theory. [5] This has been put into question by queer theorist Tim Dean, who says Guy Hocquenghem originated this strand of thought in his Deleuze and Guattari-inspired book Homosexual Desire (1972). [6] Bersani never believed himself to be a part of queer theory, but the essay is nonetheless widely viewed as an early text in the field. [7]
Bersani republished the essay in Is the Rectum a Grave? and Other Essays (2009), a collection of his essays. [8] "Is the Rectum a Grave?" is older than the other essays featured by about a decade, a move seen by queer theorist Brian Glavey as an attempt to refine his theories about sex. [9]
The title has been borrowed by other scholars, such as in "Is the Rectum Straight?" (1991) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and "Are the Lips a Grave?" (2011) by Lynne Huffer. [10]