Falla, Jeffery B. "Disembodying the Body: Allen Ginsberg's Passional Subversion of Identity." Interdisciplinary Literary Studies. 3.2 (2002): 49-65. Web. 13 May. 2013.
Jeffery Falla’s “Disembodying the Body: Allen Ginsberg’s Passional Subversion of Identity”, discusses Ginsberg’s use of repetition to demonstrate the subversion of heteronormative gender. Falla begins with his example of Ginsberg’s Gay Sunshine where Ginsberg states that subversion occurs through the repetition of “‘pleasure’ as a neurotic attachment”. He views the body is a by-product of a “large-scale conspiracy…trying to keep people prisoners in a prison-universe…”
Falla goes on to say that if we are to free ourselves from the body, we are removed from sexuality and, in the words of Ginsberg, “heterosexual conditioning.” The concept of freedom from the heteronormalcy forces sex to be viewed as only desire and nothing more. One is never truly straight, according to Ginsberg, and the lines between categories such as heterosexual and homosexual should be blurred so that it becomes safe for all people to feel the “spectrum” of feelings that they were meant to feel. This right to feel is viewed as only acceptable for ‘gays’ and not for ‘straights’ in a society entrapped in heteronormalcy. Ginsberg’s openness about his ‘abnormalities’, as defined by the heteronormative culture, was caused in part by the “externalization of internal sociocultural differences” as it “sought to contain the queer Beat in silence and abnormality.”
Falla goes on to say that if we are to free ourselves from the body, we are removed from sexuality and, in the words of Ginsberg, “heterosexual conditioning.” The concept of freedom from the heteronormalcy forces sex to be viewed as only desire and nothing more. One is never truly straight, according to Ginsberg, and the lines between categories such as heterosexual and homosexual should be blurred so that it becomes safe for all people to feel the “spectrum” of feelings that they were meant to feel. This right to feel is viewed as only acceptable for ‘gays’ and not for ‘straights’ in a society entrapped in heteronormalcy. Ginsberg’s openness about his ‘abnormalities’, as defined by the heteronormative culture, was caused in part by the “externalization of internal sociocultural differences” as it “sought to contain the queer Beat in silence and abnormality.”