Understanding Narrative Identity Through Lesbian and Gay Youth

This book seeks to contest the emerging thesis that non-heterosexual young people are increasingly living their lives beyond 'traditional' sexual categories. The main contention of post-gay theorists is that sexuality is becoming unfettered from the constraints of categorization, allowing young people to establish new ways of being sexual. In contrast, this book aims to show that lesbian and gay categories are alive and well, and that young people continue to engage with them and the distinct sense of difference they bring in a world in which heterosexuality is still largely presumed and privileged. Exploring the making of identity through the construction of desire, the role of science in explaining homosexuality, and engagement in narratives and practices of ordinariness, the book sets a new agenda for thinking about lesbian and gay identities, in which old 'modernist' stories of sexual being entwine with new narratives of sameness and ordinariness.

Edmund Coleman-Fountain is Research Fellow at the University of York, UK. His research interests include youth identities and difference, notably how processes of marginalization pattern the conditions in which young people make their identities. His current research focuses on disability, identity and the life-course.