title: Voices in the outer room.
abstract: SUMMARY An argument (in the form of a demonstration) for the development of a queer aesthetic, the essay asks whether it is our charge as lesbian writers to hold a mirror up to our experience, to "self-disclose" (so often such narratives change nothing but succeed in flattening our lives), or to find the form that will answer to queer habits of being, radical sensibilities and ideologies. The essay takes three different liminal spaces as its ground-a sickroom, a conversation on an airplane, and a Catholic confessional-to explore my own aesthetic process, the role played by randomness and interruption in that process, the complex presence of external and internalized (dis)embodied voices in my self-writing, and the desire through my work to create what I call "disruptive beauty."
authors.affiliation: a University of Rhode Island , USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cappello
keywords: Lesbian; aesthetics; confessional discourse; family; memoir; queer; voice