Tendencies - C

A leading practitioner of gay studies, Sedgwick ( The Epistemology of the Closet ) offers an illuminating and provocative collection of essays, many reprinted from academic journals, on subjects as varied as the politics of health care, the popularization of ``queer theory'' as an academic discipline (and its harassment by PC-bashing journalists) and Sedgwick's own diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. Sedgwick turns an unflinching eye on the dynamics of gender and identity that fail to fall into neat, heterosexual categories. She contends that the literature of James, Wilde and Cather call for a reading that is sensitive to the dissonances and ironies of a love that dare not speak its name; she interrogates the ``naturalness'' of heterosexual identity in literature and popular culture. The opening essay, for instance, invokes ``the utopian bedroom scene of Chuck Berry's immortal aubade : `Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.' '' Though steeped in the jargon of academic cultural studies, Sedgwick's essays offer forthright cultural analysis and an autobiographical intimacy that will prove accessible and germane for a general audience. (Dec.)