A temple to transnational queerness: the politics of commemorating Oscar Wilde

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a noted divergence between academic and commemorative treatments of Oscar Wilde. Both have placed the transnational and queer dimensions of Wilde’s identity at the fore, but scholars have also emphasised its orientalist and imperialist facets, while artists and devotees has pared down those less palatable qualities. This paper takes one tribute – Peter McGough and David McDermott’s Oscar Wilde Temple (2017–2019) – as a case study to explore the politics of queer commemoration. By first situating the Temple in a history of Wilde commemorations, I define a set of selection criteria on which any such monument must arbitrate. I then use those criteria to close read the Temple’s iconography, attending to representations of queer, Catholic, and Irish identity before addressing the politics of canonising Wilde given his participation in systems of colonial and racial injustice. Instead of grounds to dismiss Wilde’s art and its contemporary supporters, I take those politics as a challenge to imagine more critical and intersectional approaches to queer commemoration. My conclusion turns from theory to praxis to explore how models of queer myth-making and counterpublics might be concretised to develop such alternatives.