The Price of Queer Admission

This chapter explores the function of queer admission in the work of Neil Bartlett, by examining texts from across his career to date: Pedagogue (1988); ‘Caesar’s Gallic Wars’ (1996); Mr Clive and Mr Page (1997); Skin Lane (2007); and ‘14 Yeomans Mews’ (2021). Understanding ‘admission’ as encapsulating, on the one hand, the articulation of desire and identity, and on the other, the entrance and initiation into queer subcultural spaces and knowledges, the chapter analyses moments of confession, pedagogy, and the dark spaces of queer desire as they occur throughout Bartlett’s work. It thereby shows how Bartlett invites readers to follow him into the queer archive in order to construct an intertextual subcultural imaginary which facilitates queer subjectivities and living otherwise.