SOURCE: Saddik, Annette J. “The (Un)Represented Fragmentation of the Body in Tennessee Williams's ‘Desire and the Black Masseur’ and Suddenly Last Summer.” Modern Drama 41, no. 3 (fall 1998): 347-54.

In the following essay, Saddik explores the connection between homosexuality and cannibalism in “Desire and the Black Masseur” and Suddenly Last Summer.

If psychoanalysis were to have an innovative role in a Fouca[u]ldian genealogy of the human subject in Western societies, it would not be because it explains our nature in terms of our sexuality (this would be merely an addition to the history of attempts to define a “human nature”), but rather because it defines the sexual itself as that which profoundly disorients any effort whatsoever to constitute a human subject.

—Leo Bersani¹

[W]e all devour each other, in our fashion.

—Tennessee Williams²

When the film version of Suddenly Last Summer premiered in 1959 starring Elizabeth Taylor...