Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract The Epilogue provides an overview of the ways in which Julian Eltinge has been remembered, framed, misremembered, forgotten, and resuscitated by writers and thinkers in the time since his death. During the conservative 1940s–1950s, he was either relegated to the antediluvian past and/or praised for being uncontroversial. In the 1960s, as mores began to loosen, some definitively outed Eltinge as gay. As sociocultural and political gay identity coalesced in the post-Stonewall 1990s and amid the AIDS epidemic, some authors tried to resuscitate Eltinge into the LGBTQ pantheon. In our current period of antigay, anti-drag, and anti-trans reactionism, we see the mainstreaming of Julian Eltinge in Pride Month rhetoric from large, neoliberal corporations, a lumping-in of the artist with other early gender nonconformers who may have paid a social and economic price Eltinge largely avoided.