Chapter 3 looks at the way Sappho responds to material objects in Homer, and explores how plaiting becomes a metaphor for Sappho’s own poetic production. With readings of some of the lesser-known fragments (e.g., frr. 102V, 110V, and 22), as well as a re-examination of Aphrodite’s famed epithet (poikilothronos) in fr. 1, this chapter highlights Sappho’s generic range and poetic creativity, as well as her noncompetitive appropriation of the affects of fear, desire, and breathlessness that are associated with weaponry in the Iliad. In Sappho’s lyrics, similar emotions are produced by women’s garments, jewelry, and other forms of bodily adornment. The chapter ends with an interpretation of Alcaeus 140V, whose orientation towards Homeric weaponry, it is argued, is distinctly more aspirational than wily and playful.

This chapter introduces the concept of reparative reading and explains the benefits of reading Sappho and Homer through a reparative lens. It argues that previous scholarship has applied a notion of intertextuality that is competitive and hierarchical, thus missing out on key elements of Sappho’s engagement with Homer. It also introduces the reader to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a queer theorist, poet, and fiber artist and anticipates some of the parallels between Sedgwick and Sappho as reparative readers. An overview of Sedgwick’s career, her understanding of queerness and the social and historical contexts for her evolving sensibilities as a reparative reader are provided, as is a preview of the following chapters.

Together with Chapter 1, this chapter helps contextualize the closer readings and case studies that follow by providing an introduction to reparative reading and the cultures of critique (and post-critique) within which it emerged over the past several decades. It also discusses some of the key features of Sedgwick’s development of reparative reading, including shame, materiality, queer futures, and the oscillation between paranoid and reparative positions.

Chapter 2 lays out the theoretical and methodological approach for the analysis. The study draws on discourse analysis, understanding the category of homosexuality to be a construction built on an ‘external dimension’ (a regime of acts) and an ‘internal dimension’ (identity). Queer theory provides insights into the interplay of this act/identity distinction, which functions as an unstable dichotomy where sometimes one is favoured and sometimes the other. Within this system, the gay person is caught in a delicate situation, faced with contradictory expectations as to their ‘discretion’ and disclosure, while at the same time never in full control of what others know about their sexuality. In terms of methodological approach, the analysis is based on discourse analysis on refugee law doctrine. Unlike a classical doctrinal analysis seeking the right legal answer, this study is interested in the ways in which legal doctrine is constructed. Three case studies add an empirical element from the Common European Asylum System: sexuality-based asylum claims from Germany, France and Spain are submitted to analysis.

This chapter argues that, despite its reputation, deconstruction constitutes an ethical practice that preserves the possibility of unpredictable transformation. Theorists such as Rita Felski and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick claim that critique corrodes the capacity to make affirmative judgments in particular contexts. They echo early critics who associate deconstruction with a pure play that precludes responsible rationality. I argue instead that deconstruction constitutes a discipline of openness to the unexpected. On Derrida’s diagnosis, metaphysical certainty aims to assuage the anxiety that arises in an unstable world; his concern is that this buys some comfort while closing the individual to others. In contrast, deconstructive negativity enables another kind of affirmation – uncertain, subject to revision, and sustained by hope.