Queerness

[flexibeast]

Someone recently re-posted, in the postqueer community, an article entitled "Imagining Queer Studies Out of the Doldrums". The article author writes that:

[M]y classes have always remained well enrolled (today I still turn away students, even with an enrollment cap of 40), but gradually the political energy has died away almost completely. The students in California (before I left in 2004) and now in West Virginia have become remarkably blasé concerning (what they consider) the few lingering vestiges of homophobia and increasingly eager to claim that life is actually pretty good now, with our many queer television shows, product lines, and other lifestyle components. While vicious gay-marriage debates rage in the media, Brokeback Mountain stirs up heated local controversy, and Fred Phelps's "God Hates Fags" picketers show up at local gay-pride events, even self-identifying queer students seem stunningly dismissive of politics generally, relying often on eye rolling as both critique and response.

The question is, though, what constitutes 'politics'? Another post to the postqueer community, about the Post Porn Politics Symposium Berlin 14. + 15.10.2006 at Volksbuehne Berlin, perhaps offers a hint:

Today, queer theorists like Beatriz Preciado or Marie-Helene Boucier re-evalue the term post-porn to theorise sex in the age of transgender subjectivity and disidentification, drag and cyberspace. When understanding pornography as a central dispositif of late capitalism for the normalisation and disciplination of pleasures and bodies, political ambivalences and counter-strategies are needed to be discussed and mapped out without totalising cultural pessimism.

This symposium, which features theorists, performers, filmmakers, artists and musicians, understands itself as a political intervention into both the heteronormative landscape of commercial porn production and the discourses of the mainstream public which make it impossible to think and practice criticism and pleasure at the same time.

In two conference-days, a performance night and a final party, queer-feminist approaches to porn are discussed, reflected, valued and affirmed in a wide range of contributions between utopia and scepticism.

In this context, it would seem that to be politically 'active', one has to be an artist of some sort. The summary doesn't mention things like building alliances between diverse sexual and/or gender communities. i don't know what things are like nowadays, but when i was doing Women's Studies at uni in the early 90s, there was much talk of diversity and plurality and subjectivity and well-deserved critiques of universalising and/or totalising theories (e.g. Marxism), but much less talk of commonalities between particular people and groups. In other words, in response to decades of politics dominated by attempts at overarching theories, the pendulum has now swung towards on overarching emphasis on differences rather than commonalities. So it doesn't surprise me to discern two main trends in queer politics: firstly, queer assimilationism, with its blame-the-victim mentality and its inability or unwllingness to grasp the concept of solidarity; and secondly, "performance as protest", exemplified by the Berlin symposium mentioned above.

With regards to queer assimilationism - quite frankly, it disgusts me, and makes me angry. It's one thing for someone to choose (under societal duress or otherwise) to try to deal with society's queerphobia by becoming as 'acceptable' to heteronormative society as possible; i understand that, even though the notion that queers are not 'acceptable' is not one i'm happy with. It's another thing to suggest that people who aren't 'assimilating' are a primary reason that queers aren't accepted. It's basically saying "i'm comfortable with trying to conform to societal expectations, so you should be too - for the good of me!" It's telling queers who they should be, which i thought was what heteronormative society was doing to queers in the first place. :-/

With regards to "performance as protest" - i think it's cool, and in fact love such 'cultural politics' (that is, building an alternative, non-heteronormative culture). In my opinion, i think it's an essential, and significant, part of any movement seeking to change society. At the same time, though, i'm not sure that this sort of stuff alone can counter the increasingly well-organised forces of reaction; and personally, as someone whose artistic expression - except in the form of computer code - is extremely limited, i find it rather isolating, as i don't see how i can contribute. Okay, it's true that i might be able to contribute in the area of theory - although i have a strong distaste for the postmodern obscurantism in some queer theory¹ - but for me, theory has to be continually informed and tested by practice.

Ah well. Perhaps i'm better off sticking to IT and magick anyway . . . .

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1. If it's possible to write a highly readable and comprehensible book on current ideas in cosmological physics and the high-level mathematics behind such ideas, as Brian Greene did with The Elegant Universe, then i reckon writings on queer theory should be just as readable and comprehensible themselves.
 

Comments

[gendertrash.livejournal.com]

if you are interested in queer anti-assimilation you would love the book : "That's Revolting: Queer Stratagies for Resisting Assimilation" it is edited by Mattilda aka Matt Burnstein Sycamore and is fucking fantastic

[sacred-harlot.livejournal.com]

Ah Sweetie,

you always put in so much effort in terms of research for your lj posts! Once again, well done!

Much Love,
Sacred Harlot XXX.