My friend Taeho Kim and I have a new article in the Chronicle of Higher Education critiquing the capture of queer theory by homophobes: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-queer-theory-turned-its-back-on-gay-men Copy-and-pasting the text below for those unwilling to sign up for the CHE (it's free, and you get all our links to insane queer theory texts, missing from the copy below!)-this is a particularly important piece for me in my attempt to think towards a rehabilitation of ‘identity’ ‘politics’ so I'd love to hear your thoughts:
It may be ironic to refer to your intellectual rival Andrea Long Chu in this regard, but I think what you have to say about queerness co-opting and dissolving gay men’s culture isn’t so different from Long Chu’s argument that feminism (in the post-Butler era) has eaten itself.
“Contemporary feminism is arguably defined by its refusal of woman as a political category, on the grounds that this category has historically functioned as a cruel ruse for white supremacy, the gender binary, the economic interests of the American ruling class, and possibly patriarchy itself. This has put feminism in the unenviable position of being politically obligated to defend its own impossibility. In order to be for women, feminists must refrain from making any positive claims about women. The result is a kind of negative theology, dedicated to striking down the graven images of a god whose stated preference for remaining invisible has left the business of actually worshipping her somewhat up in the air.”
If I understand you correctly, queer theory likewise has refused gay men as a political category and become obligated to defend its own impossibility, too. A coalition of the oppressed may indeed make it difficult for some distinctive older gay cultural forms to survive. But I think we can let queer culture, and gay culture, develop as they will. After all, gay men aren’t gonna disappear just because some theorists have provided us with the insight that various forms of oppression are linked together! Or if we allow polymorphous queerdom into our ranks! The Tom of Finland Foundation hasn’t disbanded now that younger queers have started serving tea in its gardens. If we consider gay men’s culture to be *that* fragile, we will end up policing our identities to save our unique spaces under the misapprehension that we are liberating ourselves. (Duh: Elements of the ‘radical’ left have always been in league with the ‘traditional’ right — one of Foucault’s now totally bastardized insights.)
On another note, your otherwise fascinating expose of the ins-and-outs of disagreements within early queer/gay theorizing tends to idealize the gay bars, magazines, and literature of the 70s and 80s; they weren’t all that. Gay clones with boots and staches may be oh-so-sexy in retrospect, but they formed a conforming, restrictive, and discriminatory environment in which younger people couldn’t easily come out without joining their ranks. I personally found a more inviting and empowering climate among the more ‘conservative’ mods of the time in order to avoid the stifling atmosphere of San Francisco’s gay heyday. (The bathrooms were where it was at—and if you really want to save a dying form of life you perhaps can recapture that experience by following Garth Greenwell’s footsteps in Bulgaria…)
NO NOSTALGIA, or else we lose (to quote the campy Dave Hickey, in conversation).
Great piece! I agree queer theory doesn't seem to have served the interests of anyone apart from the queer theorists themselves. Standing outside academe, I'm all for an uninstitutionalized and untheorized homosexuality. But that's why I remain a bit puzzled as to the need to rehabilitate a particularly gay male identity politics at all. Take this sentence, for example: "Neither the conservative nor the radical appeared able to imagine that gay marriage might be desirable for gay men because it might help gay men to flourish not only as individuals and couples but also as a particular community with its own material interests." What distinct material interests are we talking about here?
It may be ironic to refer to your intellectual rival Andrea Long Chu in this regard, but I think what you have to say about queerness co-opting and dissolving gay men’s culture isn’t so different from Long Chu’s argument that feminism (in the post-Butler era) has eaten itself.
“Contemporary feminism is arguably defined by its refusal of woman as a political category, on the grounds that this category has historically functioned as a cruel ruse for white supremacy, the gender binary, the economic interests of the American ruling class, and possibly patriarchy itself. This has put feminism in the unenviable position of being politically obligated to defend its own impossibility. In order to be for women, feminists must refrain from making any positive claims about women. The result is a kind of negative theology, dedicated to striking down the graven images of a god whose stated preference for remaining invisible has left the business of actually worshipping her somewhat up in the air.”
If I understand you correctly, queer theory likewise has refused gay men as a political category and become obligated to defend its own impossibility, too. A coalition of the oppressed may indeed make it difficult for some distinctive older gay cultural forms to survive. But I think we can let queer culture, and gay culture, develop as they will. After all, gay men aren’t gonna disappear just because some theorists have provided us with the insight that various forms of oppression are linked together! Or if we allow polymorphous queerdom into our ranks! The Tom of Finland Foundation hasn’t disbanded now that younger queers have started serving tea in its gardens. If we consider gay men’s culture to be *that* fragile, we will end up policing our identities to save our unique spaces under the misapprehension that we are liberating ourselves. (Duh: Elements of the ‘radical’ left have always been in league with the ‘traditional’ right — one of Foucault’s now totally bastardized insights.)
On another note, your otherwise fascinating expose of the ins-and-outs of disagreements within early queer/gay theorizing tends to idealize the gay bars, magazines, and literature of the 70s and 80s; they weren’t all that. Gay clones with boots and staches may be oh-so-sexy in retrospect, but they formed a conforming, restrictive, and discriminatory environment in which younger people couldn’t easily come out without joining their ranks. I personally found a more inviting and empowering climate among the more ‘conservative’ mods of the time in order to avoid the stifling atmosphere of San Francisco’s gay heyday. (The bathrooms were where it was at—and if you really want to save a dying form of life you perhaps can recapture that experience by following Garth Greenwell’s footsteps in Bulgaria…)
NO NOSTALGIA, or else we lose (to quote the campy Dave Hickey, in conversation).
Great piece! I agree queer theory doesn't seem to have served the interests of anyone apart from the queer theorists themselves. Standing outside academe, I'm all for an uninstitutionalized and untheorized homosexuality. But that's why I remain a bit puzzled as to the need to rehabilitate a particularly gay male identity politics at all. Take this sentence, for example: "Neither the conservative nor the radical appeared able to imagine that gay marriage might be desirable for gay men because it might help gay men to flourish not only as individuals and couples but also as a particular community with its own material interests." What distinct material interests are we talking about here?