Short essay
I 6 EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK that s tud ents bring to them, is jo ltin g. In mos t of their courses tudents ha, ·e, unfortunatel y, l ea rned to re linquish the expectation that the co urse mat erial will addre ss them where they live and with mat erial the y ca n h old palpabl y accountable; in gay/ les bian co urses, though, uch expecta tions seem to rebo und, clamorous and uncha stencd, in all their rawness. i Especia lly co nside ring the history of denegation that most queer stud e nts bring with them to college, the vitality of their demand is a precious r eso urce. Most ofte n during a se m ester e,·eryo ne will pend so me time angry at eYe ryb ody else. It doesn't surpri se me when straight a nd gay stud e nts, or women and men stud e nts, or r eligiou s and no nrelig io us s tud ents hav e bones to pick with each o ther or with me. What has s urpri sed me more is ho\\· diYisfre issue s of me.thoc!ology and disciplinarity are: the sin gle most contr oYers ia l thing in se , ·era l und er graduat e classes has been that they were literature cour-;s; that the path to e,·ery issu e we discus ed simpl y had to tak e the a rduou s defile thr ough textual interpretation. Furthermore, it was instru tive to me in that class at Amh erst that a great many students, stud e nts who defined themsch·es as nonga y, were incen sed when ( in an interv ie w in the 1 tudent newspaper) l told the story of th e course's genesis. § hat outraged them was the mere notati~n that l had des ig ned the co urse en vi io ning an enro llme nt of mostly lesbian and gay stud en ts. Their se nse o~ entitl em en t as straight-defined s tud ents was so stro ng that th ey cons ider ed it an inalienabl e right to hav e all kind s of differe nt liYes, his to ries, c ultur es unfolded as if anthropologically in formats sp ecifica lly de sig n ed - designed fr om the ground up--for maximum legib ility to them eh ·es: they felt they s houldn 't so much a ha, ·c to slo\\' do\\'n the M e rced es to read the historical mark ers on the battl e field. That it was a field where the act ual survival of other people in the c lass might at the ,·e ry mom ent be at sta ke- wher e, indeed, in a vari ety of ways so might the ir own be - was hard to m ak e notabl e to them among the permitted assumptions of their liberal arts educa tion. Yet th e same ed u cation was being used so differently by stud ents ,,·h o bro ught to it sharp er needs, more s uppl e ep is t emo logica l frameworks.
Chri stm as effec ts What's "queer"? Here's one train of th ought abo ut it. The depressing thing abo ut the Christmas seaso n- is n't it? - is that it 's the tim e wh en
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·s d \" e g g .I -t~ QUEER AND NOW 7 s ame thin9 ? Think of that entity "the family," an imp a tcd social spa ce in which all of the following are meant to line up perfectly \\"ith ea h other: a surn am e a sexual dyad a l ega l unit based on s tat e- reg ulat ed marria ge a circuit or blo od r elationsh ips a sys te m of co mpani onship and s u cco r a building a prosceni um between "priYat e" and "publi c" an eco nomic unit of earn ing and taxation the prime sitC' of C'Co n o mi c cons umpti on the prime sit e of cultural co ns umpti o n I, I o f'.: a m e hani sm to produce, car e fo r, a nd acc ulwr ate c hildr en a mechanism for acc umulating mat erial goods ove r seve ra l generations a dail y routine a unit in a co mmunit y o f worship a s ite o f patri otic formation a nd of course the list ould go on. Looking at my own life, l sec that-pr obabl y like most peo ple---- ! haY e Yalu ed and pursued these vari ous cle me nt of family identity to quite differing degrees (e.g., n o use at all for \\"Orship, mu ch need of omp anionship ). But ,,·h a t 's been con iste nt in thi s particular life i an int erest in not le ttin g very man y of th ese dim ensions line up dir ectly with e ac h oth er at one tim e. I see it 's been a rulin g intuition for m e that the mos t produ ctive s tra tegy (int e llectuall y, em o tionall y) mi g ht be, ""h ene ve r p oss ible, to disarticulatc them one from another, to dise n gage them-the bonds of blood, of la,,-, o f habitati on , of prh ·acy, of co mpanion ship and su co r- from th e lockstep of th eir unanimit y in the sys tem called "fam ily." Or think o f all th e lc m ents that are co nd en sed in thC' no tion of sex ual ide ntit y, some thing that thC' comm o n se n se of our tim e presents as a unit ary c atego ry. Y et, ex C'rtin g an y press ure at a LI on "s xual identit) · ,"yo u see that its e le m e nts includ e your biological (e.g ., c hrom oso mal ) sex, male or female; your se lf-perc('i ,· ed gend er ass ig nm e nt, male or female (supp osed to be th same as your bio log i cal sex); th e prC'ponderan ce of your trait s of pe rso nalit y and app earan ce, ma sculin e or feminin e (supp osed to o rrespo nd to your sex and gend er); ( 1 , I th e biolog ica l sex of yo ur prefe rre d p a rtn er; th e ge nd er assignment of your prefe rre d partn er (s uppo sed to be the same as her / his bio logical sex) ; th e m ascu linity or femininit y of your prefe rred pa rtn er (s upp ose d to be th e oppos ite 6 of your O \\·n); )'Our e lf -p ercep tio n as gay or straig ht (supp osed to correspond to wh eth e r yo ur prefer red par tne r is your sex or the o pposit e); your preferred partner 's self- per ceptio n as gay or strai ght (supp osed to be the sam e as yours); your procrea ti\' C c ho ice (supp osed t o be yes if strai ght, no if gay); yo ur preferred se xual act(s) (supp osed to be inscrtiY c if yo u are mal e or m asculin e, r ece ptiv e if yo u arc female or fem inin e); your mos t ero tic izc d sex ual organ s (s upp o cl to co rrespond to the pro crea tiv e capab ilities of your se x, a nd to your in scr ti,·c/ rece pti,·c assignme nt); r 8 EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK your sexual fantasies (suppo sed t o be highl y co ngru e nt with your sexual practice, but stro nge r in int ens ity); yo ur main loc us of emot io nal bonds (supp osed to res ide in yo ur preferred sexual partner); your enjoyme nt of power in sex ual r elati ons (supp osed to be low if yo u arc fem ale or feminine, high if male or masculine); the people from whom you l earn about your ow n gender and sex (supp osed to co rre spo nd to yo urself in both respec ts); your comm unit y of cultur al and political identifi cation (supp osed to cor respond to yo ur ow n identit y); and - aga in-many more . E,·en thi s list i s re m arkabl e for the s ilent presumptions it has to make abo ut a gi,·en person's cxuality, presumptions that are true only to varying degrees, and for many people not true at all: that CYeryo ne " has a sex ualit y," for instance, and that it is implicated with each person's cnsc of o,·e rall identity in sim ilar ways; that each person's most ch aracte ristic erot ic express ion will be o riented toward an o th er person and not aut ocratic; that if it is alloerotic, it will be oriented toward a single partn er or kind of partner at a time; that it s orientat ion will not change o,·cr timc. 7 NormatiYely, as the parenthetical prescriptions in the list above suggest, it sh ou ld be possible to deduce anybody's entire set of specs from the initial datum of biological sex alone -if one adds only the normati, ·e assumption that "the bio log ica l sex of your pre fe rred p artn er" will be the oppo site of o n 's O\vn. With or without that h tcrosex ist as umpti on, thoug h, what 's striking is the number and d!lference of th e dim ensio ns that "sexual identity" is s upp osed to o rganiz e into a sea mless and uni voca l whole.
And ifitd oes n' t? That's one of the thing s that "queer" can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, OYe rl aps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of mea ning when the con stitu e nt ele m e nts of anyone's gender, of anyone's sex ualit y aren't made (o r can't be made) to signify monolithically. The expe rim enta l lin guistic , episte mologica l, representational, political ach ·cntures attaching to the very man y of us who ma y at tim es be m oved to describe our sch·es as (among many oth er possibilities) pu sh y fem mes, radical faeries, fantasists, drags, clones, l eat hcrfolk, ladies in tuxedoes, fe mini st women o r fem inist men, mast urbat ors, bulldaggers, cliYas, nap! queens, butch bottoms, storyte llers, tran ssexual s, aunties, wannabes, lcsbian id enti fied men or l esb ians who sl eep with men, o r ... people able to re lis h , lea rn from, or identify with s u ch.
Again, "q u eer" can mean som ethin g different: a l ot of th e way I h a Ye used it o far in this dossier is to denote, almost s imply , same-sex sexual o bject ch oice, lesbia n or gay, whether or not it is orga nized around multiple c riss-cross ings of definitional lines. And gfrcn the historical and co ntemporary force of the prohibitions against ever! sam -sex sex ual exp res sion, for an yo ne to disavow th ose meanings, or to displace them from the term's definitional center, ,,·o uld be to dematerialize any possibility of queerness itse l f. At the same time, a lot of the most exc itin g r ece nt work aro und "qu eer" spin s th e term outw ard al ong dim en sion s that can't be s ubsum ed und er gender and sexualit y at all: the way s that race, ethnicity, postcolonial nationalit y c riss-cross with these and other idcntity co nstituting, identity-rracturing discourses, for exam ple. Int e llect ua ls and artists of col or whose sex ual self-definitio n includ es "qu eer"- ! think of an Isaac Julien, a Gloria Anzaldua, a Richard Fung-are using th e Jeyerage of "q uee r" to do a n ew kind of justice to the fractal intrica cies of language, skin, migration, state. Thereby, the graYit y (I mean the graviras, the m ea ning, but also the center of gravit y) of the te rm "queer" itself d eepe n and shift s.
A n other telling re prese ntati onal effect. A word so fraught as "queer" is - fraught with so many socia l and personal histor ic of excl usi on, violence , defiance, exc itement - never can