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