[-empyre-] David, Christina, and Genet: An Antagonism or "Agonism"

[Robert Summers]

I agree with much, _almost_ everything, that Christina wrote in her
latest post (a response as an antagonism) to David, but I have one
disagreement: Genet can be read in the way you read him, and I agree
with much of your reading, but he can also be read in another way --
the one I offered, probably too briefly, in my response to David.  I
want to keep Genet as one example, on inroad into rethinking "queer
politics" and "queer relationality."  I do not think it efficacious to
close the book/s on Genet.

I think that Genet can offer strategies or tactics for a (new?) "queer
politics" _today_-- but, of course, there are others.  I am working on
the writings of Fanon to write on "queer subjectivity" and "queers of
color" (for example Vaginal Davis).  But, Fanon made some pretty
outrageous and damning claims against "homosexuality" -- so does this
mean we should though out Fanon?  I do not think we need to do this.
We can take from "here and there," and not accept all his arguments
wholesale.  We need not play at "good dog" - "bad dog" (or god).  I
think this points to the openness of any text and the ways it can be
used against the author's "intentions."  I am using Fanon for "queer
artists of color" in ways he would neither support nor imagine, I
think (and given his remarks on "homosexuality," I would say I know).

I do not think it productive to shut down a debate -- not matter how
volatile it is, or no matter how much we disagree.  In this sense "the
political" emerges as that point of rupture, and that which causes a
re-distribution of the sensible.  This is not to say that there are
points in Genet (and Fanon) that are not highly problematic, but those
points can be deployed in productive ways that do not reproduce the
masculinst, micro-fascisms, and blind-spots in and of the text/s.  So,
a "queering" of the text?  Deterritorializing the text in order to
re-populate it with women (gay or straight), people of color (gay or
straight), sissys and dandies (gay or straight), etc.

This is may opinion and position on the matter at issue here, now.

As ever, Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
Lecturer
Art History and Visual Culture
Otis College of Art and Design
e: rsummers at otis.edu
w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome