[-empyre-] David Chirot: Queer *Is* Violent: Response to Part of Judith'sPosition/Statement

[virginia solomon]

forgive this brief post, but I have a quick story that I think pertain here,
and hopefully with a bit more time I'd like to respond to David and Robert,
because I think that Tara's work gives us another example of what we might
call the violence of queer work that doesn't morph into what is striking me
as a troubling direction in the conversation. and apologies if this takes us
back a couple of threads, but I'm not entirely willing to let the violence
strand end quite yet.

a couple of years ago I was at a reading for an anthology to which a friend
of mine had participated. after everyone read their bit, there was a
question and answer session. a gentleman who identified himself as a member
of act up and queer nation told a story about how folks used to compete with
each other over who could do the more outrageous thing to get arrested, and
who could get arrested the most times. he then turned a question to the
panel, asking them the outrageous things that they did to compete with each
other in the interest of the movement. my friend responded by saying that
the point wasn't to compete with each other, the point was to work together
and the spirit of competition and of one-up-'man'ship was in fact
antithetical to the values of a movement based on feminist, anti-racist,
queer politics. (as an aside, I think this dovetails with a conversation
about transfeminism).

and really, I am not convinced by Genet's eroticization of shiny police
boots (as Bersani reminds us, we have to be careful to keep in mind the ways
in which our erotics don't just support power, a la Foucault, but
specifically reinforce the systems of our own subjegation) because Genet
made choices that put him in that position. now I want to be clear that I
think there is political potential in making the choices that highlight the
absurdities of the systems of power, but why are we glamorizing Genet? what
of the people who are on the floor staring at the police boot all the time,
where they live, not just when they go to get arrested in Chicago?

It seems to me, in response to Robert's question about class and race in
queer theory, that stories such as these are as often a root of a problem as
constructing a movement based around gays in the military and marriage is.
those two movements might support very different structures of dominance,
but support structures of dominance they do, I think. what transfeminism
allows us to do, I think, is to see the tactic of cutting meth for upper and
middle class consumers, I suppose, but to see that within a strategy that
considers how race and class play into drug use, how normative prescriptions
of the body and behavior intersect with drug use in such a way as to engage
issues of gender, race, and class.



On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Robert Summers <robtsum at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> I have some questions and comments re: your post:
>
> You state, "... a fighter -- i remember at the time what an immense
> moment and example this was, like the lid had been blown off the
> streets, the sewer lid, and suddenly swarming forth from the degrading
> darkness into ful view were these gladiators, tough guys, men on the
> move with weapons against the forces endlessly making them stay "in
> the closest" or bars, behind the scenes ..."
>
> I like the metaphor (but is it?) of the "sewer lid being blown off"
> and the "monstrosity" emerging: a swarm (a "war-machine"? fueled by a
> superhuman love).  I think this could be a
> corrective-as-a-return-to-radicality in "queer politics" and "queer
> action/s" that would counter the conservative turn in the major "gay
> and lesbian movements" in North America (esp. the USA) -- for example
> Equality California and the HRC, which in many aspects just has
> bisexuals and transsexuals as tokens.  Such "gay" and "lesbian"
> movements are "fighting" more for "gays in the military" and "gay
> marriage" then AIDS/HIV, queer youth, rethinking kinship, etc.  Prop 8
> in California passed, in large part, because the gay, white,
> middle-class "community" did not reach out to the working class, the
> working poor, and people of color -- as well as the places outside of
> there comfort zone: East LA, South Central, the Inland Empire, etc.
> With regard to Stonewall, I want to add that "queers" -- or then
> "gays," in the broader sense of the term, -- of color, trannies (of
> color), dykes (of color), and drag queens (of color) were also at
> Stonewall and involved in the revolt/revolution, and a similar event
> took place in LA approx. two years earlier; thus, complicating the
> narrative, the history of the "gay and lesbian movement" and
> problematizing the "masculinist" actions taken during the 3 day (?)
> up-rise.  I would like to know more of what you think of "queer
> friendship," "queer kinship," and "queer politics" -- then and now.
>
> Also, you write about "queer" and the class issue.  What does "queer
> theory" and "queer politics" have to say about class?  Has it done a
> poor job in addressing this issue: the class issue -- not to mention
> the race issue, which often dovetails into the class issues of the
> poor?
>
> Finally, for this email to you (and others), you write, "i [would]
> read Genet aloud to him and his mangy dog -- while he cut up the meth
> -- the cutting it was also a form of violence against the middle and
> upper class customers -- working kids and women like ourselves got the
> good stuff ..."
>
> This reminds me of a story by Foucault (?).  He and Jean Genet were in
> a protest and the police arrived, and as Genet was thrown to the floor
> by the police, he was drawn to the shiny, leather boots of the police.
>  This is interesting to me because Genet (as in his writing)
> eroticized power, and he reversed (if only momentarily) the movement
> of power, by turning the Subject (the Police) into objects (of
> perverse pleasure and desire).  This also shows the power of
> disidentification, if you will.  I just love the fact that the
> brutality of the police was eroticized -- turned in another direction:
> one unrecognized and unstoppable by the police, the State apparatus.
> This is similarly played out in _Funeral Rites_ and even _Un Chant
> Amour_ -- as well as the play of _Un Chant Amour_ in Todd Haynes's
> _Poison_.  Here is a link to a brilliant essay on _Poison_ and "queer
> cinema":
> http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue1/bryson/bryson.html
>
> Thanks for your intriguing post; there is much there what needs
> further discussion, I think.
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
Virginia Solomon
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