Think Sex Jennifer Tyburczy Northwestern University

Criticism

Volume 51 | Issue 2 Article 9

2009 The imeT Has Come to [Re]think Sex Jennifer Tyburczy Northwestern University

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Recommended Citation Tyburczy, Jennifer (2009) "The imeT Has Come to [Re]think Sex," Criticism: Vol. 51: Iss. 2, Article 9. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol51/iss2/9 The imeT Has Come to [Re]think Sex

Cover Page Footnote I dedicate this review to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who inspired all of us to rethink sex, sexuality, and gender in profoundly world-changing ways. She lives on through her passionate, innovative, and, as perhaps she might say about something she liked and admired, "textured" scholarship, as well as, of course, through the people who knew her well and loved her fiercely. This review is also for you.

This book review is available in Criticism: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol51/iss2/9 THE TIME HAS With the aim of celebrating the life and work of Gayle Rubin and com- COME TO [RE]THINK memorating the 1984 publication SEX of her essay “Thinking Sex: Notes Jennifer Tyburczy for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” Heather Love and her conference committee expertly Conference Review: “Rethinking curated a conference lineup of Sex: A State of the Field “thirty scholars working within a Conference in Gender and range of disciplines about the most Sexuality Studies,” University of signifi cant and pressing questions Pennsylvania, 4–6 March 2009 in gender and sexuality studies.” In so doing, “Rethinking Sex” suggested the current scheme for the discipline in unexpected ways that will, especially at a time of global movements and migrations, neoliberal ideologies, and negative affects, inspire a return to the archives, the tracing of realist gene- alogies, the reconfi guration of modes and methods for knowledge transmission, the reinvigoration of theoretical and pedagogical choreographies (not forward, but sideways or, even, spiral), and the recognition, as Gayle Rubin said twenty-fi ve years ago, of “the political dimensions of erotic life” (35).1 The conference organization was refl ective of Heather Love’s own philosophy (as articulated in her 2007 book Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer His- tory) that the fi eld needs to critique simplistically celebratory accounts of the queer past in order to create a queer future more in line with ever-diversifying queer constitu- encies. It seemed a consensus at the conference that in order for “queer” to open up intellectual, political, Criticism, Spring 2009, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 355–366. ISSN: 0011-1589. 355 © 2009 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201-1309. 356 JENNIFER TYBURCZY and sexual possibilities we need to by these phone calls, confi scated relinquish nostalgia for what was, the conference handbook. Leafl ets is, and will be, always and every- circulated by Women Against Por- where, a intrapolitically fraught nography called the conference sexual community. Particularly in participants “deviants.” The Hel- today’s global economic crisis and ena Rubenstein Foundation the vicious competition for resou- dropped its funding for the event. rces, security, and a fi nancial leg to Still, eight hundred people gath- stand on, we must recognize that ered to attend, and the conference we feel “bad” and analyze and was sold out. use these energies to reinvigorate Thus, Rubin devoted a signifi cant sexuality studies to meet the chal- portion of her keynote address at lenges of the twenty-fi rst century. “Rethinking Sex” to the emergence “Rethinking Sex” was just as much of academic work on sexuality, of a conference about conducting which, she humbly noted, she only sexuality research as it was a con- played a part (e.g., she mentioned ference that suggested ways for other trailblazers such as Alan undoing particular epistemologi- Bérubé, Joan Nestle, Jonathan cal frameworks for understanding Katz, Jeffrey Weeks, Marjorie Gar- sexuality. ber, Esther Newton, and George For Love, “Rethinking Sex” Chauncey). Entitled “Blood Under mobilized a fantasy to actualize the Bridge: Refl ections on ‘Think- those “storied conferences of the ing Sex,’” Rubin’s keynote was a past,” such as “Pleasure and Dan- graphically rich and historically ger” at Barnard College in 1982, dense journey backward in time to where Rubin fi rst delivered “Think- revisit the context out of which ing Sex” as a talk.2 In the midst of “Thinking Sex” emerged in an ac- what Lisa Duggan and Nan D. ademic and political landscape that Hunter have named the “sex wars” was hostile to sexuality scholarship. and during one of the most vola- Rubin reminded us how her con- tile decades in the history of sex troversial presence at conferences education in the United States, the such as “Pleasure and Danger” ac- conference was, to make an under- companied a larger struggle in the statement, controversial. Antipor- academy at the time. Namely, ac- nography and antisadomasochism cording to Rubin, conducting re- feminists targeted the conference search on sex and sexuality issues and tried to shut it down. Calls was the equivalent of “academic came in claiming that harm would suicide.” befall the women at Barnard be- On an optimistic note, Rubin cause of the conference. Barnard assessed the current academic en- President Ellen V. Futter, whose vironment as one of “sea change” suspicion was apparently aroused and commented that pursuing ON “RETHINKING SEX” 357 queer scholarship is no longer a bodies and populations; peda- “death sentence” for university gogy and the institutionaliza- research careers. Perhaps the relation of gender and sexuality tive calm and quiet with which studies; sexual practice, plea- “Rethinking Sex” proceeded (one sure, and community; new Penn graduate student commented imaginaries of kinship and that many students at the univer- sociality; globalization and its sity were not even aware that the effects; histories of HIV; the conference was taking place) was a politics of emotion; and the direct result of this “sea change” queer afterlife of confl icts in in the academy, notably the insti- feminism. tutionalization of gender and sexuality studies at top research Queer and sexuality studies, at least universities; or, as Valerie Traub for the scholars presenting at “Re- explained during the graduate thinking Sex,” has emerged as a student open discussion, the “qui- highly theoretical, rigorous, and etness” surrounding the conference respected area of study. Yet, in her could be construed “as a good opening remarks, Heather Love thing,” an indication that queer acknowledged a profound sense of scholars have successfully navi- “FOMS” ( fear of missing some- gated their way to tenured posi- thing), and I wonder if it was the tions and that the scholarship of heightened sense of danger sur- Rubin and other senior academics rounding the incorporation of presenting at “Rethinking Sex” “sex” into the academy at “Pleasure have achieved a kind of alternative and Danger” that Love and others canon status. Rubin’s insistence on feared they had missed in being viewing sex and sexuality as intri- born “too late.” cately interwoven in the fabric of Although “Rethinking Sex” everyday life, politics, and the law, came and went without one verbal as well as the emphasis on interdis- attack of “antifeminism” or “sex ciplinarity in the academy, have perversion,” Rubin pointedly argued also laid the groundwork for sexu- that the panics forged in the name ality scholars to simultaneously of sexual security are far from be- speak of and about sexuality while hind us. Since 1984, according to also attending to, according to the Rubin, the antigay right has be- program’s “Welcome” address, come an even bigger apparatus, “a subterranean system of roots and intersections with gender, race, tubers ready to sprout under the class, and disability; neoliberal- right conditions” that “we ignore . . . ism and sexual politics; trans- at our [own] peril.” What troubles gender lives; queer diasporas; Rubin today is how the charmed health and management of circle of heteronormativity has 358 JENNIFER TYBURCZY been taken up by “the racist white But it is precisely at times such supremacist right” to defi ne the as these, when we live with parameters of citizenship and the the possibility of unthinkable scope of national human rights. destruction, that people are Twenty years ago, Rubin argues, likely to become dangerously no social conservative or white crazy about sexuality. . . . Con- supremacist group would have sequently, sexuality should be associated homosexuality with the treated with special respect in disqualifi cation of citizenship. Ru- times of great social stress. bin’s talk argued that these efforts to link citizenship, race, and ho- The two days that followed the mosexuality point to a troubling evening of “Blood Under the trend of using sexuality as way of Bridge” approached sex and sexu- measuring who and what is ality with the utmost respect dur- American. ing these “very perilous and very Rubin’s keynote reminded the dangerous times.” audience that while sexuality stud- Nine panels, a music concert by ies has emerged as a major institu- Matmos (Drew Daniel and M. C. tional force in the academy, many Schmidt), the electronica “thought of the attacks waged against queers experiment” duo best known for and other heteronormative failures their work with avant-garde pop “look (and sound) like the ‘good’ princess Björk, and two fi lm old days” of 1984. In a comment screenings by fi lmmaker Abigail looming large on the mind of every Child followed Rubin’s keynote. In audience member during the worst homage to Jasbir Puar’s concept economic crisis of any of our life- “queer assemblage,” Matmos com- times (no need for FOMS here), poses their queer soundscapes with Rubin sums up the dangerous rela- the unexpected collisions of objects tionship between sexuality and (things, yes, but also objects of economic recession; namely, that it desire). The result is an unreliable, provokes “looking for someone to inherently inauthentic format that blame on the bottom rung of the simultaneously pays reverent hom- [sexual] system.” Twenty-fi ve years age to predecessors (such artists ago, Rubin opened “Thinking Sex” as fi lm director James Bidgood with these words: [Pink Narcissus, 1971] and DJ Larry Levan) and the theoretical under- To some, sexuality may seem pinnings of their phonic pastiches. to be an unimportant topic, a On the second night of the confer- frivolous diversion from the ence, Abigail Child screened two more critical problems of pov- of her fi lms: Mayhem (1987), which erty, war, disease, racism, fam- explores radical sexuality, innova- ine, or nuclear annihilation. tive editing techniques, and what ON “RETHINKING SEX” 359 she referred to as the “queerness of Duggan’s and José Esteban Muñoz’s form,” as well as her documentary, panel on “Hope and Hopelessness” On the Downlow (2008), which por- proposed that “queerness” might trays the everyday experiences of be the answer, the strategy of es- various African American men liv- cape (says Muñoz citing Daphne ing on the down low in Cleveland, Brooks’s notion of escapology), that Ohio.3 “signal[s] a certain belonging The panels coalesced around a through and with the negative.” collectively felt and urgent need to Duggan (who spoke against the rethink sex now, especially in terms privileged affects associated with of theorizing queerness and queer hope and its narratives of norma- experience. They also brought to tive happiness, as well as the revo- bear a burgeoning concept from the lutionary possibilities of “bitchy” “affective turn” in theoretical schol- queer hope) and Muñoz (who arship, what J. Jack Halberstam supported an educated kind of calls “queer negativities.” In his hope, one infused with concrete presentation “Unthinking Sex,” utopianness distinct from Ernst Halberstam demanded the interro- Bloch’s concept of consciousness) gation of the “wrong myth of the ultimately agreed that hope/ plucky queer as heroic fi ghter lessness named a dialectical rela- against repressive regimes, and re- tionship, a critical modality, a new markable emergence from repres- mode of collectivity that moves “al- sive regimes.” Halberstam asked, ways sideways, never growing up.” “Where might political resistance Undoing epistemological frame- take a surprising form? How might works for understanding sexuality we replace those comfortable terms?” involves a process of thinking and His answer: In a feminist stance feeling a way out of mythic and (e.g., Saidiya Hartman) or queer unrealistic narratives of where we femininity (e.g., Lynda Hart) that have been, where we are, and where reshapes politics in the name of an we need to travel. Three panelists antiheroic disintegrating queer sub- that employed critical modes of ject; in the disavowal of a meager feeling backward through the ar- choice between life and death (as in chive were Michele Mitchell, Gaya- the children’s fi lm Chicken Run tri Gopinath, and Neville Hoad. In [2000]); in “vacuation, refusal, nega- her talk, “A Unique Compound- tion” and a new voice, a passive voice, edness? A Tentative Sexuality and a “radical masochism,” or an unbe- Intersectionality,” Mitchell focused coming, passive sort of politics that on the pathologization of intrara- provides an alternative to mastery cial sexual relations and what she and the desire to dominate. calls “an archive of trauma col- Continuing the investigation of lected and distributed by W. E. B. queerness and negativity, Lisa Du Bois and Carolyn Bond Day 360 JENNIFER TYBURCZY for black nationalist purposes.” and sexed histories and the re- For Mitchell, as for Gopinath in creation of who and what is missing. her presentation, “Archive, Affect, If queer negativity, like feeling and the Everyday: Queer Diasporic backward through the queer ar- Re-Visions,” unpacking the com- chive, requires previously undreamt- plexities of identity and relation- of intersections (à la Matmos), ships to privilege and moving then Neville Hoad’s talk, “Critical beyond categories demand an in- Native Informants: ‘Thinking Sex’ tersectional return to the archive. from South Africa: Then and While Mitchell focused on the per- Now,” mobilized his fantasy of formative effects of the archive for how South African nationalists passing forth knowledge about the would put Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” gendered and sexualized African to work today. Recognizing the American body, Gopinath primar- epistemological nationalism of ily drew on the feminist anthology Rubin’s essay, Hoad’s presentation This Bridge Called My Back: Writ- applied “Thinking Sex” to South ings by Radical Women of Color, ed- Africa in 1984 and 2009. To do so, ited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria he referred to the famous graphics Anzaldúa (1981), the artwork of in Rubin’s essay (the charmed cir- Allan de Souza and Chitra Ganesh, cle and the outer limits) and argued and especially Saidiya Hartman’s that, twenty-fi ve years after, they most recent book Lose Your Mother: still provide compelling represen- A Journey along the Atlantic Slave tations for ordering sexual value Route (2007) to suggest the consis- biased toward the American and tent failure of the archive to “raise Western European contexts. the dead,” an allusion to Sharon If Hoad’s presentation belongs Holland’s book Raising the Dead: to the vanguard of archival schol- Readings of Death and (Black) arship, it also belongs to the bur- Subjectivity (2000). Like Hartman’s geoning fi eld of transnational experience in the dungeons of the sexuality. As scholarship about slave castles in Ghana, explained queers of color has shown, “queer” Gopinath, the abject material of can and does operate within a destroyed bodies propels the imag- matrix of infrastructural and su- ination of lives outside of history. perstructural class and race identity- Through her rich collage of artis- based politics that privileges queer tic, literary, and theoretical choices, whites and bourgeois class aspi- Gopinath argued that the “anti- rations. Meanwhile, transnational monumental, the nonvisual, non- sexuality scholars have discussed tactile, the excessive and the abject” the historical intersections between or the “debris of daily life” provide queerness, colonialism, and global- necessary time and space travels to ization, questioning whether queer get at the heart of gendered, raced, bodies and queer studies are too ON “RETHINKING SEX” 361 attached to their liberal referent. and work through affective res- As stated by David Eng, modera- ponses to nonnormative perspec- tor of the panel “Globalizing Sex,” tives and experiences, Sharon “travel does strange things to [sex].” Holland’s presentation “Murder S/ Namely, “sexuality becomes a de- He Wrote” examined the very so- velopmental discourse” that attends bering topic of brutal violence to issues of sovereignty, decoloni- against transgendered individuals, zation, and immigration. Gayatri particularly the undermediatized Gopinath, Lisa Rofel, Martin Manal- murder of black queers such as ansan, and Neville Hoad made up Sakia Gunn. Holland proposed ex- the “Globalizing Sex” panel, but panding the politics of recognition other scholars, such as Carol to include those who fail to pass (or Vance, Jasbir Puar, and Marisa who can not or do not try) as mono- Belausteguigoitia, also mobilized lithically raced (causes less anxiety) sexuality studies on a transna- or monolithically gendered (causes tional stage. extreme anxiety). Ruminating on At the conference, the concept whether human relations have of “trans” (as in transnational and become property relations (a hu- transgender) emerged as an object man right to inhumanity), Holland and a method for studying various argued that the violent targeting of kinds of border crossings. In her transgendered individuals of color opening comments to the panel signals a “Jim Crow mentality “Rethinking Sex, Rethinking Gen- applied to gender.” der,” Susan Stryker called for ethi- “Trans as a category,” said Dean cal responsibility in transgendered Spade during his talk, “Beyond studies, especially as it becomes in- Recognition,” “is still incoherent, stitutionalized in the academy. local and regional, unorganized Like Sharon Holland and J. Jack and diffuse.” Now is the time, he Halberstam, Stryker argued that continued, to make demands be- transgender studies might provide yond inclusion and recognition a new frame of reference (much that attend to, on a theoretical like “queer” did for feminism) level, the dangerous intersections that can problematize social cate- of trans theory with liberal and gories of belonging and push be- neoliberal fantasies such as privacy yond homonormativity and gender (and fi guring privacy as some normativities that are based in kind of universal), antiexclusion “white Eurocentric projects for and hate crime law, fantasies of mapping and containing all kinds visibility, and the freedom to of being.” work. In an argument reminiscent Continuing this critique of of Rubin’s critique of feminism in homonormativity and the consistent the early 1980s, Spade called for call at the conference to take on the recognition of “uncomfortable 362 JENNIFER TYBURCZY alliances between trans issues and En’s 2003 fi lm Feeding Boys, with police forces.” “If we’re in the mid- its biting queer commentary, as a dle of the institutionalization of critique of how bodies and desires trans studies,” asked Spade, “how become commodities in the neolib- can it be anticapitalist, antiracist, eral world. For Rofel, the fi lm and anti–able-bodied?” questions the entire apparatus of “Rethinking Sex” focused on normalization in China and, like analyzing the systems of late cap- her ethnographic work, calls atten- italist power that dangerously, and tion to the tension between sex work, at times violently, suppress and desire, and capitalism. In “The control sexual bodies. The collec- Charmed Outer Limits of Queer- tively felt anxiety about how sex, ness and Class,” Lisa Henderson sexuality, and gender norms become also addressed the intersections of institutionalized led to two addi- money, labor, desire, and the sta- tional conference themes, which I bilities and instabilities of privilege, will encapsulate as privilege and but as they are played out in main- neoliberalism and a new politics of stream (e.g., Brokeback Mountain, care and sexual safeguarding. In 2005) and queer (e.g., By Hook or “The Neo–New Deal and Why by Crook, 2002) cinema. Her pre- Obama Doesn’t Want Us to Think sentation explored how a politics about Sex,” Janet Jakobsen diag- of queer friendship and solidarity nosed the current sociopolitical provides a social and political force moment as a “neo–new deal” one integral to queer survival and ar- run by a uniquely American form gued for queer attachments that of Christian-secular alliances that recall the intersection of class and regulate race, class, and gender sexuality in the formation of social through the mechanisms of sexual- networks. ity. She predicted that “[w]e are A new politics of care and sexual headed into a new social forma- safeguarding, as suggested by tion, [but] it will not be socialism.” Steven Epstein, Carol Vance, Mar- Instead, sex will remain a dividing tin Manalansan, Robert McRuer, and divisive issue for today’s and Jasbir Puar, involves careful leadership, more so than the attention to the circulation of af- Obama administration wants it to fects, racial/national/disabled ste- be. Drawing on Rubin’s earlier reotypes, and overly simplistic essay, “The Traffi c in Women” media narratives within global (1975), Lisa Rofel’s presentation, late-capitalist structures. In his “The Traffi c in Money Boys,” also presentation “The Great Indiscuss- looked at cosmopolitan, desiring able: HPV Vaccination and the subjects, but in the context of the Politics of Queer Biocitizenship,” recent neoliberal transformation of Steven Epstein insisted that sociol- China. Rofel positioned Cui Zi ogy of science should not only ON “RETHINKING SEX” 363 focus on how knowledge gets pro- workers from the Philippines, duced, but also on how knowledge Manalansan argued against the fails to get produced. Epstein ar- essentialist notion that “Filipinos gued that “nonknowledge produc- are a caring people,” locating in- tion” about sexuality and health stead a violent gender universalism is related to issues of biocitizen- behind the stereotype: this gender ship and the representation of the universalism is constituted by biomedically excluded, which in heterosexual and reproductively the case of Epstein’s talk are men active Filipina women whose un- having sex with men who are at in- dervalued labor in a globalized creased risk of rectal cancer caused labor market is needed to uphold by human papillomavirus (HPV). fi rst-world domesticity. In “Zombies of Globalization: Robert McRuer’s presentation, Women Traffi cked into Reaction- “Disabling Sex: Notes for a Crip ary Sexual Campaigns,” Carol Theory of Sexuality,” called for a Vance critiqued grand narratives reconceptualization of the catego- of global sex work, arguing that ries of disability and sexuality, and the media creates twenty-fi rst- proposed the need to queer the century sex panics by converting ways in which the state deploys speaking subjects into “zombies,” sexuality. A crip theory of sexuality, or undead brought back to life McRuer argued, is wary of the without speech or free will. Over- ways in which the state discursively whelmingly ubiquitous and one- positions the care of sexual minori- dimensional media representations ties, especially how disability is about sex traffi cking, said Vance, often made to function as a reliable extend to nongovernment and gov- sign of something else (e.g., degra- ernment mobilizations and the “not dation, eligibility, other people’s totally misplaced moral concern” generosity). Riffi ng on McRuer’s with the victimization of traffi cked theory of “disability culturalism,” people; unfortunately, explained Puar argued in her presentation Vance, most of these reports ride on “Prognosis Time” that forms of a “technique of melodrama” that barbarism and nationalism rein- extends the term traffi cking to all scribe norms of race, gender, class, forms and situations of sex work. and region that create undeniable Martin Manalansan’s talk, “Ser- privileges. She lamented the exclu- vicing the World: Flexible Filipinos sion of affect, ambivalent or other- and the Unsecured Life,” proposed wise, from the notion of political a theory of “affective labor” that change and proposed the need to incorporates “living, habitation, work “towards a geopolitics of everyday life, love, escape, and, of affective capability.” Puar sug- course, hope.” Concentrating on gested that the “affective turn” in affective regimes of global care the humanities and social sciences 364 JENNIFER TYBURCZY simultaneously demonstrates cap- between humans and focused in- ital manipulations of affect that stead on “object sexuality,” a puta- harness bodies and resistances to tive newcomer on the landscape of surveillance. For Puar, queer theory nonnormative sexualities where illuminates the need to expand the humans develop relationships with category of who is disabled, and objects, not as fetishes, but as queering disability in prognosis time amorous partners. In bringing involves expanding debility to in- “objectum-sexuality” to the atten- clude aging, the impacts of neocolo- tion of the conference participants, nial intervention, postcolonial work Terry began to theorize an as-of- on body capacity, immigration, pov- yet unexplored sexual referent: a erty, and other global inequalities. nonbinary orientation emerging “Sex is not a thing,” Lauren from animism, or the belief that all Berlant wrote in South Atlantic things are animated. Quarterly’s recent special issue, “So many of us want so much “After Sex? On Writing since from sex, and from the study of Queer Theory”; “it’s a relation.” sex, so many of us want relief from The fi nal theme emerging from rage,” began Lauren Berlant and the conference was this concept of Lee Edelman in their joint presen- sex as relational. In “Father Knows tation “Sex Without Optimism.” Best,” Leo Bersani continued his What does it mean to be pro-sex exploration of new and unfamiliar without pan-optimism? To answer relational confi gurations and asked this question, Edelman and Berlant whether there can be a nonsadistic rhetorically performed a rethinking form of knowing the other, as op- of sex for themselves and the con- posed to the violently affective ap- ference audience. The following is a proximation to knowing the desires list of what they came up with: of another in order to master those desires. While he admitted that Sex is: psychoanalysis has misled us into — a willingness to experience believing that intimacy depends on corporeally the shock of knowledge of others’ personal psy- discontinuity chology, he also postulated that — an encounter with disinterested pursuits of psychoan- non-knowledge (citing alytic knowledge, or what his book Steven Epstein) with Adam Phillips, Intimacies — an undoing of the subject (2008), calls “impersonal narcis- — jouissance and libidinal sism,” are the key to understand- unruliness ing both the (divided) self and the — a relief from not knowing other. Meanwhile, Jennifer Terry’s how to live “Objectum-Sexuality” disrupted — a threatening cause of the assumption of sexual desire precarious life ON “RETHINKING SEX” 365

— not productive, not In many ways, Berlant and Edel- moving toward synthesis man’s presentation offered a poetic or overcoming difference summation on the queerness of — a site for experiencing negative affects: namely, they cri- intensifi ed encounter tiqued the imperative of optimism with accustomized ways as a kind of armor with which of being subjects fortify a “happiness re- — not the negative force gime” linked to the violence of a Western cultures make it desire to overcome and the deter- out to be (if only it lived mination to master and dominate up to such a description!) (as critiqued earlier, especially by — something different from Halberstam and Bersani). They pleasure added to this ongoing conversation — that which breaks us an interrogation of archives of — that which disorganizes adorability: those “smiley-faced assurances about what representations” that invoke the we want “privilege of bland normativity” — that which guarantees and “anesthetize feeling, protecting nothing but confusion against it.” — not “you make me feel Heather Love ended the confer- safe” (which only ence with a discussion on pedagogy attempts to neutralize (with panelists Marisa Belausteg- sex’s risk) uigoitia and Deborah Britzman) — part of a comedy of on the principle that the transgen- misrecognition erational transmission of sexual — a tragic comedy of knowledge requires the continua- infl ation and defl ation, tion of “storied conferences” such both affective and political as “Rethinking Sex.” The confer- — the prospect of an encoun- ence, then, became a two-day ter with the sublime classroom, a space for the passing — an economy of danger on of knowledge from senior schol- — an antianesthetic space ars to junior and emerging scholars — not a mechanism of social in the fi eld of gender and sexuality cohesion or “armored studies. That is a type of inheri- happiness” tance and a kind of future, I would — no claim to the good, wager to say, that even Lee Edelman proper, substantial ground would support. for redress For two days in March 2009, we — a claim to self-defi nition gathered to celebrate what Gayle through a resistance to the Rubin taught us in this project of omnipresent imperative of queer theoretical and cultural pan-optimism heritage, illuminating unknowing 366 JENNIFER TYBURCZY and unthinking regulatory sexual held the two-day conference “Queer regimes and the devaluation of Bonds.” particular bodies in a hierarchy de- 2. Rubin also mentioned the 1986 conference “Feminism, Sexuality, and termined by market value, neolib- Power” (what she referred to as eral ideals, and the tenacity of “Barnard II”) at Mount Holyoke age-old phobias, panics, and white College (South Hadley, Massachusetts) supremacy. Rubin and the panel- and “Act III” at the Australian National University in Canberra in ists at “Rethinking Sex” reminded 1993. The controversial 1997 us how much we forget and how conference “Revolting Behaviors: much we are bound to forget as we The Challenges of Women’s Sexual Freedom” held at the State University move, not ahead, but through the of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz “spirals” (to borrow Marisa Belaus- should also be included in the teguigoitia’s concept of queer genealogy of “storied conferences.” Valerie Traub suggested that I also movement) of sexual history. Like include the “Gay Shame” conference Lisa Duggan, the conference called held at the University of Michigan in us to model our work on the 2003. Also in 2003, Northwestern “angry, witty, creative, hilarious, University organized the conference “The Ends of Sexuality: Pleasure and alarming, analytically brilliant, and Danger in the New Millennium.” politically engaged” approach of 3. The fi lm had originally been “Thinking Sex.” Twenty-fi ve years contracted by the mainstream gay later, as Sharon Holland noted in television channel, Logo, but was her introduction to Rubin’s key- subsequently canceled after producers viewed Abigail Child’s footage and note, “we have just begun to talk realized that the fi lm would be an about sex, really.” academic and respectful documentary and not, as they were hoping, an exposé on secret sex lives. —Northwestern University

NOTES

I dedicate this review to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who inspired all of us to rethink sex, sexuality, and gender in profoundly world-changing ways. She lives on through her passionate, innovative, and, as perhaps she might say about something she liked and admired, “textured” scholarship, as well as, of course, through the people who knew her well and loved her ﬁ ercely. This review is also for you. 1. 2009 seems to be a year for “Rethinking Sex” at more than one location and in more than one way. About two weeks before Penn’s conference, the University of California at Berkeley