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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 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism 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” sug- gested the current scheme for the discipline in unexpected ways that will, especially at a time of global movements and migrations, neo- liberal ideologies, and negative affects, inspire a return to the ar- chives, 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 politi- cal 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 rela- tion 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).
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