1 Theorising Queer Performance

Notes 1 Theorising Queer Performance 1 . For a broader introduction to the domain of queer theory, see Nikki Sullivan’s A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (2003), and Robert Corber and Stephen Valocchi’s Queer Studies: An interdisciplinary Reader (2003). For an introductory overview of issues of sexuality and performance, see Jill Dolan’s Theatre & Sexuality (2010). 2 . As Moya Lloyd has argued, such logic is self-reproducing and grounded in the assumption that gender is constative, a cultural statement which is either true or false: It signals ‘what we are’: subjects of a discernible and given set of characteristics. Moreover, these are characteristics not shared by the Other. Rather, masculinity assumes analytically the existence of femininity ... Male assumes female; female assumes male. (Lloyd, 1999, p. 196) 3 . Here, the performative is distinguished from performance in that the latter does not presume a subject – ‘where there is an ‘I’ who utters or speaks ... there is first a discourse which precedes and enables that ‘I’ ... ’ (Butler, 1993, p. 225). 4 . Sue-Ellen Case characterises that development as a departure from pre- existing modes of political activism and activists: ‘the deconstructive break with the personal as the political sought to reaffirm the author as floating signifier. [ ... ] The queer call was to return to that unmarked patriarchal, Eurocentric language of, well, the French and German phil- osophical traditions. “Philosophy to fore!” cheered queer. Queer thus functioned as the sign of sexual politics cut loose from earlier, grassroots lesbian feminism’ (Case, 2009, p. 53). 5 . Claire Colebrook articulates the pragmatic politics of this trade-off: ‘On the one hand we need to be critical of constituted identities, which might come to function as restrictive norms. On the other hand, without the tactical or strategic adoption of such an identity we risk political invisibility and ineffectiveness’ (2008, p. 25). 6 . Butler’s Excitable Speech (1997a), which explores the ways in which (hate) speech may be injurious, provides the outline of this discourse. For Butler, to become a subject means to become subjected to a set of implicit and explicit norms which govern the kind of speech that will be legible as the speech of a subject (1997a, pp. 133–5). Those whose speech moves outside of those norms are not only intelligible, but unrecognisable as subjects. A movement outside of the domain of speakability is to there- fore risk one’s own status as a subject. 210 Notes 211 7 . Martin continues to suggest that there may be potential in the cultural naturalisation of femininity, observing that a ‘passing’ of the femme lesbian as a straight woman ‘implies the possibility of denaturalizing heterosexuality by emphasizing the permeabilities of gay/straight boundaries’ (1994, p. 113). 8 . Annabelle Willox’s (2009) counter-reading of Halberstam’s account of female masculinity (discussed above) explicitly rejects the notion that butch performs masculinity, or otherwise pastiches or parodies male- ness through a dramatic performance of pre-existing masculine and feminine categories. For Willox, butch identities should be understood through a phenomenological account of ‘the experience of being butch’ (2009, p. 100) – that is, without claiming an incongruity between iden- tification and bodies. Accordingly, Willox argues for an understanding of identity which refutes the necessity of ‘truth’ to gender in order to allow ‘for embodiments to be comprehensible regardless of any apparent contradictions over time; there is no contradiction where there is no assumption of a fixed or constant identity’ (2009, p. 107). 9 . For further discussion of drag performance in the context of the USA, see Esther Newton’s Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (1979) and, more recently, Leila R. Rupp and Verta Taylor’s Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003) for discussion of ‘drag queerness’ as ‘outside femininity or masculinity’. 10 . Accordingly, one might follow Butler to read authenticity sceptically as the successful fulfilment of cultural norms relating to gender and sexuality, as the ‘passing off’ of restraint as naturalised sex/gender. While there are harsh punishments for those who do not fit prescribed gender roles, those who perform well are provided with the illusory reassurance ‘that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all’ (Butler, 1990, p. 186). 11 . Charles Guignon, for example, argues that ‘postmodern thought goes beyond de-stabilising the binary oppositions that frame the concept of authenticity; it obliterates any notion of a self whatsoever’ (2004, p. 126). 12 . Alessandro Ferrara (1998), for example, has described a mode of authenticity centred on a kind of reflexive self-awareness of others, arguing ‘that reflection upon who we are entails seeing ourselves from the stand- point of another person – real, imaginary, or ideal. To live reflectively is to live through the eyes of another and, to that extent, it keeps us from simply being ourselves’ (Larmore, 2004, p. 8). 2 Claiming Representation: The Performance Politics of Gay Sweatshop 1 . The following discussion is not concerned with determining whether particular practitioners were lesbian, gay or not; I am, instead, concerned with the reasons why that question was significant and the kind of 212 Notes personal, professional and political investments which the emphasis on performer sexuality might represent or enact. 2 . This context may also explain the impulse in later lesbian work to explicitly examine the history of invisibility, as in Tasha Fairbanks’ Pulp (1985/6) which interweaves 1950s America and 1980s Britain to explore lesbian relationships in societies which vilify homosexuality. 3 . See, for example, de Jongh’s discussion of Robert Anderson’s 1953 play Tea and Sympathy (de Jongh, 1992, pp. 59–63). 4 . Freshwater suggests a more pernicious form of silencing, noting the House of Lords ‘infamous decision to reject a bill designed to crimin- alise lesbianism in 1921, on the grounds that the very discussion of lesbianism, even for an act of prohibition, was more dangerous than the benefits of containment through legislation’ (2009, p. 51). 5 . The following in-text references to manifestos, company minutes and other documents correspond to materials held in the Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company archive at Royal Holloway, University of London. 6 . See de Jongh’s discussion of the difficulties of casting of John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me at the Royal Court only a few years earlier: ‘The reluc- tance of major actors was attributable to shrewd and simple calculation. To be seen playing the role of a homosexual would be liable to lead to the whispers of sexual insinuation’ (1992, p. 110). 7 . Osment also notes a review from Desmond Rushe of the Irish Independent following performances of Any Woman Can and Mister X at the Projects Arts Centre which described the plays as ‘propagandist in the most crudely offensive manner’. Under pressure from groups including The League of Decency, Parent Concern and The Society to Outlaw Pornography, the amenities committee of the local government council suspended and later withdrew the venue’s grant (Osment, 1989, p. xxviii). 8 . I am conscious that such a formulation may remain problematic. One might argue that such thinking merely defers the terms of the authenticity it assumes; it may invoke an essentialised proof of lesbian and gay subjectivity (‘shared experience’) while leaving the nature of that subjectivity unexplored. 9 . This account finds a parallel in Weeks’ suggestion that the male domi- nance of the London GLF had produced a seeming prioritisation of gay male concerns and strategies over lesbian issues, which was in turn reflected in what was seen by the women of GLF as the reproduction of traditional sexist power arrangements: ‘By early 1972, after a think-in on the subject, the women in London GLF decided to withdraw and set up an autonomous organization. They gave three reasons: the drain on their energy by the endless fight against the men’s sexism; the unrad- ical nature of GLF politics generally; and the need to provide a “viable alternative to the exploitative ‘straight’ gay ghetto”. This was not, in fact, a final break as women and men continued to work together in various functional groupings, but it was indicative’ (Weeks, 1990, p. 200). Notes 213 3 Community and Nation: Staging Queer Histories 1 . See, for example, The Coming Out Stories (1980) edited by Julia Penelope and Susan J. Wolfe, and Margaret Cruikshank’s The Lesbian Path (1980); as well as more recent texts including Suzanne Neild and Rosalind Pearson’s Women Like Us (1992), Patrick Merla’s collection Boys Like Us (1996) and Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins’ GenderQueer (2002). 2 . For further detail of Brighton Ourstory’s work and archive, see http: //www.brightonourstory.co.uk/ 3 . I am conscious here of the Foucaultian sense of a ‘history of the present’ as a kind of anti-history which challenges the function of history by exposing the gaps between different kinds of experiencing and knowing the world. For further discussion, see Michael S. Roth’s ‘Foucault’s “History of the Present”’ (1981). 4 . See John Roman Baker’s The Crying Celibate Tears Trilogy (2008). 5 . See OurStory Liverpool. http://www.ourstoryliverpool.co.uk/ 6 . See OurStory Scotland. Storytelling. http://ourstoryscotland.org.uk/storytelling/index.htm (accessed January 31, 2011). 7 . Mass Observation Communities Online was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded project based at the Centre for Community Engagement at the University of Sussex, and takes the form of an online archive of everyday-life drawn from community, history and support groups around the UK. See http://www.mocoproject.org.uk/ 8 . As noted elsewhere, the issue of queer performance and community in relationship to place and space is addressed in greater detail in Chapter 5’s discussion of public protest, and Chapter 6’s discussion of queer arts festivals.

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