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Heteronormativity, Homonormalization, and the Subaltern Queer Subject Sebastián Granda Henao1

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Heteronormativity, Homonormalization, and the Subaltern Queer Subject Sebastián Granda Henao1 Heteronormativity, Homonormalization, and the Subaltern Queer Subject Sebastián Granda Henao1 Abstract: Norms are a constitutive part of the social world and political imaginaries. Without norms and rules of behavior, politics would be nonsensical, a nowhere. But then, what about norms and normativity over the individual, sexual and gendered bodies? What place is left for sexual identities, affective orientations, and diverse existences themselves when social norms dictate over non-normatively gendered people? Moreover, how about marginals from the acceptable abnormals, namely queer subaltern subjects? In this paper I intend to, first, draw a short review on what feminist and queer theory has to say about social norms regarding sex and gender – precisely on the matters of heteronormativity and homonormativity, so I can explore the trouble that such norms may produce. Second, I point out to the larger trouble that third world queers, as subaltern subjects –acknowledging queer itself is a subaltern category- may experience in their non-conformity to the double categories of being, on the one hand, gender abnormals, and on the other, by not fully compelling to the dominant Western modern, capitalist life experience. Finally, I conclude by putting in relation the discussion of gender in International Relations and the problem of heteronormativity and homonormalization of subaltern queer subjects. Key Words: Homonormativity, Queer Theory, Subaltern Subject. Heteronormatividade, Homonormalização, e o Sujeito Subalterno Queer Sebastián Granda Henao2 Resumo: As normas são constituintes do mundo social e dos seus imaginários politicos. Sem normas a política não faria sentido. No entanto, o que acontece com as normas e as normatividades que imperam sobre corpos, individuais, genderizados? Qual seria o lugar das identidades sexuais, das orientações afetivas e das existências diversas quando há normas sociais para as pessoas não normalizadas no seu gênero? Além do mais, o que acontece com aqueles às margens desse sistema de normas, sobre os sujeitos queer subalternos? Neste artigo, primeiro, ofereço uma revisão sobre o que as teorias feministas, as teorias queer e as teorias do gênero e a sexualidade têm a dizer no que tange aos assuntos da heteronormatividade e homonormatividade, a fim de poder explorar os problemas que essas normas podem produzir. Em segundo lugar, aponto os problemas que os queer no terceiro mundo, como sujeitos subalternos, podem experimentar, de um lado, ser anormais de gênero, e do outro, ser incompletos no pertencimento à uma experiência de vida dentro da hegemonia do capitalismo, da modernidade e do ocidente. Finalmente, concluo colocando a discusão sobre gênero e sexualidade nas Relações Internacionas em relação ao problema da heteronormatividade e a homonormalização dos sujeitos queer (e) subalternos. Palavras Chave: Homonormatividade, Teoria Queer, Sujeito Subalterno. 1 PhD Candidate in International Relations. IRI/PUC-Rio. Contact <[email protected]> 2 Candidato a Doutor em Relações Internacionais. IRI/PUC-Rio. Contato <[email protected]> Heteronormativity, Homonormalization, and the Subaltern Queer Subject Norms are a constitutive part of the social world and political imaginaries. Without norms and rules of behavior modern politics –and arguably all politics- would be nonsensical, a nowhere. But then, what about norms and normativity over the individual, sexual and gendered bodies? What place is left for sexual identities, affective orientations, and diverse existences themselves when social norms dictate over non-normatively gendered people? Moreover, how about marginals from the acceptable abnormals, namely queer subaltern subjects? In that way, one can argue that norms provide constraints for individuals to conduct themselves in social life, or otherwise be excluded and marginalized; and yet, there is a multiplicity of obscured personal experiences, neglecting the possibility of divergence to the average, or well of exploring the self in the social world. In terms of the international life, those exclusions delineate the conditions of possibility of the very existence of some individuals, their strange belonging to a national unity, the participation in any political community, or wonder –as Weber (2015; 2014) does- what about the queerness of International Relations as a field of inquiry? The queer challenges traditional political imaginaries, and so does for international politics’ stable and disciplinary categories. In this paper I intend to, first, draw a short review on what feminist and queer theory has to say about social norms regarding sex and gender –precisely on the matters of heteronormativity and homonormativity, yet trying not to confuse gender and sexuality as the same, but as parts of a whole affective experience; so I can explore the trouble that such norms may produce. Second, I point out to the larger trouble that third world queers, as subaltern subjects –acknowledging queer itself is a subaltern category- may experience in their non-conformity to the double categories of being, on the one hand, gender abnormals, and on the other, by not fully compelling to the dominant Western modern, capitalist life experience. Finally, I conclude by putting in relation the discussion of gender in International Relations and the problem of heteronormativity and homonormalization of subaltern queer subjects. As a disclaimer, in forehand, I acknowledge the very complex intersections that race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and class possess as social categories. Nevertheless, it seems too difficult, if not impossible, for me to apprehend such a large discussion as a whole in a short scholarly effort. For the sake of the parsimony of this essay, I will rather approach only the problems that compulsory attributed sexual(ized) norms may cause on the live experiences of subaltern subjects, intersections will appear for discussion only tangentially, and their possible implications for international politics as social phenomena in face of late modernity. It would seem throughout the text that I advocate for a normative unnormalization of sexual and gender relations; although, as I write in the first line of the text, I consider that a social world without norms –of any kind- is a utopian no-place. Sex, Gender, Norms and Troubles: As Foucault (1978a) introduces, normalization (and normatization as its corresponding disciplinary mechanism) has become a form of exercising power over bodies, controlling individuals, obscuring divergence and containing resistance and opposition to a political project in the era of disciplinary power; this through statistic studies and the definition of a median normal of the biopolitical organism. That is the case of a power that is imposed from outside, an arbitrary external input to living – individual or social- bodies for the sake of a lively society. Norms, either tacit or explicit, work as institutions in a juridico-political order; they provide prohibitions and aspirations for individuals if they want to belong to the social group. Yet further discussions on the production of norms and their compliance are necessary. On this aspect one has to take into account that individuals constitute society and are limited by socially constructed boundaries on behavior; norms can change as long as a determined society itself manifest change. In a world of norms and rules, the “normal” and the “abnormal” work in a symbiotic and co-constitutive relation, since both are void concepts, only inteligible in context. Therefore, any category of sexuality –i.e. heterosexuality, homosexuality, transexuality...- are produced through the production of norms over bodies. Sex and gender are but cases of those aspirations to lead a normal(ized) life, one has to behave accordingly to a compulsory discipline of normal nuclear monogamist heterosexual family, with two family heads, with no interchangeable masculine and feminine roles, each according to their birth sex. Anything beyond such a straight-forward definition is odd and should not be reproduced –if not combated or limited. In the normal world there is no space for singlehood, mono-parental families, same-sex arrangements, and even less for transsexual/transgender people, and even lesser for colored ones. Out for such superficial definition only lies the abnormal, the weird queers that co-constitute the normal form the outside, and which is symmetrically, externally constituted by the non-compliance to that core. In his first volume of the History of Sexuality, Foucault (1978a) tries to trace back the modern norms of sexuality to Victorian patterns of behavior, along with the repression and silence of delegitimized sexualities and the creation of places of tolerance, such as the brothel and the mental hospital. There was an authorization to certain kinds of behavior, mostly of privative character, and it came in companion with the booming of capitalist and bourgeois reforms to state power and its upcoming order. As a bio-political technology, sex repression became an instrument for the separation of public and private spheres. Accordingly, Warner and Berlant (1998) argue that sex is a matter “mediated by publics”; it is not only about what happens in intimacy, a proper sexual act, but also it is about what people think of and do themselves in relation to other people. Problematically, they find, there is a form of ‘national heterosexuality’ that conditions the belonging and determines the places where
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