In Defense of Identity Politics: A Queer Reclamation of a Radical Concept by Rostom Mesli A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor David M. Halperin, Chair Professor David Caron Professor Lisa Disch Associate Professor Gayle S. Rubin © Rostom Mesli 2015 For Matthieu Dupas & David M. Halperin Parce que c’était eux, parce que c’était nous. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a distinct pleasure to reach the moment when I can thank those who made it possible for me to write this dissertation. My first thanks go to my friend and mentor, David M. Halperin, for being willing to deal for all these years with my chronic incapacity to finish anything on time, for accepting to read innumerable drafts and editing them (often within days, at times within hours), for his patience and his impatience, for his constant support, for his countless suggestions, for our friendship, for teaching me much of what I know, and for taking the risk (how many times, again?) to jeopardize that friendship by enforcing the deadlines without which I would never have been able to finish a paragraph. I was incredibly lucky to have a dissertation committee composed of friends. More thanks than I can express go to them: to David Caron, for following me through my wandering around and accepting to stay on a committee and read a dissertation that looks nothing like the one I presented to him years ago; to Lisa Disch, who read innumerable drafts of this and many other things, who drew from earlier drafts many ideas I had no idea were there, who has familiarized me with some of the theoretical frameworks I use in this work, who has helped me draw from them countless insights, who has helped me sharpen innumerable ideas, and who has helped me come out as a political theorist of iii sorts (that is, a queer one). My intellectual debt to Gayle Rubin does not need to be stressed; so many ideas of this dissertation came from conversations I had with her that I cannot remember all of them, much less list them here. I shall simply thank her for generously giving me access to her extensive archives which contributed in particular to the third chapter. While I claim ownership of all mistakes, inaccuracies, and imprecisions in the following pages, if this work has any qualities, all four committee members are responsible for most of them. Each in her own way has taught me that there is such a thing as feminist, gay, lesbian, and queer mentoring, and if there is one lesson I want to remember, that’s the one. As I near the moment when I will be singing “So long, Michigan,” I also want to thank the professors whose classes I took here and who have helped shape my thinking: Vassilis Lambropoulos, Victor Roman Mendoza, Esther Newton, Yopie Prins and, last but by no means least, Elizabeth Wingrove. Moving from one generation to the next, I also want to thank the undergraduate students who took my classes and helped me work my way through many of the texts I analyze in this dissertation. Special thanks are due to the Rackham Graduate School and to the Department of Comparative Literature for, after admitting me to work on sex and politics in Roman Antiquity, giving me the option to shift my project in dramatic ways and work on sex and politics in the late 20th century; to the Women’s Studies department and the Institute for iv Research on Women and Gender; to the Sweetland Center for Writing and particularly the wonderful Paul Barron and the colleagues who made the spring of 2014 so productive. Thanks are also due to the Institute for the Humanities: its very generous fellowship offered me heavenly conditions in which to go through the hell of finishing this dissertation. I cannot express enough thank yous to Mama Duck, Paula Frank, and Judith Gray for their constant support and for the warmth they brought to many a day spent writing in the loneliness of my office. Some of the archives I had to consult for this work are community or volunteer-based. A special shout out is due to Rebekah Kim and Gerard Koskovitch who provided wonderful help at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco; and to Rick Storer and Jakob VanLammeren who guided me so graciously through the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago. This work has also benefited immensely from countless conversations with many more friends than I can name. But I cannot not acknowledge the help and suggestions I received from at least a few of them. The dear friends who were willing to listen to my ideas as they were taking shape, and who shared their thoughts, even when their thoughts were not what I wanted to hear, include, but are by no means limited to: Jean Allouch, Erika Almenara, Tiffany Ball, François Fillette Berdougo, William Caroline Bishop, Sandra Boehringer, Jay Borchert, Maria Canal, Basak Candar, Sébastien Chauvin, Mark v I. Chester, Isabelle Châtelet, Genevieve Creedon, Scott De Orio, Chelsea Del Rio, Hugues Fischer, Roger Grant, David B. Green, Lauren Gutterman, Jean Hardy, Gert Hekma, Lucas Hilderbrand, Trevor Hoppe, Dean Disher Hubbs, Jean-Vincent Ichard, Mark Jordan, Amr Kamal, Elizabeth Keslacy, Gerard Koskovitch, Laurie Laufer, Gildas Le Dem, Arnaud Lerch, Sarah Linwick, Tim Madesclaire, Chris Meade, Stuart Michaels, Stephen Molldrem, Thierry Nazzi, Danny N’Guyen, Vincent Palliez, David Paternotte, Richard Pierre, Massimo Prearo, Steve Roach, Yves Roussel, Suphak Shawla, Mejdulene Shomali, Michael Sibalis, Greg Storms, Jack Tocco, Mathieu Trachman, Bonnie Washick, Brian Whitener, Shannon Winston, Damon Young as well, of course, as Adam Mitts (for keeping me sane) and Matthieu Dupas (for driving me crazy) — or was it the other way around? I also want to thank some of the activists, writers, and scholars whose achievements have been bottomless sources of inspiration, and who — although most of them will never know it — have contributed the work that made mine possible: Christine Delphy, of course, but also Pat Bond and Terry Kolb, Cheryl Clarke, Daniel Defert and Michel Foucault, Colette Guillaumin, Stuart Hall, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Geoff Mains, Steve McEachern, Cherríe Moraga, Brian O’Dell and David Stein, Cynthia Slater, Barbara Smith, Monique Wittig, as well, of course, as Chantal Mouffe and the late Ernesto Laclau. vi Finally, I want to thank the late Tobin Siebers who, in his capacity as Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, welcomed me to the University of Michigan when I first came, and whose defenses of identity politics, some of which he generously shared with me before they were published, helped me articulate mine. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION: THE TROUBLE WITH IDENTITY POLITICS 1 Section I: Queer as a Complement to Identity 6 Section II: Queer Against Identity 8 Section III: Revisiting Identity Politics 19 CHAPTER I: IS ALL IDENTITY POLITICS ESSENTIALIST? AGAINST QUEER EXCEPTIONALISM, RECLAIMING RADICAL FEMINISM 26 Section I: Radical Feminism or Radical Feminisms? 34 Section II: Anti-Essentialism and Its Roots in Identity Politics 48 Section III: French Radical and Materialist Feminists: The Invention of Anti-Essentialism 64 CHAPTER II: WOMEN OF COLOR FEMINISM AND THE MULTIPLICATION, NOT THE DISAVOWAL, OF IDENTITY POLITICAL STANDPOINTS 97 viii Section I: Is Audre Lorde’s Politics of Difference An Anti-Identity Politics? 106 Section II: Combahee, Barbara Smith, and the Invention of Identity Politics 125 Section III: Multiplying Identity Political Standpoints 141 Section IV: Women of Color Feminists Are Feminists 149 CHAPTER III: POLITICIZING IDENTITIES: THE EXAMPLE OF SADOMASOCHISM 162 Section I: Forging SM Identities 164 Section II: Politicizing SM Identities Through Equivalences 178 Section III: Articulating SM to the Left 186 Section IV: Re-Articulating Sex and Politics 203 CONCLUSION: IN DEFENSE OF EQUIVALENCE 224 Section I: Queer Critiques of Analogies 224 Section II: Equivalences to Construct Hegemony 229 Section III: “Chick Equals Nigger Equals Queer: Think It Over” 234 Section IV: Are Analogies Really Only Used by Whites? 245 BIBLIOGRAPHY 258 ix INTRODUCTION: THE TROUBLE WITH IDENTITY POLITICS “There is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and ‘psychic hermaphrodism’ made possible a strong advance of social controls in this area of ‘perversity’; but it also made possible the formation of a ‘reverse’ discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or ‘naturality’ be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.” Michel Foucault, 1976 “Academic theory need not be simply a handmaiden, but it can learn from activism.” Michael Warner, 1992 “We need identity politics now.” Tobin Siebers, 2013 There is and has always been a lot of contention about what queer theory is, what it was when it started, what it has become since, and what it should look like. Yet despite all the disagreements, there is one thing that virtually everyone agrees queer theory is not and never was: queer theory stands in contradistinction, if not in opposition, to identity politics. Identity politics was what second-wave feminists and gay and lesbian liberationists engaged in; it was a type of politics both naïve and narrow. Queer theory is up to something a lot more radical: its theoretical and political project is categorically non-identitarian (and at times anti-identitarian). Unlike earlier feminists and gay and lesbian activists who took such identity categories as “woman,” “gay,” or 1 “lesbian” for granted and, by organizing politically around them, further entrenched them, queer theory seeks to challenge them, to destabilize them, to deconstruct them.