Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

240 Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

Patrick Keilty University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Information Studies, GSE&IS Building, Box 951520, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520, USA

Patrick Keilty is a PhD candidate in the Department of Information Studies, with a concentration in the Women's Studies Department at UCLA. His research considers what differences feminism, gender studies, sexuality studies, and notions of queer, make to prevailing ideas about information structure, seeking, and ethics.

Keilty, P. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging. Knowledge Organization, 36(4), 240- 248. 21 references.

ABSTRACT: Considering fields as diverse as the history of science, Internet studies, border studies, and coalition politics, the article gives an historical overview of how the knowledge around queer phenomena has been structured, tabulated, and spacialized: the hazards, coercive and productive qualities, as well as queer's paradoxical relationship as both resistant to and reliant on categories, classification, and knowledge structures. In the process, the article also considers the development of Western hierarchical knowledge structures in relation to societal power dynamics, proximity, and space.

1. Introduction Nevertheless, much of the philosophical back- ground of knowledge organization, such as systems As with border studies, “belonging” is a central con- philosophy, insists that general laws and principles cern in the study of classification, grouping things in underline all phenomena, allowing for its organiza- relation to where they belong, where they don’t be- tion (Svenonius 2000, 3). Yet this assertion sounds long, and why things belong in one class and not an- mechanistic, teleological and monolithic: mechanis- other. Yet not all phenomena belong neatly within a tic because it assumes that phenomena have a system set of boundaries, as any cataloguer can attest, espe- of predictable rules that interact to perform a func- cially where classification systems meet the politics of tion (in this case, their organization); teleological ontologies, diverse ways of being. Queer is one such because it explains phenomena through purpose and phenomenon, referring as it does to “the open mesh design; and monolithic because it assumes phenom- of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and reso- ena can group wholly and singularly. Even Ludwig nances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the con- van Bertalanffy, the father of systems theory, ac- stituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s knowledged the limitations of such thinking. “This sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify humanistic concern of general system theory as I monolithically” (Sedgwick 1993, 8). The term “queer” understand it,” writes Bertalanffy (1969, xxiii), itself is an ever-shifting category to describe an area of study whose dimensions in recent years can’t be sub- makes a difference to mechanistically oriented sumed under gender and sexuality alone: the ways it system theorists speaking solely in terms of ma- has been applied to race, ethnicity, post-colonial na- thematics, feedback and technology and so giv- tionality, and transnationalism or other “identity- ing rise to the fear that system theory is indeed constituting, identity-fracturing discourses” (Sedg- the ultimate step towards the mechanization and wick 1993, 9). devaluation of man and towards technocratic so- Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 241 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

ciety…. I do not see that these aspects can be entire natural temperament, and his talents” (Ulrichs evaded if general system theory is not limited to 1994, 36). On this basis, Ulrichs is able to create a a restricted and fractional vision. new class of people, a third sex. According to Joseph Bristow, “since the sexed body and gendered mind are In the same work, Bertalanffy devotes an impressive by definition turned inside out, Ulrichs declares the chapter to the cultural relativism of categories. In- Urnings constitute a ‘third sex’: not fully men or deed, a practice is by definition unsystematic with- women.’ In making this claim, Ulrichs lays the out holistic, big picture thinking that includes, nec- ground on which he establishes the belief that Urn- essarily, consideration of humanistic concerns. ings are beings who contain the soul of the opposite It is therefore instructive to examine the hazards sex in their own bodies” (Bristow 2003, 21). Bristow involved in trying to find a classification system that further explains (p. 22): can adequately organize queer phenomena—an inher- ently paradoxical phenomenon that by definition be- This idea would have lasting and damaging influ- longs to a category of that which does not belong—a ence on twentieth-century prejudices against phenomenon that is both dependent upon and resis- homosexuals. For it set the trend for imagining tant to borders, boundaries, categories, and classifica- that lesbians and gay men were ‘inverts’. One of tion—whose gravity (both the center and gravitas) is the myths that has circulated most widely about ever-shifting and misfit. Taking from Foucault’s con- lesbians and gay men is that both sexual identi- cept of order, one nevertheless sees how categoriza- ties involve the inversion of assumed gender tion of queer phenomena operates within bureaucratic norms – so that the butch lesbian and effeminate discipline and how the creation of discernable catego- gay man have often been the recognizable ste- ries is productive for institutional access. Simultane- reotypes that serve to caricature and thus con- ously, organizing information about queer gender and demn styles of homosexual dissidence. sexuality has led, in some instances, to the eroticization of hierarchical knowledge structures and the sys- With further investigation, Ulrichs develops a fourth tematization of sex and desire. sex that corresponds to the third: “a sex of persons built like females having woman-womanly desire, i.e. 2. Hazards having the sexual direction of men” (Ulrichs 1994, 81). To illustrate the hazards, let me begin by examining Yet the more Ulrichs investigated sexual behavior, the classification system of a scholar noteworthy in the less he was able to classify the varieties of desire the field of sexual science, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs neatly in terms of Urnings and Dionings. For exam- (1825-1895). Ulrichs’ work circulated widely in late ple, he eventually recognized what would later come nineteenth-century Europe. Homosexual men espe- to be known as bisexuality. And predictably, he cre- cially sought information that both explained and le- ated a category for bisexuals: Uranodionings. In gitimized their sexual condition. His work, however, time, Urlichs developed an elaborate classification predated the term “homosexual” by several years. In- system for people and their corresponding desires: stead, Ulrichs borrowed his nomenclature from Pla- to’s Symposium, drawing a distinction between what I. Men he calls Uranian and Dionian love. Urnings, people II. Women who desire their own sex, express Uranian desire in III. Urnings the manner of the god Uranus. In contrast, according 1. Manlings to Ulrichs, Dionings express Dionian desire, oppo- 2. Intermediaries site-sex attraction, in the manner of the god Dione. 3. Weiblings His classification of desire becomes more complex as IV. Urningins Ulrichs argues for the naturalness of Uranian desire. V. Uranodionings “There is,” he writes, “a class of born Urnings, a class of individuals who are born with the sexual drive of 1. Conjunctive women and who have male bodies.” Ulrichs thus con- 2. Disjunctive cludes that an Urning, “is not a man, but rather a VI. Uranodioningins kind of feminine being when it concerns not only his VII. Hermaphrodites (Ulrichs 1994, 314) entire organism, but also his sexual feeling of love, his Table 1. Ulrichs’ classification 242 Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

Ulrichs’ system becomes less stable when we consider classifying its materials in her article “Characteristics further assumptions made in the categories beyond of Material Organization and Classification in the the dichotomy of Uranian and Dionian desire. For ex- Kinsey Institute Library,” in part because sex generally ample, Mannlings and Weiblings represent virile and had been a taboo topic for much of social history, effeminate homosexuals respectively, each internally queer sex even more so (Zhou 2003). Indeed, it is pre- opposed to each other, while Intermediaries belong to cisely because queer belongs to the categories of per- a category, which, according to Ulrichs, explains how a version that it transgresses the traditional boundaries virile Urning takes a passive role in sex and an effemi- of desire. In Ulrichs’ time, homosexual desire was fa- nate Urning takes an active role. His succeeding cate- mously, in the words of Lord Alfred Douglass, “the gory, Urningins, designate a class later known in the love that dare not speak its name.” So perverse was the early twentieth-century as lesbians, what Ulrichs re- desire that it resisted even ordinary categorical boun- fers to as ‘woman-womanly’ desire. Bisexuals fall into daries of explicit naming. Still the case, like Ulrichs’ two categories: Conjunctive, who experience “sensual unwieldy tabulation of sexual categories, today’s po- love in a double direction,” and disjunctive, who “feel pular abbreviation “LGBT” is ever-expanding and only a romantic gentle love for young men” (Ulrichs cumbersome—not only for the sake of political inclu- 1994, 313-14). Finally, Uranodioningins constitute sion, but also evidence that sex and desire do not sig- female bisexuals while Hermaphrodites denote people nify monolithically. It derives from some variation of whom Ulrichs observed having the physical character- the following: L(esbian), G(ay), B(isexual), T(ranse- istics of both sexes. It is important to note, too, the xual), T(ransgender), T (ransvestite), T(wo-Spirited), way in which Ulrichs conceives of sex and desire as Q(ueer), Q(uestioning), I(ntersex), P(ansexual), and split into two antithetical yet complementary forms: so on. Moreover, categories such as “men who have feminine always seeks masculine and passive always sex with men” (MSM), which frequently refers to men seeks active, whether Uranian or Dionian. However who do not necessarily identify as gay or bisexual, unwieldy and awkward Ulrichs’ organization of know- group people into behavioral categories rather than ledge about sexuality and desire looks, it is succinct identity categories, further showing the ways in which compared to the classification systems of twentieth- sex and desire do not yield easily to structures of cate- century encyclopedias of human sexuality, which re- gorization. veal the great lengths to which social and medical sci- However hazardous the attempts have been to map entists will go to comprehend sexual variety. knowledge about sex and desire—indeed, limiting how Furthermore, Ulrichs was not alone in investigating we are even able to think about these topics—the pro- sex and desire in nineteenth-century Europe. Richard cess has also been highly productive, marking the first von Kraftt-Ebing takes as his theoretical model that all of two paradoxical manifestations in the organization sexual love, even in its most praiseworthy married of queer phenomena. The other such paradox consid- form, is to some degree tainted with illness; Iwan ers how queer necessarily relies on normalized and Bloch, far from believing that homosexuality is an ill- stabilized boundaries to exist, not only because queer ness, appraised sexual desire through medicine and itself is a category with limits—it is whatever normal scientific observation; and Otto Weininger, in contrast sex and desire is not, that which does not belong, as to many of his predecessors, believed that sex was al- normality changes over time—but also because queer ways a matter of degree, rather than fixed opposition transgresses those boundaries. Queer’s non-normati- (though he also held the surprising belief that ideal vity relies on norms as a precondition, and is therefore types of men and women not only can be constructed defined in relation to its opposite. This is a problem but must be constructed, appealing to Platonic Ideal- not easily remedied, if that is even a goal, but a debate ism for his reasoning). Twentieth-century social and about the dimensions of queer as a spacialized concept medical scientists, too, undertook to organize knowl- is not my concern here, though it is worth noting. edge about sex and desire: from the classification of Much more useful is an understanding of how the homosexuality as a mental illness by the American classification of queer phenomena has productive qua- Psychological Association, and the subsequent patho- lities that benefit queer subjects. logization of non-normative sexuality, to Alfred Kin- sey’s Sexual Nomenclature: A Thesaurus, still influen- 3. Institutional Access tial for organizing materials at the Kinsey Institute Li- brary. Liana Zhao, head of the library at the Kinsey In- It is important to remember that Ulrichs’ research stitute, described the challenges of organizing and developed out of his lifelong radical campaign in Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 243 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

Germany to justify and legitimize sexual relations system that rewards interest groups and minorities between men and women. He did his utmost to de- whose boundaries are clear and immutable: stating fend “man-manly” and “woman-womanly” love as over and over that the categories of homosexual and healthy and normal and to decriminalize them in heterosexual are clear and natural and immutable, German law. While his typology strikes us today as and that homosexuals are thus a discernable minority rather absurd, it was part of a broader effort that laid group deserving equal treatment.” According to this the groundwork for the modern lesbian and gay logic, it is not simply that categories of sexuality re- rights movement. His efforts have not gone unno- gulate queer subjects or sex and desire more broadly. ticed; The International Lesbian and Gay Law Asso- Rather, sexuality is “actively produced in organiza- ciation presents an annual Karl Heinrich Ulrichs tions that have their own logics and exigencies, by Award in Ulrichs’ memory. In fact, one forefront of people with jobs that have little directly to do with queer legal scholarship and activism today concerns sexuality” (Gamson 2003, 388). Whether or not Ul- the classification of queer subjects in administrative richs was aware of the instability of his categories of law. For example, Dean Spade, in his article “Docu- desire, the categories nevertheless helped achieve a menting Gender,” investigates the conflicting gender certain degree of success in gaining queer men and (re)classification rules operating across the U.S. in women access to legal and political institutions in departments of motor vehicles, public benefits sys- nineteenth-century Germany, however short-lived. tems, prisons, shelters, group homes, federal, state, How, then, does one reconcile queer’s resistance to and local data collection contexts to show the haz- classification with the institutional production to ards of a national standardization and consolidation classify? After all, as I have shown, the consolidation of identity documentation and data. of queer subjects into discernable categories necessar- Despite examples of the coercive uses to which ily normalizes the phenomenon, no longer rendering classification has been put, Spade strikes a middle it queer. The problem is succinctly explained by Jago- ground regarding the attempts of administrative go- se (1996, 131): “Queer … is an identity category that vernance to classify, urging his readers: “It is impera- has no interest in consolidating or even stabilizing it- tive to neither uncritically embrace state caretaking self. It maintains its critique of identity-focused mo- projects as requiring growing levels of surveillance vements by understanding that even the formation of for purposes of security and health, nor to turn to its own coalition and negotiated constituencies may individual privacy rhetoric wholeheartedly and valor- well result in exclusionary and reifying effects far in ize an end to government data collection” (Spade excess of those intended.” It is for this reason that 2008, 819). As Spade indicates, debates surrounding the 1980s radical political group ACTUP has come to the classification and data retention of HIV status represent queer politics. It sought to coalesce around concern the balance between privacy and the need a particular moment, the AIDS emergency, and re- for the distribution of resources to communities se- thought identity in terms of affinity rather than es- verely impacted by the disease. Taking from Bowker sence, bringing together not only lesbians and gay and Star (2000, 321), Spade advocates for a critical men, but also bisexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, engagement with the categories of the powerful, re- people with AIDS, health workers, parents and alizing that “all information systems are necessarily friends of gays, and many others effected by the dis- suffused with ethical and political values.” ease. Its ironically named successor, Queer Nation, Indeed, the relationship between power and classi- was almost exclusively a gay and lesbian organization, fication is made complicated when the categorical eventually fracturing its members even within those regulation of subjects is required for institutional ac- two categories, along axes of gender, desire, ethnicity, cess. On the one hand, queer phenomena disrupt and color. As with Queer Nation, identity-based mo- traditional sexual and gender categories, often ren- vements frequently (if not necessarily) stabilize iden- dering them unusable and thereby making sexual tity by giving it cores and norms, thereby creating di- subjects impossible to identify, undermining the vision where broader coalition is possible. “discursive logic of homo and hetero,” and “calling In the hopes of remedying this problem, Spivak attention to heteronormativity rather than normaliz- (1995) developed the concept of ‘strategic essential- ing homosexuality” (Gamson 2003, 387). On the ism,’ a strategy in which nationalities, ethnic groups other hand, gay and lesbian activists today, like Ul- or minorities temporarily ‘essentialize’ or stabilize richs over one hundred years ago, are acting within, themselves to achieve certain goals. Its power, there- according to Gamson (2003, 387), “an institutional fore, lies in its temporality, instability, and the idea 244 Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

that things change over time, on the one hand, while It is often said that the establishment of bo- simultaneously providing the stability and dis- tanical gardens and zoological collections ex- cernibility necessary for institutional access, on the pressed a new curiosity about exotic plants and other. It continually recognizes that essentializing is animals. In fact, these had already claimed only strategic and does not reflect the reality of the men’s interests for a long while. What changed phenomenon. Similar concepts are not entirely new was the space in which it was possible to see to the classification of queer phenomena. In The them and from which it was possible to de- Power to Name, Olson (2002) explores the limits of scribe them. To the renaissance, the strangeness subject representations in library catalogs and argues of animals was a spectacle: it was featured in for making the limits permeable without undermin- fairs, in tournaments, in fictitious or real com- ing limits altogether. She challenges the presumption bats, in reconstitutions of legends in which the that systems of classification and library subject hea- bestiary displayed its ageless fables. The natural dings are universally applicable. Yet the examples I history room and the garden, as created in the provide reveal how correcting the hazards of classi- Classical period, replace the circular possession fying queer phenomena occurs not only when the of the ‘show’ with the arrangement of things in structures of categorization are made permeable, but a “table.” also when scholars, practitioners, and activists form a critical engagement congruent with queer’s intrinsic What Foucault describes (2007, 143) is the time be- resistance to classification. Otherwise, queer will ha- tween the age of the theatre and that of the catalog, ve been sacrificed to an institutional system that re- which comes to fruition in the ever more complete wards what it is not—a consolidated category. systemization, preservation, and classification of things along an appropriate ordering by the nine- 4. Difference and the Development of teenth century: Western Hierarchical Knowledge Structures The establishment of archives, then the filing We have seen the ways in which categories of sex and systems for them, the reorganization of librar- desire are both coercive and productive. While cate- ies, the drawing up of catalogues, indexes and gories perhaps limit how we are able to think about inventories, all of these represent, at the end of sex and desire, categorization also provides necessary the Classical age, not so much a new sensitivity institutional access. Yet, as I will show, the structure to time, to its past, to the density of its history, of the categories themselves developed out of a need as a way of introducing into the language al- to organize our society and those different from us, ready imprinted on things, and into the traces what Mudimbe calls “ordering the other.” Thus, so- it has left, an order of the same type as that cietal organization and social relations infuse the which was being established between living structure of categories, even while categories provide creatures. access to social organization and institutions. It is therefore instructive to consider how categories were Indeed, classification in the early modern period used to create knowledge about subjects. Being the found itself constituted along an axis of where dominant model, Ulrichs necessarily relied on a tra- things—initially living things, later people—belonged ditional Western hierarchical knowledge structure naturally, creating of modern science, through the for organizing desire, as is evidenced in the tabula- nineteenth century, a classified, squared and spacial- tion of his classification system above. Since the ized time. nineteenth-century, the concepts his categories rep- Mudimbe makes explicit the ways in which the resent have been deepened, broadened, and renamed, classifying rubrics of modern science, as described but the structure remains. To tabulate his subjects, by Foucault, create and sustain social relations. He Ulrichs used a scientific model received from the seeks to understand the ways in which nineteenth- classifying rubrics of early modern science. Along century Western colonizers and colonialists sought with the naming, arranging, and ordering of plants to epistemologically organize Africa by imposing on and animals during the early modern period (the it Western knowledge structures, creating the foun- European Classical period) came the institutional dations of Africanist discourse, and effectively orga- systemization of classifying, as described by Fou- nizing and transforming non-European areas into cault (2007, 143): fundamentally European constructs. “Colonialism Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 245 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

and colonization basically mean organization, ar- nonsensical” (Mudimbe 1988, 10). Citing Baudrillard, rangement. The two words derive from the Latin Mudimbe argues that a process of aestheticization word colěre, meaning to cultivate or to design” occurred from the eighteenth-century onward. “What (Mudimbe 1988, 1). Taking from Foucault’s concept is called savage or primitive art,” writes Mudimbe, that the center of knowledge was the principal of or- “covers a wide range of objects introduced by the der in the European Classical age, Mudimbe under- contact between African and European during the in- stands the colonial organization of Africa—that is, tensified slave trade into the classifying frame of the “the dominance of physical space, of reformation of eighteenth-century” (1988, 10). These objects were natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic given an aesthetic character based on an artistic crite- histories into the Western perspective”—from a hy- rion and standard that emerged within the “power- pothesis about the classification of being and socie- knowledge” field of a given culture, designated, struc- ties (1988, 2 Mudimbe’s italics). He writes, “It is the tured, arranged, and classified as “savage” objects. ‘power-knowledge’ of an epistemological field which As a scientist, Ulrichs is very much part of the sci- makes possible a domineering and humbled culture” entific lineage of classification that Foucault and (1988, 11). Mudimbe considers how explicit political Mudimbe describe. Yet the social and power relations power presumes the authority of a scientific knowl- they describe also stem from a specifically hierarchical edge and vice-versa. Of this discourse, he writes, structure of Western knowledge that has ancient ori- “Colonialism becomes its project and can be thought gins. The structure of Western knowledge developed of as a duplication and fulfillment of the power of in part by the change in Ancient Greece from an ana- Western discourses on human varieties” (1988, 16). logical structure of knowledge to a hierarchical one Tracing the lineage of the scientific model of anthro- that resulted from attempts by Ancient Greeks to un- pology, Mudimbe attempts to “account for the pos- derstand difference and social inequity. Indeed, at- sibility of anthropological knowledge, and its mean- tempts to “order the other” are not specific to modern ing for the foundation of both Africanist discourses science but in fact constitute, at least partly, the devel- and African gnosis” (1988, 23). opment of Western hierarchical knowledge structure Mudimbe asks us to consider issues derived from and social organization, in the form of institutions. the allocation of an “African object” to nineteenth- According to Page DuBois, “a fundamental crisis is century anthropology. Portuguese sailors brought to brought on by the Peloponnesian War of 431-404, by Europe the first fetiços, African objects supposedly subsequent social conflict within Athens, by returning having mysterious powers, in the late fifteenth- prosperity and growing dependence on slavery. The century. “One finds them mostly in well-organized new philosophy, as a hierarchizing, rational form of curio cabinets, along with Indian tomahawks or ar- discourse, is born of these changes” (DuBois 1991, 2). rows, Egyptian artifacts, and Siamese drums,” writes Dubois investigates how the Greeks described the in- Mudimbe (1988, 9-10). While some scholars consider dividual’s existence in terms of the society of the these artifacts signs of barbarism, Mudimbe and oth- Greeks’ as a whole. She finds that before the Persian ers see then as simple curiosities brought back in ac- War, which ended in 478, Greeks often refer to those cordance “with the tenth task of the travelers in the different than them in analogous terms. That is, “oth- table of Verenius’ Geographia generalis (1650): to ers” (barbarian, animal) “were like spokes radiating consider “famous Men, Artificers, and Inventions of from the hub of a wheel” (DuBois 1991, 129). After the Natives of All Countries” (1988, 10). Mudimbe the Persian War, Greek philosophers had to rationalize argues that it is not until the eighteenth-century that the existence of widespread slavery within Greek soci- these objects enter into the frame of African art, as ety and did so by turning away from seeing once strange and ugly artifacts. By the eighteenth-century, analogous difference to seeing hierarchical difference. there was tremendous increase in the slave trade and It was a theory of society bound up in Greek archaic trans-Atlantic economy, when European-sponsored cosmological theory, in which “the cosmic order is lik- organizations began to settle Africa, such that by ened to a social or political order, to a living being, or 1792, Africans expelled the Portuguese in present-day to the product of “intelligent designing agencies” (Du- Mozambique and by 1770, Dutch immigrants and Bois 1991, 3). Bantus began their first war. In this atmosphere of By the time of the Peloponnesian War, the hierar- “intense and violent exchanges, fetiços became sym- chical view of individuals once reserved for Barbarians bols of African art,” creating a view of these once cu- was enacted against fellow Hellenes. Not only were rious artifacts as “primitive, simple, childish, and Greeks fighting other Greeks, once considered simi- 246 Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

lar to them, but there became a sharp distinction be- basis for a new form of sexual sociability rooted in tween those who had property and those who had the celebration of the imagination and its infinite none, resulting in a revolutionary clash. Indeed, possibilities” (Laqueur 2003, 419). He continues: “much of Plato and Aristotle’s discourse concerned the problem of stasis, of civil war and conflict among There are hundreds of thousands of porno- people who would, in the fifth century, have thought graphic sites that cater to every masturbatory themselves bound up in relations of similarity and fantasy imaginable, but what is really new is the community” (DuBois 1991, 131). Thus, Western hi- virtual communities of onanists, an alternate erarchical knowledge structure formed in trying to universe of sociability that is created through rationalize power differences among individuals in the public revelation of the not so vice. Cyber- Greek society, and it continues to shape our thinking, space has … made possible an erotic commu- organize our social relations, and serve as a model for nity whose desires are not so easily brought our institutions more than two thousand years later. within the bounds of power as they were constituted in or around 1712. 5. Eroticization of Hierarchical Knowledge Structure Indeed, in many ways, Xtube breaks down notions of public and private. Because most of the images on Ulrich’s tabulation too reveals social power dynam- Xtube are home-made, though certainly not all, they ics; the category “men,” for example, maintains a are recorded in a space often conceived in the West privileged status “on top” and is defined by a group as archetypal of privacy. Yet in the case of Xtube, the of people who desire the opposite sex. Yet these sa- private space and sexual acts are being publicly me dynamics can be seen even within contemporary broadcast and then (presumably) privately con- information seeking spaces and institutions, espe- sumed, thereby complicating the private/public di- cially online, where the hierarchical structures of sex vide, a boundary that is ever shifting online. and desire are made erotic. Consider, for example, On the other hand, Xtube’s classifications func- the arrangement of sexual desires on adult video ho- tion to guide, if not overtly discipline, subjects—both sting services online, such as Xtube.com, which al- the subjects of the images and the viewer as subject. lows individuals to upload pornographic video clips, It is evidence of an environment in which desires and basically Youtube for pornography. subject positions are produced as essential standards On the one hand, Xtube attempts to provide a through a discourse of hierarchal categorization and near instantaneous mass mediation and dissemina- classification. Images on Xtube are available to the tion of sexual representation. Conceivably, one viewer only through the negotiation of a coarse and might argue that this wealth of images offers an elaborate typology in which subject positions are fi- emancipatory scenario whereby subjects can project xed and defined in relation to each other, similar to their virtual selves into a seemingly endless variety of Ulrichs’ tabulation. For example, the tags “boy” and environments, and to embody an infinite number of “boi”—the latter term Judith Halberstam (2006, 114) freely chosen subject positions, roles and desires. has defined as a “boyish gay man”—often depict sub- Additionally, one might argue that Xtube allows for jects performing receptive roles in sex, which Ulrichs an exploration of the self and one's identity in rela- had categorized as effeminate and passive. Like Ul- tion to others (indeed, reliant on others as viewers). richs, the word “man” is not applied to the receptive In this sense, Xtube creates new possibilities for subject position. The subject is often paired with a various stylistics of the self, where the self is a work person in the insertive sexual role, who is seemingly in progress, an artist of itself. According to David older or more masculine or both. Thus, the categories Halperin, such autonomy of the self creates a new applied to this erotic image maintain Ulrichs’ tabula- strategic possibility by making the self a public site tion of “Men” as a separate and distinct category (Halperin 1995, 72). Thomas Laqueur, in his look at from those who take a receptive role in sex. In that the history of masturbation, argues that the Internet formation, sex and desire are conceived along an anti- frees people’s desires and fantasies from disciplining thetical axis in which feminine pairs with masculine voices. He claims that as a result of the Internet, and passive with active. This classification scheme is “masturbation has become not only a source of indi- common throughout Xtube. Consider, as well, how vidual self-discovery and the celebration of the the hierarchical classification reveals itself among the imagination and its infinite possibilities, but also the images labeled “BDSM” (Bondage, Discipline, Sa- Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 247 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

dism, Masochism). Among these images, the seem- Both of these lines reveal not only the ways in which ingly dominant and active person in sex, the one in- categories have come to constitute identities of de- flicting pleasure/pain, is often tagged as a “man,” a sire—identities that allow one to belong to one group “master,” or even a “real man,” whereas the seemingly or another—but also the ways in which social rela- passive person in sex is referred to as a “boy” or “sla- tions—in this case, of conflict and power dynamics ve.” In this way, the power dynamics of the hierarchi- respectively—are wrapped up in eroticized categories. cal structure are made explicit, as well as erotic. The Thus, categories of desire allow access to one’s de- phenomenon is also noticeable among subcultural sires, regulate one’s desires, and reinscribe the very BDSM dating sites, in which users apply these cate- social organization that is necessary for both institu- gories to themselves, thereby embracing the eroti- tional access and belonging. I present Old’s poem cized hierarchy. (1987, 17-18) in its entirety: While a user might role-play within these categories, the “exploration” is always already constrained Finally they got the Singles problem under con- by a logic of recognizable cues that are regularized, trol, they made it scientific. They opened huge disciplined and stabilized according to norms of sex Sex Centers-you could simply go and state and desire that have long been reflected in the organi- what you want and they would find you some- zation of these topics. In the case of Xtube, users are one who wanted that too. You would stand un- required to organize their images among standardized der a sign saying I Like to Be Touched and Held “channels” that prioritize certain categories within and when someone came and stood under the which users make a priori decisions about how to tag. sign saying I Like to Touch and Hold they Indeed, users are not connected to their desires would send the two of you off together. through categorization so much as their desires are already named, regulated, and stabilized in advance, At first it went great. A steady stream of people along a coarse axis of registers. Because the identity under the sign I Like to Give Pain paired up of their desires belongs within discernable bounda- with a steady stream of people from under I Li- ries, so too is the perception that desire is stable. ke to Receive Pain. Foreplay Only-No Orgasm Whether or not their desires transgress these bounda- found its adherents, and Orgasm Only-No Fore- ries, subjects are forced to choose from among the play matched up its believers. A loyal Berkeley, categories in order both to satisfy their desire and to California, policeman stood under the sign Mar- name themselves to others as a desiring subject. The ried Adults, Lights Out, Face to Face, Under a same was true of Ulrichs’ tabulation; homosexual Sheet, because that's the only way it was legal in men in the nineteenth-century looked to his typology Berkeley-but he stood there a long time in his to identify themselves, partly for legitimization, part- lonely blue law coat. And the man under I Like ly for self-understanding, and partly to develop a no- to Be Sung to White Bread Is Kneaded on My menclature necessary to connect to others. Stomach had been there weeks without a reply. Yet this regulation does not occur only online. It is also evidenced in Sharon Olds’ poem “The Solution,” Things began to get strange. The Love Only-No first published in 1987, in which she critiques, among Sex was doing fine; the Sex Only-No Love was other sexual aspects of our culture, the categorical sy- doing well, pair after pair walking out together stemization of desire. A phrase from the last line is like wooden animals off a child's ark, but the line especially fitting, “since they had to name it,” reflect- for 38D or Bigger was getting unruly, shouting ing our need for distinctions (italics my own). On the insults at the line for 8 Inches or Longer, and odd one hand, without such categories, subjects would isolated signs were springing up everywhere, Re- not access those who share their desire. On the other tired Schoolteacher and Parakeet-No Leather; One hand, these categories of desire function to regulate Rm/No Bath/View of Sausage Factory. subjects – grouping them where they belong, where they don’t belong – and reinscribes social relations. The din rose in the vast room. The line under I Consider the following two excerpts, “but the line Want to Be Fucked Senseless was so long that for 38D or Bigger was getting unruly, shouting insults portable toilets had to be added and a minister at the line for 8 Inches or Longer” and “people under brought for deaths, births, and marriages on the the sign I Like to Give Pain paired up with a steady line. Over under I Want to Fuck Senseless-no stream of people from under I Like to Receive Pain.” one, a pile of guns. A hollow roaring filled the 248 Knowl. Org. 36(2009)No.4 P. Keilty. Tabulating Queer: Space, Perversion, and Belonging

enormous gym. More and more people began to Queer theory and communication: from disciplining move over to Want to Be Fucked Senseless. The queers to queering the discipline(s). New York: Ha- line snaked around the gym, the stadium, the worth Press. whole town, out into the fields. More and more Gellner, Ernest. 1998. Language and solitude. Cam- people joined it, until Fucked Senseless stretched bridge: Cambridge University Press. across the nation in a huge wide belt like the Halberstam, Judith. 2006. Boys will be… bois?: Or, Milky Way, and since they had to name it they transgender feminism and forgetful fish. In Ri- named it, they called it the American Way. chardson, Diane, et al. eds., Intersections between feminist and queer theory. New York: Palgrave 6. Conclusion Macmillan. Halperin, David. 1995. Saint = Foucault: towards a As this overview shows, classification has both coer- gay hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. cive and productive effects for queer. Ulrichs’ tabula- Jagose, Annamarie. Queer theory: an introduction. tion of sex and desire reveals long lasting hierarchical New York: New York University Press. social relations that continue to infuse contemporary Laqueur, Thomas. 2003. Solitary sex: a cultural history information spaces. Problematizing the hazards of of masturbation. New York: Zone Books. classifying queer phenomena occurs not only when Mudumbe, V. Y. 1988. The invention of Africa: gnosis, the structures of categorization are made permeable, philosophy and the order of knowledge. Blooming- but also when scholars, practitioners, and activists ton, IN: Indiana University Press. form a critical engagement congruent with queer’s in- Olds, Sharon. 1987. The gold cell. New York: Knopf. trinsic resistance to classification. Otherwise, queer Olson, Hope. 2002. The power to name: locating the will have been sacrificed to an institutional system limits of subject representation in libraries. Boston: that rewards what it is not—a consolidated identity Kluwer Academic Publishers. category. Future scholarship must exam the relation- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham: ship between Western hierarchical knowledge struc- Duke University Press. tures and social power dynamics, as well as the forma- Spade, Dean. 2008. Documenting gender. Hastings tive power of knowledge structures on our under- law journal 59: 731-842. standing and social relations. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1995. The Spivak reader: selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New References Yo r k : R o u t l e d g e . Svenonius, Elaine. 2000. The intellectual foundation of Bertalanffy, Ludwig van. 1969. General system theory: information organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT foundations, development, applications. New York: Press. George Braziller. Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich. 1994. The riddle of “man- Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Star, Susan Leigh. 2000. manly” love: the pioneering work on male homosexu- Sorting things out: classification and its consequences. ality, 2 vols., trans. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. New York: Prometheus Books. Bristow, Joseph. 2003. Sexuality. New York: Rout- Xtube.com 2008. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from ledge. http://wiki.xtube.com/index.php?title=XTube& DuBois, Page. 1991. Centaurs and Amazons: women action=purge#Statistics_and_Growth and the pre-history of the great chain of being. Ann Zhao, Liana. 2003. Characteristics of material organi- Arbor: University of Michigan Press. zation and classification in the Kinsey Institute Li- Foucault, Michel. 2007. The order of things: an archae- brary. Cataloging and classification quarterly 35no.3/ ology of human sciences. New York: Routledge. 4: 335-53. Gamson, Joshua. 2003. Reflections on queer theory and communication. In Yep, Gust, et al. eds.,