Queer Pedagogy and American Studies: a Reparative Re-Thinking

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Queer Pedagogy and American Studies: a Reparative Re-Thinking QUEER PEDAGOGY AND AMERICAN STUDIES: A REPARATIVE RE-THINKING By NISHANT SHAHANI A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 Copyright 2006 by Nishant Shahani ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project has been profoundly shaped in scope, method and content by the vision of my director, Kim Emery. I began conceptualizing this project after taking three graduate seminars with Prof. Emery that were hugely influential in the conceptualization of this dissertation. The seminars have been truly performative in that they not only have shaped the way I theorize but also have greatly impacted my own pedagogy. I also wish to thank Prof. Emery for the time, energy and dedication that she devoted to me during the job market process. I am extremely grateful that she had faith in a project that had a strange archive and was difficult to market. At every step, from revising my job letter to checking my unselective use of commas, she has guided me during this very stressful part of my student career. I have greatly benefited from her intellectual abilities and I can only hope to emulate her as a scholar and a teacher. She has been the best mentor I could hope for. Special thanks go to Prof. Kenneth Kidd for his unwavering support and encouragement throughout my graduate career. His feedback on various chapters has been instrumental in giving my dissertation a direction and cohesiveness. His brilliance and dynamic energy have greatly impacted not only my academic work but also my graduate life in the English Department at UF. I will truly miss him. Finally, I am greatly indebted to Prof. Stephanie Smith whose personal and professional guidance has been invaluable. She has always asked tough questions that have enabled me to consider issues and questions that were missing from my work. I especially value her assistance to iii me during my job search. I also wish to acknowledge the generosity of my outside expert, Prof. Gwynn Kessler. Several other professors in the English Department have greatly enriched my graduate career at UF. I especially appreciate the extra work that the department has done to cater to the needs of international students. Special thanks go to Prof. Sid Dobrin for looking out for the concerns of teaching assistants. I have had the opportunity to teach a wide range of exciting classes at UF over the past seven years and I am extremely thankful for the opportunity. I have greatly benefited by the efficiency and hard work of Prof. Pamela Gilbert who has always been an extremely helpful graduate co-ordinator. Thanks go to Prof. David Leavitt for working with me on an independent study and introducing me to the work of Mark Merlis. I greatly appreciate the help of Prof. Ed White and Prof. Phil Wegner during the job market process. I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous hard work of the staff in the English Department, especially Kathy Williams. I would like to acknowledge the work of my Union, in particular, GAU President Todd Reynolds, for strongly advocating against the International Student Fee and for securing better health benefits for graduate students. I am extremely grateful to all the folks at Wild Iris Bookstore for sustaining an important space in Gainesville. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to all my students for challenging me and forcing me to think more carefully about the implications of pedagogy in my own research. My years in Gainesville have been greatly enriched by the warmth and friendship of several friends and colleagues—I share many warm memories with Harun, Rochelle, Franklin, Todd, Andrea, Laura, Heather, Tonya, and Nicole. Thanks go also to Drew, iv Craig, Anthony, Steve, and Tony. I greatly value the friendship and fabulous culinary abilities of my colleague Maisha. Much warmth goes to Robina, with whom I share a love for Joni Mitchell and Thai food, amongst other things. I have been fortunate to live with roommates like Amanda, Wakako, and Sophie who not only became close friends but also part of a family I came home to everyday. I have greatly benefited from the passion and creativity of my friend, Sheila Bishop. Thanks go to Alvarez with whom I will one day write a book on Diva etiquette. I am profoundly indebted to the brilliance of my friend Mindy—I am especially thankful to her for suggesting that I should read Butler differently! I really appreciate the warmth, friendship, and excellent cooking of my friend and Scrabble-partner, Luce. Finally, I wish to thank Emily, Eric, and Meg—a group of friends who have, over the years, become a part of my family. I look forward to a lifetime full of celebrity bowl games and rants against the “hoobas” of the world with these close friends. Their love and friendship mean the world to me. I am extremely grateful for the support of my sister and Rohit. I am fortunate to have family so close by. Their home in Atlanta has been a welcome refuge. The support of my parents has also been invaluable. It has been difficult to be away from them for so long, but their encouragement and support over the years have greatly nourished me. Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my grandmother, Kala Shahani—the beauty and dignity with which she lived her life will be an inspiration for me forever. v TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: QUEER PEDAGOGY AND AMERICAN STUDIES: A REPARATIVE RE-THINKING ..................................................................................1 Thinking of Performativity Performatively: Towards a Theory of Queer Pedagogy...1 Theories that Matter......................................................................................................6 Madness behind the Method: Qualifying the “Scavenger” Archive ..........................13 Notes...........................................................................................................................23 2 PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES AND THE REPARATIVE PERFORMANCE OF FAILURE, OR, “WHAT DOES [QUEER] KNOWLEDGE DO?”.....................25 Towards a Pedagogical Notion of "Failure" ...............................................................25 The Reparative Promise of “Failure,” or what does “Failure” do? ............................28 The Erotics of Ignorance, or the Performance of not Knowing .................................29 Failures that Matter.....................................................................................................40 Recursive Roads to Reparative Failure.......................................................................45 Notes...........................................................................................................................56 3 THE PEDAGOGY OF QUEER THEORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL FRAME: TOWARDS A REPARATIVE MODEL OF SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP IN INDIA..58 Introduction.................................................................................................................58 Diasporic Performativity—Repetition without a Difference?....................................61 The Reparative Pedagogies of Performativity—Moving away from the “Specifically Female” .............................................................................................70 Notes...........................................................................................................................94 4 THE POLITICS OF QUEER TIME: TOWARDS A REPARATIVE NOTION OF TEMPORALITY ........................................................................................................96 Re-thinking the Relation between Reparation and Failure.........................................96 Out of Time? The Temporal Politics of Performativity ..........................................100 vi “Things Change in One Moment”—The Politics of Temporal Condensation.........104 “Fallen out of Time”—Performativity and the Problem of Reparation ...................116 5 QUEER ‘RETRO’-SEXUALITIES: REPARATIVE RETURNS TO THE PRIMAL SCENE OF AMERICAN STUDIES........................................................131 “Bearing Witness” to the Fifties...............................................................................131 American Studies and the Retrospective Re-imagining of History ..........................138 Changing Time—American Studies and the Denial of Coevalness.........................146 Resisting the “Great Paradigm Shift”—Against a Progressivist Notion of Time ....153 Paranoid Thinking and the Problem of the Performativity—Re-visiting Primal Scenes....................................................................................................................159 American Studies and the Promise of Reparation.....................................................166 Notes.........................................................................................................................175 6 AFTERWORD: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES FAILURE MAKE? ......................178 LIST OF REFERENCES.................................................................................................186 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................191 vii Abstract of Dissertation
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