DOCSLIB.ORG

The Unpredictable Future of Fantasy's Traversal

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Unpredictable Future of Fantasy's Traversal ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 18 number 4 december 2013 he work of psychoanalytic theorist Jacques T Lacan has long had a vexed relationship to feminist and queer theory because of the heavy emphasis that much contemporary Lacanian discourse places on the doctrine of “sexual difference.” Lacan’s account of the psyche is often explained through reference to his early account of the interlocking imaginary, sym- bolic, and Real orders. These three registers support the fantasies that animate desiring sub- jectivity. Whereas the imaginary order is the realm of the specular image and its (mis)recog- nitions, the symbolic is that of language. The imaginary and the symbolic intersect with chris coffman each other and with the Real – the source of the most profound psychical resistance.1 More- over, Lacan claims in his early work that being THE UNPREDICTABLE a subject (rather than a psychotic) requires that one accept the “name of the father” as the FUTURE OF FANTASY’S “ fi ” primordial signi er that grounds the latter TRAVERSAL order (Seminar III 96, 150). Even though Bruce Fink clarifies that any name – not just that of the Father – could serve this function, much contemporary Lacanian discourse insists unconscious investments in constricting life pat- that the law that governs the symbolic order terns (Ruti, “The Fall of Fantasies” 498). must be that of the Father and that “sexual However, that loss clears the ground for a difference” always governs desire (Fink 56).2 future that could be lived otherwise (ibid.). ̌ As a result, feminist and queer theorists such Thus, in a queer reading of Slavoj Zizeǩ’s as Judith Butler have long viewed the Lacanian work, I argue that “(hetero)sexual difference” doctrine of “sexual difference” as unacceptably (the label I give to “sexual difference” to indi- heteronormative.3 cate its heteronormativity) “is the fantasy that However, traversing the fundamental Lacanian psychoanalytic theory needs to tra- fantasy – a movement Lacan first describes in verse in order to fully register the many possible Seminar XI – could open up the possibility of configurations of desiring subjectivities” and ̌ new configurations of language, signification, contemporary genders (“Queering Zizeǩ”). and desire. Traversing the fantasy involves, on However, in that piece I do not address the the one hand, subjective dispossession – that question of what might lie beyond that fantasy is, the subject’s loss of the fantasies that struc- – a matter that “remains unconcluded in ture subjectivity but that also motivate Lacan’s work” itself, as Lorenzo Chiesa observes ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/13/040043-19 © 2014 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2013.869023 43 fantasy’s traversal (189). In this essay, too, I resist mapping out the may not be occupied by an actual queer. contours of such a “beyond,” for such a gesture However, on the other hand, he demonstrates would be just as prescriptive and constraining as through analysis of right-wing discourse that the fantasy of (hetero)sexual difference. homosexuality currently occupies this position However, in contrast to theorists such as Lee within a homophobic symbolic governed by Edelman, who repudiates any engagement the ideology of reproductive futurism. with futurity, in this essay I do seek to Edelman advocates embracing the figure of the embrace the productive and unpredictable sinthomosexual – and thereby traversing the futures for the signifier – and for gender and homophobic fantasy of reproductive futurism desire – that traversing the fantasy of (hetero) – rather than engaging in the imaginary and sexual difference would engender. symbolic strategies motivating both mainstream gay politics and Butler’s theories. Though Edel- ’ denying the future man s largest wager is on the potential of the sinthomosexual’s jouissance to undercut repro- Edelman’s 2004 No Future brings Lacan’s work ductive futurism, he also intimates that such a to bear on queer theory by drawing on Lacan’s traversal of the fantasy could also undermine explanation in Seminar XXIII of the way in the logic of “sexual difference,” which he which it is possible to traverse the fantasy by describes as “merely a supposition, merely a embracing the sinthome. The term “the positing” that is part of reproductive futurism’s sinthome” refers to each person’s particular edifice (No Future 139).4 form of jouissance – the experience of ecstasy Presenting “negativity as society’s constitu- that exceeds symbolic inscriptions of desire by tive antagonism,” Edelman starts from the tapping into the drive in the Real. As Yannis Žizekiaň premise that the symbolic and imagin- Stavrakakis writes, for Lacan it is only by ary orders of illusory meaning and recognition embracing the sinthome and “accepting [ … ] cover over an antagonism in the Real (“Antag- an impossible representation [ … ] that it is onism” 822). Thus discussion among queer the- possible to ‘represent’ the impossible or rather orists about No Future (and Edelman’s to identify with the impossibility of its represen- subsequent reassertions of his argument) has tation,” thereby traversing the fantasy (134). largely focused on his work’s exemplification Edelman’s book grafts these ideas into the of what Robert Caserio, in a 2006 PMLA context of queer theory by calling on queers to forum, calls the “anti-social thesis”: the argu- traverse the fantasy of “reproductive futurism” ment that queer sexuality is inherently – the pervasive ideology that holds out the child opposed to society and community. Scholars as the figure for whom the future must be have focused on Edelman’s claim that traversing secured. Edelman asserts that queers should the fantasy of reproductive futurism would embrace the structural position of the reviled entail the wholesale devastation of the symbolic sinthomosexual – a neologism he forms by order of meaning that Edelman equates with the punning on the Lacanian sinthome. The term social, and have not paid much attention to his “the sinthomosexual” designates the queer reading of Žizeǩ or to alternative accounts of figure that a homophobic symbolic order associ- fantasy’s traversal. This is unfortunate, as Edel- ates with the pure jouissance of the drives in the man’s overly pessimistic interpretation of both Real, and therefore with the refusal of reproduc- Lacan and Žizeǩ is largely responsible for the tive futurism. Edelman views “structurally controversial nihilism of No Future – for the determinative violence” against the sinthomo- way in which Edelman’s refusal to posit an sexual as inescapable, even though the identity alternative to reproductive futurism is as vehe- of those who occupy the place of the sinthomo- ment as his justifiable rage against it. While I sexual may change (“Antagonism” 822). On the am very sympathetic to Edelman’s project of one hand, he importantly insists that the sintho- reworking Žizeǩ’s theories for queer ends, I mosexual is a structural position that may or find in the latter’s work an ambivalent 44 coffman combination of pessimism and optimism that – not only of imploding all imaginary and sym- unlike the former’s book – does not exclude agi- bolic misrecognitions, homophobic or other- tation for positive structural change. Žizeǩ and wise, but also of persisting in a utopian space other Lacanian theorists present traversing the of negativity defined by the absence of their fantasy not as a refusal of all forms of futurity strictures. This utopia is not, however, as but rather as a ground-clearing gesture that is radical as Edelman’s rejection of the imaginary directed toward a future. and symbolic makes it seem, for the sinthomo- Edelman’s refusal of all modes of addressing sexual is only able to ignore the symbolic by the future is a problem because it downplays the accepting the space of jouissance that the sym- transformative aims of the very theory of “tra- bolic itself circumscribes. versing the fantasy” upon which he relies. Though Edelman’s argument leaves the Those who voluntarily enter into psychoanalysis sinthomosexual suspended in a place of jouis- are seeking transformation, and, in its clinical sance that does not ultimately challenge the form, “traversing the fantasy” is futurally symbolic’s coordinates, Tim Dean observes oriented, though it offers no guarantees that that the anti-social thesis, with its goal of “the the future that it opens up will be for the shattering of the civilized ego,” promises “not better. If, as Ruti observes, psychoanalysis’s the end of sociality but rather its inception” very goal is to expand the analysand’s options, (“The Antisocial Homosexual” 827).5 The only it is difficult to accept Edelman’s assertion participant in the 2006 PMLA forum to that all modes of futural orientation are danger- engage Edelman’s use of psychoanalysis, Dean ous (Ruti, “The Fall of Fantasies” 498). His attributes No Future’s excessive negativity to version of “traversing the fantasy” exclusively its author’sinflexible interpretation of psycho- emphasizes its phase of subjective destitution, analytic theories of the drive. In “An Impossible suggesting that queers embrace the figure of Embrace,” a further development of his PMLA the sinthomosexual in order to abandon imagin- piece, Dean reminds us that both Freud and ary misrecognitions and the symbolic order of Lacan conceive of the drive as far more unpre- illusory meaning that sustains them. Yet dictable – and far more capable of constructive Edelman disavows the way in which embracing
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Disrupting Heteronormativity with Russian Fairy Tales SQS 2/2011
    And They Lived Queerly Ever After: Disrupting Heteronormativity with Russian Fairy Tales SQS 2/2011 David McVey The Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literature 17 The Ohio State University QueerScope Articles Russian fairy tales and their uses because the fairy-tale protagonist, often striving toward some lofty goal, mapped well onto the prevailing Stalinist narrative of the “New Soviet Man” Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanas’ev1 (1826–1871) is to Russian fairy tales (Tippner 2008, 312), who was to build a bright socialist future and inspire what the Brothers Grimm are to German tales and Charles Perrault is to others in doing so. Fairy-tale influences on art were thus permitted and French tales. Although he collected the narratives for only ten fairy tales exuberantly appropriated by the Soviet system because their plotlines often himself, between 1855 and 1864 Afanas’ev edited and published over 600 mirrored “Stalinist culture’s spirit of miraculous reality” (Prokhorov 2008, diverse stories based on oral Russian folk tradition (Jakobson 1945, 637). 135). Pre-revolutionary fairy-tale narratives no longer rankled the censors His quintessential compiled tales have provided a trove of inspiration to with their fantasy and were appropriated into the Soviet Union’s didactic Russian authors, poets, playwrights, composers, and filmmakers since the and assiduously policed system of textual production and circulation, nineteenth century. which foretold of a happy and triumphant future. These Russian fairy-tale narratives contain the same sort of fantastical Afanas’ev, however, anonymously published another set of Russian folk elements present in Western varieties. Consequently, the tales’ imaginative stories in Geneva, Switzerland in 1872 (Perkov 1988, 13).
    [Show full text]
  • A THOUSAND PLATEAUS Capitalism and Schizophrenia
    A THOUSAND PLATEAUS Capitalism and Schizophrenia Gilles Deleuze Felix Guattari Translation and Foreword by Brian Massumi University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges translation assistance provided for this book by the French Ministry of Culture and by the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. Copyright © 1987 by the University of Minnesota Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Eleventh printing 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deleuze, Gilles. [Mille plateaux. English] A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia/Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari; translation and foreword by Brian Massumi. p. cm. Translation of: Mille plateaux, v. 2 of Capitalisme et schizophrenic. A companion volume to Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-8166-1401-6 ISBN 0-8166-1402-4 (pbk.) 1. Philosophy. I. Guattari, Felix. II. Title B77.D413 1987 194-dcl9 87-18623 Originally published as Mille Plateaux, volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizophrenic © 1980 by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris. Photo of Sylvano Bussoti, Five Pieces for Piano for David Tudor, reproduced by permission of G. Ricordi, Milan, copyright © 1970 by G. Ricordi E.C. SPA; photo of Fernand Leger, Men in the Cities, 1919, copyright © 1987 by ARS, N.Y./SPADEM; photo of Paul Klee, Twittering Machine, 1922, reproduced by permission of The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., copyright © 1987 by Cosmopress, Geneva.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    11 INTRODUCTION been officially reported during the last twenty years, without having prompted any real action from either The problem is not so much homosexual desire as police or legal authorities. In such conditions, it is dif- the fear of homosexuality: why does the mere men- ficult to imagine that the world’s “tolerance” of gays, tion of the word trigger off reactions of hate? We lesbians, and transgenders has gained much ground, if must therefore question how the heterosexual world at all. On the contrary, in the majority of these nations, conceives and fantasizes about “homosexuality.” homophobia appears to be more violent than ever. —Guy Hocquenghem, Homosexual Desire, 1972 This brief overview of the situation seems even more sinister as it belies the naïve impression of those who According to widespread opinion, homosexual- would believe that the overall acceptance of gays and ity is more liberated today than it has ever been: it is lesbians in society is growing. But in reality, pessimism present and visible everywhere, in the streets, in the and blind optimism constitute two symmetric pitfalls newspapers, on televisions, in the movies. It is even for both thought and action, inasmuch as both of these completely accepted, as witnessed by recent legisla- attitudes rest upon completely illusory presuppositions: tive advances in North America and Europe regard- one, that homophobia has and always will exist, and is a ing the recognition of same-sex couples (Vermont, constant in human society; the other, that homophobia Quebec, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, France, is generally a thing of the past.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet Author(S): Michael Warner Source: Social Text, No
    Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet Author(s): Michael Warner Source: Social Text, No. 29 (1991), pp. 3-17 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466295 Accessed: 02/09/2010 12:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Text. http://www.jstor.org Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet MICHAEL WARNER "Oh, the sly Myra Breckinridge! Nothing can escape the fine net of her dialectic!" Myra Breckinridgel This special section of Social Text has two purposes.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Sibalis, Gay Liberation Comes to France
    Gay Liberation Comes to France 265 Gay Liberation Comes to France: The Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR) Michael Sibalis There were no cameras rolling in New York City in the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 1969, when the Stonewall Riots launched the American gay liberation movement.1 In contrast, the founding moment of gay liberation in France occurred live on the radio. Between 1967 and 1981, Ménie Grégoire hosted a confessional-style radio program on station RTL, and more than a million listeners (overwhelmingly women) tuned in every weekday afternoon to hear Grégoire, her guests and the occasional studio audience discuss important personal and social issues.2 The day’s topic on Wednesday, March 10, 1971, was “Homosexuality, This Painful Problem.”3 Grégoire had brought together before an audience in the Salle Pleyel in Paris a group of so-called experts (she described them as “people who know the question for a lot of diverse reasons”) that included André Baudry, the head of Arcadie, France’s only “homophile” association; the young journalist Pierre Hahn, who had written magazine articles on sexuality and homosexuality; a priest; a psychoanalyst; and, quite incongruously (their presence has never been explained), Michael Sibalis is Associate Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He has published numerous articles on the nineteenth-century French labor movement, the police state of Napoleon I, and the history of homosexuality in France. His most recent work includes: “Urban Space and Homosexuality: The Example of the Marais, Paris’ ‘Gay Ghetto,’” Urban Studies 41 (2004): 1739-1758, and “Arbitrary Detention, Human Rights and the Napoleonic Senate,” in Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon, eds.
    [Show full text]
  • Particularities of Queer Utility: Gay Expertise and the Aesthetic
    Particularities of Queer Utility: Gay Expertise and the Aesthetic Disposition Goldsmiths College – Centre for Cultural Studies (submitted for consideration of MPhil degree conferral) Joseph C. Russo The work presented in this thesis is the candidate’s own. Date: January 22, 2015. Signed: Joseph C. Russo ABSTRACT This thesis attempts a reconceptualization of queerness as it is discussed within queer studies and popular cultural forms. It avoids the tendency towards queerness as pure abstraction, in which queerness constitutes an aleatoric force that defines some basic quality of nature (flux, change, chaos, possibility); it also attempts to find creative ways to circumvent a compartmentalization of queerness into identity formation. That is, it avoids describing queerness as either a phenomenon or an identity choice. Instead, this thesis conceives of queerness as a set of functions, or utilities, that enact social processes. In this work, these processes are referred to as ‘masks’ in order to exemplify their use value. By using Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of distinction and Guy Hocquenghem’s theory of homosexual desire, as well as engaging with contemporary works of queer theory, it presents an analysis of the figure of the ‘gay expert’ within popular culture discourses as an arbiter of aesthetics whose queer functionality (not ruling class status) provides him with cultural capital and the power to advise and instruct consumers. This power amounts to the ability to encode and decode cultural knowledge. Additionally, the concept of the ‘queer avatar’ is explored in analyses of various popular cultural forms, including professional wrestling and popular television series, in which a particular functionality of aberrance is deployed to various ends, including horror, satire, and valor.
    [Show full text]
  • Family, Capitalism, Anus
    Family, Capitalism, Anus GUY HOCQUENGHEM Homosexual desire flows in two directions: one rising towards sub­ limation, towards the Superego, towards social anxiety; the other descending into the abysses of a non-personalized, non-codified desire. And it is good to pursue the descent; this is the course of desire in which the connecting organs obey no law and follow no rule. THE SIGNIFYING PHALLUS AND THE SUBLIMATED ANUS In the world of Oedipized sexuality, free connections between organs, direct relations of pleasure are no longer possible. There is one organ, one sexual organ only, at the center of the Oedipal triangle, the One which determines the place to be occupied by the other three elements of the triangle. The One creates the lack; it determines absence or presence; the penis envy of the little girl, or the castration fear of the little boy. As the signifying despot, it organizes the global situations of people. As the com­ plete detached object, it plays, in the sexuality of our society, the role money plays in the capitalist economy; the fetish, the veritable universal reference of activity, economic in one case, desiring in the other ... Sex for the whole world is above all a word that designates the phallus, in relation to the phallus the quantity of possible pleasure is determined. This society is phallocratic; in the construction of the complex of social relations according to the hierarchical mode, the transcendance of the Great Signifier displays itself. The schoolmaster, the general, the boss are father­ phalluses. Everything is organized in pyramidal form, and the Oedipal signifier distributes levels and identifications.
    [Show full text]
  • The Unbearable Comfort of Privacy: the Everyday Life of Gays And
    gay_comfort_eng_01.qxd 2006/03/02 10:31 Page 3 A LENKA Š VAB AND R OMAN K UHAR THE UNBEARABLE COMFORT OF PRIVACY THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF GAYS AND LESBIANS gay_comfort_eng_01.qxd 2006/03/02 10:31 Page 1 gay_comfort_eng_01.qxd 2006/03/02 10:31 Page 2 gay_comfort_eng_01.qxd 2006/03/02 10:31 Page 4 ALENKA ŠVAB AND ROMAN KUHAR THE UNBEARABLE COMFORT OF PRIVACY THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF GAYS AND LESBIANS TRANSLATION: OLGA VUKOVIĆ PROOF-READING: MICHELLE GADPAILLE COVER ILLUSTRATION: IRENA WÖLLE PHOTO INSIDE THE COVER: ANAMARIJA ŠPORČIČ, PRIDE PARADE 2004 IN LJUBLJANA: “THE WEDDING IS ON!” MIHA FRAS, PRIDE PARADE 2005 IN LJUBLJANA: “REGISTRATION EQUALS DISCRIMINATION” DESIGN: IRENA WÖLLE PRINT: STANE PEKLAJ REVIEWERS: DR. TANJA RENER, FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, LJUBLJANA UNIVERSITY DR. ALEKSANDAR ŠTULHOFER, FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, ZAGREB UNIVERSITY © MIROVNI INŠTITUT, 2005 THE PUBLISHING OF THIS BOOK WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY: OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE SLOVENIAN RESEARCH AGENCY CITY OF LJUBLJANA BOOK SERIES POLITIKE EDITOR: ALDO MILOHNIĆ PUBLISHER: PEACE INSTITUTE INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES METELKOVA 6 SI-1000 LJUBLJANA E: [email protected] WWW.MIROVNI-INSTITUT.SI CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 316.723-055.3 ŠVAB, Alenka, 1970- The unbearable comfort of privacy : the everyday life of gays and lesbians / Alenka Švab and Roman Kuhar ; [translation Olga Vuković]. - Ljubljana : Peace Institute, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, 2005. - (Book series Politike)
    [Show full text]
  • After Queer Theory
    After Queer Theory Penney T02732 00 pre 1 08/10/2013 08:16 Penney T02732 00 pre 2 08/10/2013 08:16 After Queer Theory The Limits of Sexual Politics James Penney Penney T02732 00 pre 3 08/10/2013 08:16 First published 2014 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © James Penney 2014 The right of James Penney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3379 3 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3378 6 Paperback ISBN 978 1 8496 4985 8 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4987 2 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4986 5 EPUB eBook Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America Penney T02732 00 pre 4 08/10/2013 08:16 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: After Queer Theory – Manifesto and Consequences 1 Setting
    [Show full text]
  • The Anal Voice
    ISSN 1751-8229 Volume Six, Number Three The Anal Voice James Michael Goodwin, University of Maryland “We are ashamed of shit because, in it, we expose/externalize our innermost intimacy.” Slavoj Žižek “Our asshole is revolutionary” Guy Hocquenghem Of all the brief, tortuous vignettes in William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959), readers most often recall – and, according to the following essay’s argument, for good reason – Dr. Benway’s tale of “the talking anus.” In this vignette, his colleague, Dr. Schafer, bemoans what he believes are the body’s utterly inefficient methods, its lack of economy, that is, its separate holes for separate procedures: “Why not one all-purpose hole,” he complains, “to eat and eliminate?” Naturally, this reminds Dr. Benway of an amusing anecdote about a man who taught his anus to talk. The man accomplished this feat through a series of inverted farts (similar to gulping air in order to force oneself to belch), until he had perfected the skill well enough to tour, where he performed an amusing ventriloquist act entitled “The Better ‘Ole.” The anus, however, soon acquired the ability to speak on its own. At first, the anus’s autonomy seemed to improve the act, for now its owner (or is the man now his anus’s partner?) could improvise the routine; but eventually, in increasing anthropomorphic fashion, the anus acquired the ability to eat and drink, 1 and while this too was incorporated into the act, the anus also, and most problematically, developed a massive inferiority complex and began demanding civil rights. Since such rights were not forthcoming, the anus would get drunk…and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth.
    [Show full text]
  • HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE Uy Hocquenghem
    HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE uy Hocquenghem With a New Introduction by Michael Moon Preface by Jeffrey Weeks HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE A series edited by Michele Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE Guy Hocquenghem Translated by DaniellaDangoor Preface to the 1978 edition by Jeffrey Weeks New Introduction by Michael Moon Duke University Press Durham and London 1993 © 1972 Editions Universitaires Translation © 1978 Estate of Guy Hocquenghem Preface© 1978Jeffrey Weeks This edition© 1993 Duke UniversityPress All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper oo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Cover image is provided by permission of T om of Finland Foundation, P.O. Box 26658, Los Angeles, CA 90026. CONTENTS New Introduction by Michael Moon 9 Preface to the 1978 Edition by Jeffrey Weeks 23 1 Introduction 49 2 Anti-Homosexual Paranoia 55 "Unnatural acts": nature and the law 61 A myth: the progress of public morals 62 The strengthening of anti-homosexual paranoia 66 Homosexuality and crime 67 Homosexuality and disease 69 "L atent" and "patent" homosexuality 72 " 3 ''Disgusting peroerts... 73 The polymorphously perverse, bisexuality and non- human sex 74 Hatred of woman 77 The Oedipalisation of homosexuality 79 Castration and narcissism 79 Oedipus or the chromosomes? 82 The homosexual judge 83 Cure: the infernal cycle 86 Homosexuality and shame 88 4 Capitalism, the Family and the Anus 93 The phallic signifier and thesublimated
    [Show full text]
  • Unseen Identity: Jeffrey Bukowski University of Vermont
    University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 2008 Unseen Identity: Jeffrey Bukowski University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis Recommended Citation Bukowski, Jeffrey, "Unseen Identity:" (2008). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 35. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/35 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNSEEN IDENTITY: CLASS, MASCULINITY, AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN E. M. FORSTER’S MAURICE AND A. T. FITZROY’S DESPISED AND REJECTED. A Thesis Presented by Jeffrey Charles Bukowski to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Specializing in English May, 2008 Accepted by the Faculty of the Graduate College, The University of Vermont, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts specializing in English. Thesis Examination Committee: - /&& 3.27.8 g Advisor Valerie Rohy, Ph.D. ,h.rl 3 / 2 F / o k' Chairperson Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies March 27,2008 Abstract While capitalism is thought by many to enable male homosexual identity to emerge, this same economic system creates a class hierarchy that promotes a heteronormative worldview, which marks homosexual men as the outcasts of society. In England during the years leading up to the First World War, a man’s character and persona were determined by his social class position.
    [Show full text]