Queer Theory Mobilised for Community?

Yesterday, Michael Stevens - a blogger for gaynz.com - posted Be Careful What You Wish For. This post was inspired by the greater number of gay and lesbian MPs we have in parliament after the election but went on to warn about whether we actually want to go down the path of assimilation or do we want to stay cowering in our gay ghettos? I find many things wrong with this post that I thought it best to direct my attention to short passages and then then write a few closing remarks.

Rather than assimilation, it sought a radical re-ordering of the entire social fabric. In its latest guise it has come to us as “Queer Theory”, which made a number of grossly inflated claims as to the importance of sexual identity. It is this last stance that sees all those of us who are outside the norms of mainstream sexual practice and identity as having a common ground to stand on and a common enemy to fight against: heterosexist patriarchal Capitalist society. And this common oppression is supposed to help us form our community.

This is so problematic I am not quite sure where to begin. Queer Theory - at least in the early forms - imagines no community. Butler has since changed her opinion since publishing Gender Trouble in 1990 but Queer Theory posits that there is no stable identity. If identity is ever-mutable then community also must similarly be mutable - if there is even such a thing as "community." We are made up of so many community affiliations that are so context-dependant: how can we possibly say which one dominates without taking in account the influences of the particular moment?

This passage also betrays a Marxist view of hegemonic heterosexuality. I would argue that Queer Theory is interested in deconstructing phenomena to see how power works in particular instances - whilst also considering the context of phenomena. Queer Theory does not aim to cause a revolution. Indeed, this is one of the problems with Marxism: there will never be a revolution and - if we are waiting for it to happen - we will become disillusioned and give up. Rather, we are better to make gradual change and realise what is changing whilst thinking about that change critically rather than spurting off some knee-jerk reaction.

As a post-modern theory, Queer Theory shares the abhorrence of meatanarratives. In a way, the Revolution is a metanarrative so itself should be critiqued - what is at stake in the Revolution? For whom? Could the Revolution be slower than we anticipated? Why do we want the Revolution? What is more, this kind of thinking leads to the progress narrative - itself a metanarrative - which leads to further victimisation - or a self-fulfilling prophecy of victim hood - and not appreciating what we have; progress narratives distract from the task of critiquing power relations. A further problem with metanarratives is that they distract by forcing us to focus on the past instead of taking account of that past, synthesising it with the present to create a future in which we would be happy to live; we are too busy looking back and pining for what has gone before rather than looking ahead to the future. We are not so much walking backwards into the future as we are stopped looking backwards into the past with shock and love.

What I suspect this assimilation, this normalisation of us as people will mean is this: the importance of sexual identity as a unifying bond that forms a community will weaken even more over time.

Whilst I kind of agree, we do not have a community based on "sexual identity." The only possible way we can conceive of such a community is creating one that seems so forced since there is no one else on this planet that has the same sexual identity as us. Indeed, our sexual identity changes over time and we have the opportunity to have multiple identifies. Which of our identities predominates - sexual, class, race, ability etc. It is important to remember that Queer Theory is interested in examining the intersection of different identities.

Our gay community was at its most productive, its strongest, its most challenging, its most exciting and vibrant when we were banded together in our gay ghettos, fighting for our rights, fighting against HIV and the prejudice it engenders and living lives that placed us on the outer of the mainstream.

Should we want to be living in our ghettos? This still buys into the structuralist binary of us/them. Instead, we should not be fighting to uphold the repressive categories but we should be working to abolish such categories altogether. I am left wondering just how much this opens a space for heterophobia. After all, if we want to keep our common difference this means we have to separate ourselves from the heterosexuals - we must then open the door to excluding heterosexuals from our lives and thereby introduce the spectre of heterophobia.

The need for us to exist as a distinct social entity will lessen and fade.

What is this need? Is it simply a nostalgic longing for what has faded? Was there ever a need for us to exist as a distinct social entity? I really don't believe so. Rather, there is a need for us to account for our difference - and the difference inherent in everybody - but we should not let this difference erect walls between ourselves and others. I think it is time for us to grow and evolve rather than wanting to sit in our little ghettos and stare at our navels as we push people away from us because they are different.

25.11.08