Madhavi Menon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695904
- eISBN:
- 9781452953656
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being ...
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Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.Less
Indifference to Difference organises itself around Alain Badiou’s suggestion that in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and ethics of being “indifferent to difference.” Following up on the ideas of sameness and difference that have animated queer theory, I think about what it might mean, methodologically, to be indifferent to differences of chronology, culture, and sexuality. Rather than giving us an identifiable “queerness,” or queerness as an identity, a universalism premised on indifference would be queer in its resistance to ontology. This queer universalism would be neither additive nor predicative; instead, it would resist the regime of difference in which embodiment is considered the basis of authentic identity. Indifference to Difference resuscitates the philosophical debates around universalism by joining them to the concerns of queer theory. Asking, along with Alain Badiou, what it would mean to be indifferent to someone else’s difference from us, Indifference, or Queer Universalism suggests that being locked into a world of differences should not translate into reifying difference as the basis of identity. Rather, by being indifferent to the many differences within which we live, we acknowledge the reality in which we are always moving and ever mobile. This continual movement is the movement of desire. Desire resides in us, but with scant regard for who we are. If we take seriously the universal inability of desire to settle, then we lose the ontological specificity of difference. Queer universalism can only ever be indifferent to difference.
Penelope Deutscher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231176415
- eISBN:
- 9780231544559
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231176415.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality ...
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In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality and biopolitics to challenge our understanding of the politicization of reproduction. By analyzing Foucault's contribution to the politics of maternity and its influence on the work of thinkers such as Roberto Esposito, Giorgio Agamben, and Judith Butler, Deutscher provides new insights into the conflicted political status of reproductive conduct and what it means for feminism and critical theory.Less
In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality and biopolitics to challenge our understanding of the politicization of reproduction. By analyzing Foucault's contribution to the politics of maternity and its influence on the work of thinkers such as Roberto Esposito, Giorgio Agamben, and Judith Butler, Deutscher provides new insights into the conflicted political status of reproductive conduct and what it means for feminism and critical theory.
Jocelyn Sakal Froese (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496815118
- eISBN:
- 9781496815156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496815118.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that ...
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This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.Less
This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.
Bill Marshall
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941114
- eISBN:
- 9781789629163
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941114.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter begins by presenting the role of Christiane Taubira in defending and promoting the 'mariage pour tous' legislation in France, including the references made to the work of Léon ...
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This chapter begins by presenting the role of Christiane Taubira in defending and promoting the 'mariage pour tous' legislation in France, including the references made to the work of Léon Gontron-Damas. This is then linked to two conceptual signposts: firstly, Tzvetan Todrov's La Conquête de l’Amérique (1982) and his exploration of 'the two elementary figures of alterity'; and secondly, Didier Eribon's Une Morale du minoritaire (2001), which makes links between the social processes of inferiorisation inherent to class society, colonialism, and homophobia. This conceptual section will then be followed by an analysis of Caribbean sexualities, and their theorisations, in relation to the specificities of Guyane, including the racial and sexual inversions associated with the period of the penal colony. Positing an active queerING in this context – with the emphasis on the process - and its capacity creatively to build on the anomalies of Guyane's history and contemporary reality, the article ends by looking at recent fiction that exemplifies this process.Less
This chapter begins by presenting the role of Christiane Taubira in defending and promoting the 'mariage pour tous' legislation in France, including the references made to the work of Léon Gontron-Damas. This is then linked to two conceptual signposts: firstly, Tzvetan Todrov's La Conquête de l’Amérique (1982) and his exploration of 'the two elementary figures of alterity'; and secondly, Didier Eribon's Une Morale du minoritaire (2001), which makes links between the social processes of inferiorisation inherent to class society, colonialism, and homophobia. This conceptual section will then be followed by an analysis of Caribbean sexualities, and their theorisations, in relation to the specificities of Guyane, including the racial and sexual inversions associated with the period of the penal colony. Positing an active queerING in this context – with the emphasis on the process - and its capacity creatively to build on the anomalies of Guyane's history and contemporary reality, the article ends by looking at recent fiction that exemplifies this process.
Gregory S. Jay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190687229
- eISBN:
- 9780190687250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190687229.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
No novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin achieved the celebrity and cultural impact of To Kill a Mockingbird in regards to race in America. The chapter explores Lee’s youthful experiments in writing and ...
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No novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin achieved the celebrity and cultural impact of To Kill a Mockingbird in regards to race in America. The chapter explores Lee’s youthful experiments in writing and gender-bending, and discusses how her first unpublished novel, Go Set a Watchman, approached themes both repressed and continued in Mockingbird. Using ideas from Queer Theory, the chapter argues that Lee’s racial liberalism is less comforting when read through the lens of her gender-bending children and closeted narrator, showing how the plots about Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are finally brought together. Analysis of Lee’s college writings expose her early interest in satirizing Southern racial politics, while biographical information from those years supports hypotheses about her queering of sexual norms.Less
No novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin achieved the celebrity and cultural impact of To Kill a Mockingbird in regards to race in America. The chapter explores Lee’s youthful experiments in writing and gender-bending, and discusses how her first unpublished novel, Go Set a Watchman, approached themes both repressed and continued in Mockingbird. Using ideas from Queer Theory, the chapter argues that Lee’s racial liberalism is less comforting when read through the lens of her gender-bending children and closeted narrator, showing how the plots about Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are finally brought together. Analysis of Lee’s college writings expose her early interest in satirizing Southern racial politics, while biographical information from those years supports hypotheses about her queering of sexual norms.
Justin Adams Burton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190235451
- eISBN:
- 9780190235499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190235451.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, History, Western
Posthuman Rap listens for the ways contemporary rap maps an existence outside the traditional boundaries of what it means to be human. Contemporary humanity is shaped in neoliberal terms, where being ...
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Posthuman Rap listens for the ways contemporary rap maps an existence outside the traditional boundaries of what it means to be human. Contemporary humanity is shaped in neoliberal terms, where being human means being viable in a capitalist marketplace that favors whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, and fixed gender identities. But musicians from Nicki Minaj to Future to Rae Sremmurd deploy queerness and sonic blackness as they imagine different ways of being human. Building on the work of Sylvia Wynter, Alexander Weheliye, Lester Spence, L.H. Stallings, and a broad swath of queer and critical race theory, Posthuman Rap turns an ear especially toward hip hop that is often read as apolitical in order to hear its posthuman possibilities, its construction of a humanity that is blacker, queerer, more feminine than the norm. While each chapter is written so that it can be sectioned off from the rest and read with a focus on the discrete argument contained in it, the chapters are not meant to be individual case studies. Rather, each builds on the previous one so that the book should best function if it is read in sequence, as a journey that lands us in a posthuman vestibule where we can party more freely and hear the music more clearly if we’ve traveled through the rest of the book to get there.Less
Posthuman Rap listens for the ways contemporary rap maps an existence outside the traditional boundaries of what it means to be human. Contemporary humanity is shaped in neoliberal terms, where being human means being viable in a capitalist marketplace that favors whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, and fixed gender identities. But musicians from Nicki Minaj to Future to Rae Sremmurd deploy queerness and sonic blackness as they imagine different ways of being human. Building on the work of Sylvia Wynter, Alexander Weheliye, Lester Spence, L.H. Stallings, and a broad swath of queer and critical race theory, Posthuman Rap turns an ear especially toward hip hop that is often read as apolitical in order to hear its posthuman possibilities, its construction of a humanity that is blacker, queerer, more feminine than the norm. While each chapter is written so that it can be sectioned off from the rest and read with a focus on the discrete argument contained in it, the chapters are not meant to be individual case studies. Rather, each builds on the previous one so that the book should best function if it is read in sequence, as a journey that lands us in a posthuman vestibule where we can party more freely and hear the music more clearly if we’ve traveled through the rest of the book to get there.
Emma Young
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474427739
- eISBN:
- 9781474444965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427739.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Extending the theoretical lens further, this final chapter moves beyond the initial discussions of gender to consider the significance of sexuality in contemporary feminisms. After some initial ...
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Extending the theoretical lens further, this final chapter moves beyond the initial discussions of gender to consider the significance of sexuality in contemporary feminisms. After some initial reflection on the political significance of sexuality, the main sections of literary analysis engage with how sexuality has been conceptualised and continually re-positioned in feminist discourses. The notion of choice is central to this analysis and through a reading of Kalbinder Kaur’s story this chapter considers the implications of sexuality and women’s choice in the context of race and ethnicity. As such, this first section takes a range of short stories as individual textual moments and scrutinises the dialogue these narratives purport between seemingly diverse feminisms. The section on ‘Sexual Transgressions?’ examines sexuality as a site of political resistance for women, and considers how the ageing and culturally “othered” body is positioned in relation to sexuality. The final part of this chapter questions how the politics of queer theory interact with feminisms via the locus of sexuality in the writings of Kay and Smith.Less
Extending the theoretical lens further, this final chapter moves beyond the initial discussions of gender to consider the significance of sexuality in contemporary feminisms. After some initial reflection on the political significance of sexuality, the main sections of literary analysis engage with how sexuality has been conceptualised and continually re-positioned in feminist discourses. The notion of choice is central to this analysis and through a reading of Kalbinder Kaur’s story this chapter considers the implications of sexuality and women’s choice in the context of race and ethnicity. As such, this first section takes a range of short stories as individual textual moments and scrutinises the dialogue these narratives purport between seemingly diverse feminisms. The section on ‘Sexual Transgressions?’ examines sexuality as a site of political resistance for women, and considers how the ageing and culturally “othered” body is positioned in relation to sexuality. The final part of this chapter questions how the politics of queer theory interact with feminisms via the locus of sexuality in the writings of Kay and Smith.
John David Penniman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300222760
- eISBN:
- 9780300228007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222760.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This Conclusion explores how the imperative “to eat well” has been an undercurrent, a connecting thread, linking disparate arguments about food and formation within the figures and texts explored. ...
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This Conclusion explores how the imperative “to eat well” has been an undercurrent, a connecting thread, linking disparate arguments about food and formation within the figures and texts explored. Gastronomy inevitably carries with it a set of social, physiological, and intellectual valences regarding the power of nourishment in human development. The simplicity of the phrase “eat well” obscures the complex of ideologies in which a community gathers and to which its individuals are held accountable. The phrase thus evokes a process of growth and development, at once essentially materialistic and profoundly symbolic. What else is gastronomy, then, but a kind of socializing curriculum, a system for incorporating ambient cultural values into one’s own person? A meal materializes the porous boundary between our individual bodies and the social body in which we participate. Drawing upon theorists such as Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, this conclusion considers whether the trope of milk and solid food might be wrested from its traditional and more restrictive use in regulating bodies and minds. Is it possible to imagine a new Pauline gastronomy that focuses not on power exerted but rather on the vulnerability shared between eater and feeder?Less
This Conclusion explores how the imperative “to eat well” has been an undercurrent, a connecting thread, linking disparate arguments about food and formation within the figures and texts explored. Gastronomy inevitably carries with it a set of social, physiological, and intellectual valences regarding the power of nourishment in human development. The simplicity of the phrase “eat well” obscures the complex of ideologies in which a community gathers and to which its individuals are held accountable. The phrase thus evokes a process of growth and development, at once essentially materialistic and profoundly symbolic. What else is gastronomy, then, but a kind of socializing curriculum, a system for incorporating ambient cultural values into one’s own person? A meal materializes the porous boundary between our individual bodies and the social body in which we participate. Drawing upon theorists such as Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, this conclusion considers whether the trope of milk and solid food might be wrested from its traditional and more restrictive use in regulating bodies and minds. Is it possible to imagine a new Pauline gastronomy that focuses not on power exerted but rather on the vulnerability shared between eater and feeder?
