on 12/17/00 11:38 PM, Chris Jones at ccjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> YES INDEED..... do take a good look! Butler berates the gay rights
> movement for its lack of understanding of the radical potential of
> cross dressing. Perhaps Butler has very little to do with the gay
> rights movement and the temporary coalition known as the gay
> community in Australia for if she had she would not make this demand.
> Butler is telling us to put on a dress and quietly die of AIDS. Here
> her text is verging on, if not actually homophobic.
>
Oh come on! This is certainly a possible interpretation of Butler but that's
NOT what Butler ever says!
I think that people misunderstand the point of the analysis of
cross-dressing. It's not that it's liberating, but that it's a performance
of a particular type of subversion - that is to say that it's a form of
resistance, not that it's THE form of resistance.
What do you reference in your accusation of demands for quietism? If we look
to other texts like Excitable Speech I don't think it's possible to have
such an interpretation of Butler.
While it seems to me like such a performative view of politics could be a
strategy for activism, it seems to work much in the opposite way - that
activism can be understood in terms of those performances and we can begin
to understand how particular aspects of culture have formed in relation to
"dominant" culture.
> Drag has long been used in gay rights struggles, as a tactic, even
> donning a bussiness suit is drag. But perhaps, in antidote
> to Butler's conservativism, I can suggest that the most radical thing
> I have seen during the gay rights riots in Sydney in 1978 were drag
> queens, in the front lines, carrying a bag of rotten tomatoes which
> they accurately lobbed into the faces of the homophobic thugs which
> at that time constituted the New South Wales Police Force.
What conservatism? My above response I think answers this. I don't think
that it's really possible to see what value those tomatoes had without
understanding the context -- the tomatoes weren't going to cause any drastic
change, they were part of a larger statement of subversion.
>
> Leo Bersani had this to say of Butlers reactionary demands that all
> the gay rights struggle need do it cross dress:
>
> In response to claims to "subversion" and "insubordination,"
> Bersani affirms, and I agree with him completely on this one, he
> affirms that "the historical and ideological critique of identity
> surely deserves to inspire more than a taste for crossdressing" (H
> 50).
> [From Homosexualism
> by Fadi Abou-Rihan at
> http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~abouriha/]
>
Another unfair reading of Butler. This seems to be putting a normative read
on what is descriptive. I don't think it works that way.
---
Asher Haig ahaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dartmouth 2004
> YES INDEED..... do take a good look! Butler berates the gay rights
> movement for its lack of understanding of the radical potential of
> cross dressing. Perhaps Butler has very little to do with the gay
> rights movement and the temporary coalition known as the gay
> community in Australia for if she had she would not make this demand.
> Butler is telling us to put on a dress and quietly die of AIDS. Here
> her text is verging on, if not actually homophobic.
>
Oh come on! This is certainly a possible interpretation of Butler but that's
NOT what Butler ever says!
I think that people misunderstand the point of the analysis of
cross-dressing. It's not that it's liberating, but that it's a performance
of a particular type of subversion - that is to say that it's a form of
resistance, not that it's THE form of resistance.
What do you reference in your accusation of demands for quietism? If we look
to other texts like Excitable Speech I don't think it's possible to have
such an interpretation of Butler.
While it seems to me like such a performative view of politics could be a
strategy for activism, it seems to work much in the opposite way - that
activism can be understood in terms of those performances and we can begin
to understand how particular aspects of culture have formed in relation to
"dominant" culture.
> Drag has long been used in gay rights struggles, as a tactic, even
> donning a bussiness suit is drag. But perhaps, in antidote
> to Butler's conservativism, I can suggest that the most radical thing
> I have seen during the gay rights riots in Sydney in 1978 were drag
> queens, in the front lines, carrying a bag of rotten tomatoes which
> they accurately lobbed into the faces of the homophobic thugs which
> at that time constituted the New South Wales Police Force.
What conservatism? My above response I think answers this. I don't think
that it's really possible to see what value those tomatoes had without
understanding the context -- the tomatoes weren't going to cause any drastic
change, they were part of a larger statement of subversion.
>
> Leo Bersani had this to say of Butlers reactionary demands that all
> the gay rights struggle need do it cross dress:
>
> In response to claims to "subversion" and "insubordination,"
> Bersani affirms, and I agree with him completely on this one, he
> affirms that "the historical and ideological critique of identity
> surely deserves to inspire more than a taste for crossdressing" (H
> 50).
> [From Homosexualism
> by Fadi Abou-Rihan at
> http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~abouriha/]
>
Another unfair reading of Butler. This seems to be putting a normative read
on what is descriptive. I don't think it works that way.
---
Asher Haig ahaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dartmouth 2004