Butler, Melancholy Gender - Refused Identification (1995)

Butler points out how Freud changes his position in 'Mourning and Melancholia' in the subsequent The Ego and the Id over what it might mean to resolve grief. While in MM, Freud sees grief as being resolvable through a breaking and then re-making of attachment, he later 'makes room for the notion that melancholic identification may be a prerequisite for letting the object go' (167). However, she points out that he changes what it means to let an object go, for in his later work, the letting go does not mean a final break in the attachment. Instead, there is 'the incorporation of the attachment as identification, where identification becomes a magical, a psychic, form of preserving the object' (167). These identifications are what form the ego. 'Indeed, one might conclude that melancholic identification permits the loss of the object in the external world precisely because it provides a way to preserve the object as part of the ego itself and, hence, to avert the loss as a complete loss' (167). In other words, letting go becomes about a move of the object from external to internal, preserving the object in the ego as a way to both refuse loss and simultaneously let go. As Butler explains, 'giving up the object becomes possible only on condition of a melancholic internalization or, what might for our purposes turn out to be even more important, a melancholic incorporation' (167).

Freud, Mourning and Melancholia (1917) [1915]

Freud begins by suggesting that mourning and melancholia share a cause, namely the loss of a love object, but while mourning is considered normal, melancholia is seen as pathological. Freud explains that when a loved object is lost, there is opposition to giving up the libidinal position. However, that with mourning, eventually the reality of the object's absence wins over and the clinging to the object ceases. Freud remarks though that this is definitely a painful and time-consuming process, whereby '[e]ach single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it' (245). At the end of the process of mourning, Freud explains that the ego indeed becomes 'free and uninhibited agian' (245).

Turning to melancholia, Freud makes an interesting distinction and suggests that the loss in melancholia is 'of a more ideal kind' where the loss may not actually be the death of a loved one (245). In this kind of loss, what is specific is the way that what is lost might not actually be clear. Freud explains that 'one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost' (245). 'This, indeed, might be so even if the patient is aware of the loss which has given rise to his melancholia, but only in the sense that he knows whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him' (245). For Freud, this places melancholia in the realm of the unconscious, whereas mourning never moves past the conscious.

Further, Freud explains that this results in an impoverishment of ego in melancholia that is not found in mourning. 'In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself' (246). In other words, while mourning exhibits clear signs of an individual losing an object, melancholic individuals express a loss of ego. Freud explains that the self-reproaches in melancholic individuals are actually directed against a loved one. While in mourning the libido withdrawls from the lost loved object and is displaced onto another object, in melancholy, 'the free libido was not displaced on to another object; it was withdrawn into the ego' (249). In this withdrawl into the ego, it serves to 'establish an identification of the ego with the abandoned object' (249).

Freud explains that both mourning and melancholy can run their courses and pass after time. Mourning's 'reality-testing' eventually frees the libido. Freud explains that 'normal mourning, too, overcomes the loss of the object, and it, too, while it lasts, absorbs all the energies of the ego' (255). Like with mourning, the process of getting past melancholia is a long and arduous one. However, Freud is less certain about how this process finds completion but seems to suggest that the process is similar to mourning - a 'detaching the libido bit by bit' (256). The process is undoubtedly different in melancholia because of ambivalence. This ambivalence is missing in mourning because usually mourning takes place after the death of an object, whereas melancholia seems to occur in less clear losses. 'In melancholia, accordingly, countless separate struggles are carried on over the object, in which hate and love contend with each other; the one seeks to detach the libido from the object, the other to maintain this position of the libido against the assault' (256). This same process occurs in mourning but Freud explains that the path to recovery is blocked in melancholia. The inability to settle the ambivalence towards the love object eventually leads to its incorporation into the ego. 'So by taking flight into the ego love escapes extinction' (257). Freud does however insist on an analogy between the work of mourning and melancholia. 'Just as mourning impels the ego to give up the object by declaring the object to be dead and offering the ego the inducement of continuing to live, so does each single struggle of ambivalance loosen the fixation of the libido to the object by disparaging it, denigrating it and even as it were killing it' (257).

Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (ii) (1996)

Part II (Chapters 3 & 4)

In these chapters Sargisson works to bring her concept of utopianism into feminism and deconstruction to show how relevant the concept is in contemporary feminist debates. In Chapter 3, she focuses on the concept of difference in feminism to argue for the need to side-step, subvert, move beyond, the binary of equality-difference. She argues against positions that want to 'close' the debate through arguments of equality vs. difference and instead argues that it is possible to create a utopian space 'in which we can start to think creatively and differently about equality and difference' (73). It becomes clearer as the chapter progresses that what Sargisson considers utopic and the approach that she finds preferable in the debate over equality and difference is a poststructuralist approach that undermines the conceptual system through which this binary is created in the first place. In other words, she argues for an approach that destabilizes and deconstructs the binary opposition. She argues that this rejection 'is one way in which systems of (linguistic and hence cultural) domination can be destroyed' (77). Further, that this approach, in its beginnings with dissatisfaction in the present and its pushing toward something new, is, according to Sargisson 'profoundly utopian' (77). Sargisson argues that the pushing toward something new is 'an essential function of utopianism - and, of course, of political theory: without utopianism, feminism will grind to a halt' (92).

In Chapter 4, Sargisson moves on to a closer reading of Derridean poststructuralism and Cixous. She argues for strong parallels between Derrida and utopianism: 'Deconstruction works from inside the text... This function is also performed by utopianism, which is rooted in and acknowledges complicity with the present. By employing various tactics of estrangement, utopian thought provokes a certain distant from the present which permits the creation of new conceptual space' (101). A further similarity between deconstruction and utopianism that Sargisson argues for is their mutual rejection of closure or an endpoint. Sargisson argues that deconstruction should not be read as the endpoint of analysis: 'Were deconstruction and utopianism to stop, to reach an end, then logocentrism would be embodied, the truth attained, and process completed. These ends are neither desirable nor "possible"' (103). Sargisson uses Derrida's concept of 'difference' as a moment of utopia in his work. She argues that because difference 'creates new "meaning" and is itself new in that it does not "fit" into a hierarchical or dualistic conception of language; strictly speaking, it is unconceptualizable' (108).

The understanding that I take from these two chapters is that she is attempting to bring utopianism into feminist theory in part through arguing for its affinity to poststructuralism. If her argument is indeed successful, she comes away with a concept of utopianism as non-binary opposition that works within the structures of language to attempt to make space for something new.

Hollinger and Gordon, Introduction: Edging into the Future (2002)

Hollinger and Gordon's introduction to their collection of SF critical theory begins with the well-worn truism that 'contemporary life in the West reiterates not the past but the future' (2). They point to the way that SF has become less about reflecting reality and has come closer and closer to being reality, explaining that 'science fiction has come to function not only as metaphor for the present but also, and increasingly, as literal description. These days it is both fictional genre and discursive field' (2). The 'now' moment of postmodernism 'teeters, then, on the edge of the future, neither there, nor, thought it seems impossible, here' (3). SF then, is both a symptom of the disjunctures, fractures, and gaps of our 'present' while also 'an expression of our desire to situate and give a shape to the moment' (3).

I like the sentiment because it colludes with many other theorists' point that SF or maybe utopia is more about making the present moment accessible.

Pearson, Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer (2008 reprint)

Pearson starts by describing gay and lesbian activist groups arguing for the importance of lesbian and gay characters on SF shows - as some proof/representation that indeed the future means both the existence of and acceptance of these identities. Pearson argues that it is this particular representation that is desired by SF viewers, 'the vision of a future in which queerness is neither hidden nor revealed as difference, but is simply there' (15). She wants to argue that gay characters might not 'queer' an SF text, but indeed, queering of such a text might require something altogether different. Specifically, she points to the notion that it would take a move beyond 'inclusion' to a more radical shift in the show to question current sex/gender systems and socio-cultural institutions.

I think it is this understanding of queer as questioning the foundations and discourses by which subjects are shaped in a society that also allows her to bring SF and queer together, seeing them both as having the ability to create different (and potentially radical) foundations. She suggests that SF and queer theory in some ways occupy similar theoretical space: 'Queer, with its denaturalization of master narratives and its movement towards subcultural and subaltern understandings of texts, operates, by analogy, on some of the same levels as sf' (18). She sees in SF the potential to write queer subjects, given the genre's resistance to realism, and the ensuing risk of being at the service of 'common sense.' Further, she describes a long history in SF (beginning with Shelley) of questioning foundational systems of thought. Taking her cue from Earl Jackson, Pearson argues that in SF, there is rejection of the Cartesian subject and instead insistence 'that the subject is the effect of the system' (18).

Pearson first reads Campbell's 'Who Goes There?' (1938) thinking through the cultural anxieties about the invisibility of the homosexual during the era of WWII. The need to reassert heterosexual values was accompanied by intense demonization in films and stories, SF genre included, of the Other. Particularly anxiety surrounded how to identify the alien, the queer, from the rest. Pearson thus claims that Campbell's story 'serves as a near perfect example of the way in which the story of the alien who passes as human derives from the precise confluence of anxieties that serve to claim, at the same time, that homosexuality is always written on the body and that it is always able to pass' (21).

Next, Pearson turns to thinking about what she calls the other half of the story. While Campbell's story is concerned with 'passing,' Pearson now wants to think about that which remains invisible and unrecognized, what she calls a 'queer text.' I think in this instance she is trying to differentiate between her queer reading of Campbell's story and the potential to recuperate and recognize texts as queer. To think through this idea she turns to Reamy's 'Under the Hollywood Sign' (1975), a story which she believes can undergo a queer re-reading, clarified as not just being concerned with the text, but also 'of the heteronormative reading protocols that have constrained earlier readings' (28). She argues that this story is an unfaithful reproduction of the 'trope of the invisible alien' (28). Particularly, the story, in Pearson's reading, is concerned with the visibile invisibility - the fact that the aliens in the story are only visible to the narrator. Pearson argues that the story is concerned with three related issues: the question of visibility, the sexual identity of the narrator, and the identity of the aliens (29). However, the shifting and coded nature of these themes, argues Pearson, has meant that can be read as not being queer enough. Pearson argues that the story intervenes into the invisibility trope as expressed in Campbell's story in part because of this ambiguity, particularly with reference to the aliens' identities. Pearson explains, 'they fail to serve as warnings of the invisible "passing" Other.' The same can be said for the ambiguity around the narrator's sexuality through expressing a universal homosexual desire in the story and further suggesting that this alone does and cannot account for the narrator's desire.

Thus, Pearson reads Reamy's text as 'becoming queer,' once accessible only through hidden information, cryptography, but now containing markers that the 'modern subject' cannot avoid. She suggests that this incurs a shift from cryptography to cartography. Pearson argues for the queerness of the subject/text as 'an effect of a system that can be variously understood, depending on one's worldview' (33). This comes back to her earlier assertion that SF was a ripe arena for queer re-readings precisely because of its focus on the system over the individual. Being concerned with systems, the SF genre brings to the fore the importance of the system in the production of subjectivity. Thus, she concludes that the story's queer quality is less about the character being gay, and more 'in the way the text itself calls into question the very system which effects the narrator as a gay subject' (33).

Pearson, Hollinger, Gordon, Introduction: Queer Universes (2008)

In the introduction to this collection of writing on queer SF, they make the claim that if queer theory is indeed about 'imagining a world in which all lives are livable, we understand queer theory as being both utopian and science fictional, in the sense of imagining a future that opens out, rather than forecloses, possibilities for becoming real, for mattering in the world' (5). They basically situate the collection as one of the first attempts to bring together a comprehensive book of approaches to SF through the lens of sexuality - arguing that while gender has been an important lens, sexuality has not been as influential/widespread as an approach.

Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (i) (1996)

Introduction & Part 1 (Chapters 1 & 2)

Sargisson sets out her discussion by explaining that she is using 'utopianism' following Sargent (1994), Levitas (1990), and Bloch (1986) , as an umbrella term to refer to social dreaming, a desire for a better way of being, or as an impulse. She first sets out to challenge the notion of utopia=perfection, arguing that a survey of texts suggests no such conclusion. She explains that the central argument of the book is about critiquing perfection as equalling closure and sees in utopianism being wrapped up in the question of how meaning is constructed (3). In other words, I think she is arguing that in debates over utopia, what is also being contested are more theoretical desires to make meaning closed, to settle the meaning of a concept, idea, etc.

In the first chapter, Sargisson critiques form-based and content-based approaches to utopianism. Drawing on the work of Bloch and Levitas, Sargisson argues that form-based approaches are too limiting, as utopianism is expressed in many forms. She points to the disciplinary desires inherent in these form-based definitions, as well as cultural imperialism. Moving on to thinking about utopianism through content definitions, Sargisson similarly expresses unease about the limitations of such an approach. One of her continual arguments is that 'A restrictive and narrow approach to utopianism produces a restricted (restrictive) and narrow definition, understanding or concept. The act(ivity) of conceptualization thereby becomes an exclusionary one' (19). Like many other theorists she is keen to expand the notion of utopianism as perfection and sees this understanding as common in content-based approaches. Turning to feminist utopias, she argues that if the working definition of utopianism is perfection, then 'many feminist utopias do not "fit" into a definition which relies on finality of end' (20). She thus uses feminist utopias to push for an expansion of the definition. However, she also traces back through historical utopias, such as More's Utopia, to argue that a characteristic of utopia is their engagement with contemporary debates. This characteristic Sargisson argues, results not in a closed text, 'but rather one that struggles to maintain an open end (or mind) by inhabiting the spaces and tensions between two ideals' (27). Sargisson thus argues that utopianism has always been more than a blueprint for a perfect future through connecting utopian texts to the contradictions and politics of their contemporary times. Utopias 'have a critical edge in that they challenge the political present' (28).

Sargisson then turns to feminist utopias to argue for the limitations of focusing on how the content of these utopias somehow makes them different from the male/mainstream texts. She argues that attempts to define feminist utopias such as Pearson's (1981) and Gearhart's (1984) potentially lead to notions of feminist utopias as having a binary relationship to the present, as mere reversals of the status quo. Further, she pushes to suggest that such definitions have the effect of homogenizing and defining feminism itself. Again, her main concern is with how these definitions close off understandings of feminism and utopianism.

In the second chapter, Sargisson focuses on function-based approaches to utopianism and judges these approaches as superior to the previous two. She argues that theorists that focus on the function of utopia tend to suggest that it is 'transformative, subversive or oppositional, or to have some other radical or political function' (47). Sargisson takes issue however with the definition of 'opposition' in these accounts. Looking at Mannheim (1936), she argues for the too simplistic dualism assumed between ideology and utopia. For Mannheim (1936) the ideological is what retains order, while the utopic destroys that order. Sargisson refutes this notion of utopia mostly due to the requirement that it must achieve change, which Sargisson suggests brings utopia too close to revolution. Sargisson argues that while utopia 'depends on and results from dissatisfaction with the present,' it does not 'comprise a coherent body in dialectical opposition with the dominant ideology' (49). From these socialist oppositional approaches to utopianism, Sargisson moves to consider a feminist oppositional model which she alligns herself with and defines as such: 'The function of utopianism, thus approached, is not to blueprint and enclose the future but to explore alternative states of being to those presently existing - to stretch and expand our understanding of the possible, thus making a multiplicity of radically different futures not only desirable but also conceivable' (52). As for the 'time' of utopia, Sargisson argues that utopianism is about anticipating 'different "nows"' (52) and thus operates in the political present and works as 'a paradigm shift in consciousness' (52). In other words, utopianism is moved from a 'speculative (or concrete) future to a no place/good place that is an alternative reading of the present' (52). In this conceptualization, utopianism sounds more like a mode of possibility...

Sargisson then turns to Moylan and 'critical utopias.' Unlike Mannheim, Moylan allows for a multiplicity of opposition (his conception of the historic bloc). Further, he also stresses process and even critiques the concept of opposition as dialectical to ideology. 'Critical opposition is not the classical binary tradition but opposes the existing space of opposition; its funciton is not to provide an alternative but to deny that existing options are the only ones' (55). However, she is concerned with his tentative suggestion of a unity between oppositional forces but she does like how he attempts to explain precisely why utopias do not seem to be about perfection after all.

She therefore privileges function as an approach to utopianism and will go on to argue for utopianism as a place to think feminist political theory. She ends the chapter by using utopianism as a means to creating a new space to conceptualize past, present, future. Sargisson thus stresses 'the paradigmatic nature of the transformative effect of utopian thought: if utopian thought can change the shape and scope of our consciousness then the unthinkable can be thought and desired' (59).

Jacoby, Picture Imperfect (ii) (2005)

Chapters 2-4 & Epilogue

In Chapter 2, Jacoby argues that violence comes not from utopia, but from the end of utopia. With this, he attempts to show through situated and biographical readings of the 'anti-utopians' in Western philosophy, how their refusal of utopia stemmed from the political collapses of their time. Beginning with More's own turn from Utopia to potential totalitarian beliefs. Jacoby argues that it is 'with More, or through More, we can see the emergence of modern anti-utopianism' (48). However, Jacoby is adamant to insist that More's changing opinion of utopia was deeply embedded in the political climate of the times, namely the religious and political changes occurring in the 16th Century Reformation which argues Jacoby, led to More feeling 'a sense of betrayed utopian hopes' (49). Jacoby goes on to suggest that it is this quality of living through a dream 'gone amuck' (50) that is an important aspect of the anti-utopians. Jacoby then turns to what he describes as a 'liberal anti-utopian consensus' (50) typified by the writings of Popper, Talman, Arendt, and Berlin. Tracing through what Jacoby identifies as their similarities (from dates of birth to experiences of war, communism), Jacoby highlights how their experiences of communism forever tainted how they saw fascism, 'the latter was viewed through the lens of the former' (52). What Jacoby seems to be suggesting in this chapter then is that anti-utopianism stems from disappointment in the outcome of utopia. These writers turn from utopia from a disappointment, and assume that utopia becomes exhausted by the failure of communism.

In Chapters 3 and 4, Jacoby attempts to outline what an iconoclastic utopianism might mean through turning to Judaism. 'The Jewish tradition gave rise to what might be called an iconoclastic utopianism - an anti-utopian utopianism that resisted blueprints' (85). These chapters do not seem particularly important to read too closely at this point, suffice it to say that he wants to argue for the sustaining impulse to dream the future as stemming from a refusal to picture what it might exactly look like. He also makes it clear in this chapter that he sees utopianism as essential: 'a world without utopian longings is forlorn. For society as well as for the individual, it means to journey without a compass' (143).

In the Epilogue, he attempts to tease out the contradition in utopia between present-day struggle and future dreaming. Jacoby argues that utopia necessarily tries to keep a distance from the day-to-day otherwise 'it would forfeit its own commitment to a realm beyond the immediate choices' (145). However, he also says that the opposite is also true, that utopianism 'emerges out of and returns to contemporary political realities' (146). He argues that this is the defining contradiction of the utopian project, 'it partakes at once of the limited choices of the day and the unlimited possibilities of the morrow. It straddles two time zones: the one we inhabit now and the one that might exist in the future' (146). He connects this to the style of More's Utopia, as it is written in two books. Jacoby highlights that we need to find a way to connect utopian thinking with the everyday and he seems to suggest starting from the negative. We may not know what the 'end of racism' will look like, but we know we want it to end, 'utopian wishes need to be situated against something' (148). Jacoby argues that while utopian wishes may indeed be dependent on a negation, they go beyond this negation to keep 'an ear, if not an eye, on the future' (149).