Introduction
Her main premise is to think about a relationship to the past that can fully account for negative affects without this attention somehow prohibiting politics in the present. Love argues that many contemporary critics neglect these negative affects through instead affirming a 'progress' narrative. 'Although many queer critics take exception to the idea of a linear, triumphalist view of history, we are in practice deeply committed to the notion of progress; despite our reservations, we just cannot stop dreaming of a better life for queer people' (3). Love argues that this tension between wanting to explore the connection between queer existence and loss and arguing against it. However, she wants to argue that texts that evoke feelings of loss have an insistent hold on the contemporary queer imaginary. Love explains that she wants to look at these dark representations and avoid the impulse to turn them into 'good use' (4).
Love outlines the persistent connection between queerness and backwardness and argues that the texts she looks at 'turn their backs on the future' (8). Further, she wants to engage with the 'backward feelings' that the texts inspire in contemporary critics. 'In that these texts do not welcome contemporary critics - instead they turn away from us - they often have proved difficult to integrate into a queer literary genealogy' (8). Love points out the impetus to want to rescue queer figures from the past but is interested in her texts precisely because they seem to resist. 'Texts or figures that refuse to be redeemed disrupt not only the progress narrative of queer history but also our sense of queer identity in the present. We find ourselves unsettled by our identifications with/these figures: the history of queer damage retains its capacity to do harm in the present' (8-9). She points to the tension of being ruined by the past, in that being attached to these figures somehow means ruin in the present. She argues that this refusal to turn to the past 'has made it difficult to approach the past as something living - as something dissonant,/beyond our control, and capable of touching us in the present. Clearly annihilation is not a goal for the movement, but an absolute refusal to linger in the past may entail other kinds of losses' (9-10).
Primarily, Love suggests that disavowing histories of loss structures queer existence in the present. In other words, Love is concerned that queer theory, 'in its haste to refunction such experiences, may not be adequately reckoning with their powerful legacies' (19). Love is interested in the tension between looking back and moving on. She argues that the conflicting feelings of shame and pride, hope and despair, means that contemporary queers 'find ourselves in the odd situation of "looking forward" while we are "feeling backward"' (27). She wants to resist a complete turn to the future and instead wants to linger with the 'damage that we live in the present' (29). 'The politics of optimism diminishes the suffering of queer historical subjectsl at the same time, it blinds us to the continuities between past and present. As long as homophobia continues to centrally structure queer life, we cannot afford to turn away from the past; instead, we have to risk the turn backward, even if it means opening ourselves to social and psychic realities we would rather forget' (29).
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Brown, Resisting Left Melancholy (1999)
While most of this article is not terribly useful to me, it expresses similar sentiments to the previous one I read.
However, what it is useful for is the insistence again on thinking through how important it is to consider 'feelings and sentiments' in radical politics. Brown explains that the purpose of her thinking about left melancholy suggests 'that the feelings and sentiments - including those of sorrow, rage, and anxiety about broken promises and lost compasses - that sustain our attachments to left analyses and left projects ought to be examined for what they create in the way of potentially conservative and even self-destructive undersides of putatively progressive political aims' (27). In other words, I might gesture to this article and argument as yet more insistence that the emotions that come out of political work need to be part of our analysis.
However, what it is useful for is the insistence again on thinking through how important it is to consider 'feelings and sentiments' in radical politics. Brown explains that the purpose of her thinking about left melancholy suggests 'that the feelings and sentiments - including those of sorrow, rage, and anxiety about broken promises and lost compasses - that sustain our attachments to left analyses and left projects ought to be examined for what they create in the way of potentially conservative and even self-destructive undersides of putatively progressive political aims' (27). In other words, I might gesture to this article and argument as yet more insistence that the emotions that come out of political work need to be part of our analysis.
Brown, 'Women's Studies Unbound: Revolution, Mourning, Politics' (2003)
Brown highlights the question of how to live 'after' the promise of a revolutionary feminism. She argues that we are now urged 'to think feminism and women's studies in this condition of afterness, in this temporal condition of "knowing better" about our naive yet founding past, and thus also to grieve what we now know we never should have loved... a tortured and guilty grieving to be sure' (3). Brown wants to question what it might take to live in this temporality, having given up the hope for a radical overthrow of the social relations of the present. Further, she wants to delineate what indeed has been lost, what the loss of revolution is.
Indeed, she argues that what we mourn when we mourn revolution is not necessarily clear, or even necessary to delineate. Brown points to the lack of boundaries in mourning in a similar way to Butler. 'The condition of mourning is a stumbling and stuttering one, a condition of disturbed ground, of inarticulateness, of disorientation in and about time' (4). Brown also argues that a mourning being 'learns a new temporality' that punctures 'conceits of linearity with a different way of living time' (5).
Brown argues that a loss of revolution, or a fear that revolution equals totalitarian might seem to consign us to the present. 'It is this conviction about the inevitable triumph of the people over the illegitimate powers of wealth and rule that exploit, dominate or disenfranchise whose loss washes over us today' (6). Brown pushes to seeing this as melancholic instead of mourning precisely because there can be no closure in mourning a 'promise.' 'So we cannot even see or say what we mourn, gather at the site of its disappearance, weep over its remains, hold its lively embodiment in our memory as we must if the mourning is to come to an end' (7).
Brown declares that revolution is 'unquestionably finished' but then wonders why we should mourn it. For her, quite simply, it means letting go of dreams for something better. 'A severe critique that does not articulate with anticipation of a different future... an illness with no cure... how to proceed when this has become our condition?' (13) Indeed, she seems to be searching for an alternative way to live through this diagnosis. 'What as yet unpracticed political sensibility is required to dwell here?' (13)
Brown's solution seems to be to keep alive a utopian impulse while giving up indeed the blueprint of revolution. 'Above all, how to suspend this utopian impulse in a different temporality such that it could fuel rather than haunt or taunt left political life in our time?' (14) 'The task, then, would be to recuperate a utopian imaginary in the absence of a revolutionary mechanism for its realization such that this imaginary could have a political use, that is, participate in the making of social transformation and not only constitute an escape from the felt impossibility of such transformation' (14).
Brown concludes with suggesting that sitting in mourning might be productive. Through this 'dwelling,' it perhaps becomes possible to see how a 'seemingly unendurable loss is also the opening of possibility to live and think differently' (15). In other words, trying to let go of loss or disavow it or discredit it might also mean not using loss as a means to see differently. Indeed, that loss might be a pivotal place for learning to live and think differently.
Indeed, she argues that what we mourn when we mourn revolution is not necessarily clear, or even necessary to delineate. Brown points to the lack of boundaries in mourning in a similar way to Butler. 'The condition of mourning is a stumbling and stuttering one, a condition of disturbed ground, of inarticulateness, of disorientation in and about time' (4). Brown also argues that a mourning being 'learns a new temporality' that punctures 'conceits of linearity with a different way of living time' (5).
Brown argues that a loss of revolution, or a fear that revolution equals totalitarian might seem to consign us to the present. 'It is this conviction about the inevitable triumph of the people over the illegitimate powers of wealth and rule that exploit, dominate or disenfranchise whose loss washes over us today' (6). Brown pushes to seeing this as melancholic instead of mourning precisely because there can be no closure in mourning a 'promise.' 'So we cannot even see or say what we mourn, gather at the site of its disappearance, weep over its remains, hold its lively embodiment in our memory as we must if the mourning is to come to an end' (7).
Brown declares that revolution is 'unquestionably finished' but then wonders why we should mourn it. For her, quite simply, it means letting go of dreams for something better. 'A severe critique that does not articulate with anticipation of a different future... an illness with no cure... how to proceed when this has become our condition?' (13) Indeed, she seems to be searching for an alternative way to live through this diagnosis. 'What as yet unpracticed political sensibility is required to dwell here?' (13)
Brown's solution seems to be to keep alive a utopian impulse while giving up indeed the blueprint of revolution. 'Above all, how to suspend this utopian impulse in a different temporality such that it could fuel rather than haunt or taunt left political life in our time?' (14) 'The task, then, would be to recuperate a utopian imaginary in the absence of a revolutionary mechanism for its realization such that this imaginary could have a political use, that is, participate in the making of social transformation and not only constitute an escape from the felt impossibility of such transformation' (14).
Brown concludes with suggesting that sitting in mourning might be productive. Through this 'dwelling,' it perhaps becomes possible to see how a 'seemingly unendurable loss is also the opening of possibility to live and think differently' (15). In other words, trying to let go of loss or disavow it or discredit it might also mean not using loss as a means to see differently. Indeed, that loss might be a pivotal place for learning to live and think differently.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
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).
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).
Friday, 9 April 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
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.
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.
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