queer+theory

Queer theory is certainly anarchic / anarchistic.

Speaking of "queering the canon" in cinema, Angelo Restivo asserts that queer reading practices "are charged with //a radical ethical injunction//, beyond any comforting dream of "assimilation'" (my emphasis).

This statement has (at least) two related implications: first, that ethical injunctions vary in their depth (or radicalism), and second, that "comforting dreams" such as the hope evoked by "assimilation" are a sign of shallow ethics. The latter of these two ideas may be controversial, but i believe both are legitimate and valuable — and that they are not only consistent, but thoroughly harmonious with the varieties of anarchism i advocate. I'm tempted to provide some qualifications on this point, but i believe the limited scope of the claims i'm making will become apparent. (See acknowledgments.)

I remember being struck by a soliloquy from Adward Albee's //The Zoo Story// (after which my junior high school drama teacher, who had an early and enduring influence on me, named his rock band in Calgary). Jerry, one of the two characters, says to Peter, upon whom he as imposed a conversation: "I wonder if it's sad that I never see the little ladies more than once. I've never been able to have sex with, or, how is it put? . . . make love to anybody more than once. Once; that’s it. . . . Oh, wait; for a week and a half, when I was fifteen . . . and I hang my head in shame that puberty was late . . . I was a h-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l. I mean, I was queer . . . (Very fast) . . . queer, queer, queer . . . with bells ringing, banners snapping in the wind. And for those eleven days, I met at least twice a day with the park superintendent's son . . . a Greek boy, whose birthday was the same as mine, except he was a year older. I think I was very much in love . . . maybe just with sex. But that was the jazz of a very special hotel, wasn't it? And now; oh, do I love the little ladies; really, I love them. For about an hour."

an idea which i called "transcendental sexual politics" (transcending fixed notions of sexual identity / orientation)

//Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality//

To give another example from discussion of film,

Egoyan's Ararat deleted scene "... Noah didn't take any gay animals?" Herzog "forges his own signature"?

Muñoz on Bloch

When Grossman claims that "the true subversive appeal of Spider-Man’s story... is that he’s working-class", he touches upon a point that fits in with Bloch's notion of colportage — anticipating "a brighter elsewhere..." queertopia? (See Tilsen & Nylund, below.)

//...//

However queer theory can be problematic

normalization of "queer" can destabilize hard-won identities of "gay" and "lesbian"

//Nevertheless,// Tilsen and Nylund, in their critique of //homonormativity//, argue that the mainstream movement for gay rights has "come to align itself with neoliberalism in the cultural sphere." They continue: "Supporting neoliberalism includes promoting militarisation through its campaigns against discrimination in the armed forces, promoting the privatisation of welfare and healthcare guarantees through its focus on marriage as a social cure-all, and promoting the excesses of capitalism over development through its general infatuation with the free market and consumer society as the best way to ensure gay ‘visibility’ and equal participation in North American society."

and so on...