inside/out LESBIAN THEORIES, GAY THEORIES EDITED GY DIANA FUSS aang. xara de Coma ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK AND LONAONPubl 1 1991 by Routledge int of Routledge, Chapman and Efall, nc 29 Wese 35 Steest New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Resale dge 11 New Fener Lane London EC4P 4EE ‘Copyright © 1991 by Reurledge, Chapman and Hall, Beineed i the United States of America ding phorocapying a system, sithowt perm: reconting, in waiting from rary of Congress and British Libraey eatalo information is available. Adknowledgy Inside/Out Contents HS Diana Fuss 1 Decking Out: Performing Identities Amication and Gender Insubordi Judith Butter The Politics of Gay Drag Tyler Gay “Identity® as Polirical ion (A Theoretieal Rumination) Ed Coben Seeing Things: Representation, the Seune of Surveillan Lee Edelman the Spectacle of Gay Male Sex. IL Cutting Up: Specters, Spectators, Authors Anal Rope D. A. Miller Female Spectator, Lesbian Specter: The Hav Patricia White A Parallax View of Lesbi Jedith Mayne The Homose: Richard Dyer 93, ug az irs 18510 Covering The Wall of 2 ‘Thomas Yingling 13 “All the Sad Young Me ‘Hanson 15. Shocking Pink Praxis: Race and Gender on the ACT UP Frontlines. feld and Ray Navcrro V_speaking Out: Teach 16 ‘When Pedagogy and Simon Waray Source Bibliography 2os 25 289) 291 324 aai Acknowledgments y beginning aud w sontributed their most recent works Many of the ci made valuable additions tothe <0 year compilation and revisi ‘orilliant libracy Hlumanites and by the Princeton English Bepartment lowe sperial100, 101, 704 Decking Out: Performing Tdeatties Thier, “Thess ora Neale 3 tad, caper Who Are “We”? Gay “Identity” as Political (E)motion {A Theoretical Rumination) ‘question. Becau mustnor be previous tothe que ly be the cesult—and nsoestaely the tempo- i sed in the new ceens in which learn nay west sting lessons abour ng to the ways in which the differences ime Hedown together.’ Audre Lorde 4 gay academic living nea che intellectual enclaves of New Tye been going to lot of “gay and les hes” discus: sions recently and it's been a somewhae unset the one hand, I enjoy the pote ty and comgadery that these occasions provide: mast of the time getting together with a group of intellectual dykes and faggars likea pleasant if not always worthwhile endeavor. often leave these meetings wondering how theie people ended up the same room with each other, thinking ie'sa mirace that any mucual understanding exists, and trying co figure out what in the woeld we 's his last part that especially gets to ke to have the fecling—as one reading group partici ma724 Decking Our Performing Identities characterized his fe Tesbian studies was a place where we didn ‘weare.” However my ¥ tion: the more often | find the nausea in my stomach seems t¢ t¢ ul often very to fear losing, something particular groups self-rell e rubrics “gay” and * which provokes my as off rp which ex appear to offer a stable « project ical categories Frequent Fy ether amd eop ws at odds time and Indeed, the paradoxical inte yy engendered by {os the periodic attempts ro exclude SM 0 practices from “proper” gay or espousing the Lat ippages between care- ‘cations of “bisesu: ins who sleep with men gay American lated within, by, and as pracesses of lective response roan force, Epstein assumes the monavocslizing su- imposed categorization” and thus defines resi primarily as negation, as “fighting back.” Howeve of is a nor “gay” were products the political selt-ai74! Decking Out: Performing Ldn { s cn, lesbians, ickifem women, I Epstein’s analysis, they Asetingly 1e0us distinction, "blaekeness,” thereby elfacing—for audience—the ongoing strmgyles by and between 1d “ethnic” insularity Epstein symimectic shat ean and shou singe ncither “race” and "sex" nor mozpltic social mat analogy to su rness™ to hypost bian”) as a s \ from its eoneeen with the possibility “identity” (defined here as the leg about the * ‘totalizing’ sameness within the group,” itun and of goals ov of “ider re they then not 10 be accorded yy? Sour” movements? And what of pnice Pe his analy1g Tdentites obe such a well-considered, chought-provoking, and the subject is always purchased at the price of the Tn an essay sketching out the trectory by jons of identity Celmerzed a8 “identity pe 1960s, Philip Gleason ludes ta this problem af episte- ign reflexive undertaking te cagito), “bee of the a Ed Coben 177 iit inference that if one’s presupposes the “sameness” of one's som: then conversely one’s somatic difference fine the “sameness” of one's “identity.” buted to somatic signife n of human bodies as wre both engendered and iadian pol wy—is predicated on a set of funda cposition of bodie Macpherson’s famous fort cumscribed by a tradition of wh in which individuals are defined p assumprions abour mark out the logs of the self. In ‘Wescemn political discourse is cir calls “posscestve individualism” as peopprictors of78 (Ducking On who areconsequer sassclves seventconthcenture individ Colky which lay in its postesive qual suggest an isting. ina ess ry relation w themsclyt possessions of them- rechnology of the self" —te appropriate ch the bourgeois indivi is process Of sel between bodies as property and che pre ‘overdetermine what Macpherson felicitonsly cerms “the ‘Thus, os the basis for organizing and *deploymenrof sexuality” thar Foucanle describes as emerging in 18th-century ‘sexuality names a complex nexus of “concrete ar- je scxuality “in the body as a mode af “The notion of sex," he suggest seeks to peoblemacize the * 1 theve points of “nan While Foucault avoids gence of “sexuality” [sie] by a law of ts torecogni tos this emergence with tions of the European middle classes seartingi fiotmed the basis for as it “naturally”80 / Decking Our: Ponforming doutitine impressed the indivi suchas “population” and of the middle-class fan oeuvre that cagries xk (fourth-cencury BCE) and Graeco-Roman (secoad-century “CE cy 1s provided Fouca incerrupe che asce ulas, “sexed” body and order to recast “politics as an at to ethics leads Foucault 10 foreground the peaet th we {acsthes $10 ourselves to cach other in order to “ask polities what ic kK y grounded om the et “woman.” Framed by ast fifteen years to intercupe the itferene” women, Butlet’s a igining “gender” as che social and historic ‘cance derived from a pre-gives,we, OF 4 natural rerpresation of gender as viduals who are engendered f ry effocts af social differentials and gradients precisely because they vr effects as bo Processes of intervextion sz00d, old-fashioned “i 1's analysis seems Fd Coben 183 from “inside” bodies otto those practices that organize how specie individuals move throu ad change the then gender p: critical y and histories ttempe ro rethink “ageney” 8 of “construct soths 1 aculcurol field of gender ° By attempting t move. 1 collapses bodies of how genders are embodied, thisexploratan by evacuating somatic prac 1 problem.” cing somatic masteni- roiimto discursive processes, Butler84 { Decking Out: Performing I dictions that Lacan sought to resolve by di he body” makes to rad paraphrase of Stephen H. metaphysics." You see, I feel * about the body: I Beliewefecling isthe difference that a difference that moves people to action. As movements are engendered by personal and sing “diffe bodies make, they are—i.e, tt touch and moveeach feelings often frusteace the crystal m drmca thoughe ts be is precondicion precisely because they provide yy for experiencing one's “own” body not as the site of as the medium for creating transpersonal con- fed Coben / 85 tiguitits. Indeed, would seem that any itself on an ss between the parachiat hher WASP childhood and pre-p: embodied racist history of the search Triangle, North Carolina, whe iced. years ly transformed atthe urban Wash: » Souther, Christian gi 3 predominanely I Atlantic city pros Hlections on the global implications of racism, sexism, and cl: other with a Northern Jewish lover li Black neighborhood of a predominantly Black voke hee ime end space: when | walk outin my neighborhood, each spexking-to another come franghe, for mo Wi moving from the igelou called 8 PIOCESS is cm into conssiousness, Ic would be a ie to 69 forting.”” Praw’s uminarion on the exhaus yrocess of becoming aware of }ees make foregrounds the36 / Decing Oa: Perfo importance of understanding “who we are* notas a scanding: J moving, as a speaking to ad being spoken eo, a8 being touchod. ‘and through the text, sh ity needed to eng ‘as with people on the stecers, buses, and trains and in the other satily exceed the Chandra Talpade Mohanty have recently observed of this essay, smpinges upon and transforms peop! social “realiey*= 7 acknowledges te extent 10 rmilitates against cons oppression, hortophy ‘What Pratt's wandering bodies forth ps space, we cossing and being crossed, jotions of others. In this ling , OF alter Our trajectories, challenging us to jo observe, deny ignore, ments that are coalescing withat the body. | difference? To in dhs “eonstruct these hopes are not directed towards those who are “the sa sor conti sve must be aware questions: “Whe to reiterate ice that have been 6s progressire pelvic. ‘As far as | can tell, the pro hy “movements” based on “idee is that by seeking change on the b ichanging, they ably and painfully © is wrong or bad, only and as such qualifies the efficacy of groups i art of what 1 would like to contradictions into the pro- idemity’ esses of pol ments may be able to canscionsly affirm erence. This pose when we are conside (process and its goct the inter m2 0; patteras of privilege and oppression? “I" don't have theEd Coben s91 9), 461-63. The CED, wis the rs entense of this bf “ident ast qualifies dhe chara wf uma, 12, While Mcoberson ising the generic “nan hewe ta dei bis amass world have been consi ofthis arson. [nny honk, Tale 14 Gowealogy of Mate Seceatisies (New Toa, Roi [New Yorks Fitehesnd Books, 1988) Locke, Second Tratie Tis Treaties of Goverment tle Deter Conte este Maing ofan Contedze ico: Uatwesiy of Chicano Press, content, Derrida dition in “Eine s Etbrie Measinr 17, ne, 3 tMaylAug eld, aprepo¢ ofp ose Bagh i. “Ths Subjes and Power,” Bickel Foweanle Sevan’ Src and Sonitis, ef Hulbert Dregs a Paul Ration (Chigago: U ‘of Chicago Pres 1582), 201, Foussuly, History, 123. (New Yorke Vinee, 1985), cece,” Telos 67 (Spring (966): vty A Semawsie History." Journal of Amonian (Gleason, “dent Hlsory 69, no. 4 (htareh 19 11, Joka Lacke, Essays Comcsrning Gules Trouble: Femnises and tbe Seboersion of Hetty (New i200; Routledge, 1990), 3. Nefeseaces immediatly following are alan: George Ball and ted in te92 | Decking Out: Performing idem jw with Michal Eoucaal,” 4 Seeing Things: Representation, the Scene of Surveillance, and the Spectacle of Gay Male Sex Lee Edelman ing been convicted of ascaule he back room of a Vere Sizcer and disgusting account of the pu ‘of certain wretches con sere comments repudiate the at such scenes af brat AS one contemporary acco 688%, patatoss, and buckecs filled mig," docs not argue, in the passage from ng of sodomitical relations,