Deleuze and Queer Theory PDF
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12043 eup Queer Theory:7022 eup Queer Theory 13/11/08 15:35 Page 1 Deleuze Connections Deleuze Connections D e l e Series Editor: Ian Buchanan u Deleuze and z e Deleuze and Queer Theory a n d Queer Theory Q u e Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr e r T H ‘Thisisabrilliantandwell-timedcollectionofstate-of-the-artsessays.Itconclusivelyproves e thatqueernesshastodonotonlywithidentitypoliticsandperformativestances,butalso o withmaterialandcollectiveexperimentswithradicalothernessandun-programmed r y intensity.’ RosiBraidottiisDistinguishedProfessorandDirectoroftheCentrefortheHumanities atUtrechtUniversityandHonoraryProfessoratBirkbeckCollegeLondon Thisexcitingcollectionofworkintroducesamajorshiftindebatesonsexuality:ashiftaway fromdiscourse,identityandsignification,toaradicalnewconceptionofbodilymaterialism. Movingawayfromtheestablishedpathknownasqueertheory,itsuggestsanalternativeto Butler’smatter/representationbinary.Itthusdarestoaskhowtothinksexualityandsex outsidethediscursiveandlinguisticcontextthathascometodominatecontemporary researchinsocialsciencesandhumanities. DeleuzeandQueerTheoryisaprovocativeandoftenmilitantcollectionthatexploresa E diverserangeofthemesincluding:therevisitingoftheterm‘queer’;arethinkingofthe d sex-genderdistinctionasbeingimpliedinQueerTheory;anexplorationofqueer s temporalities;thenon/re-readingofthehomosexualbody/desireandthebecoming-queer N oftheDeleuze/Guattariphilosophy.Itwillbeessentialreadingforanyoneinterestednotjust ig inDeleuze’sandGuattari’sphilosophy,butalsointhefieldsofsexuality,genderandfeminist i a theory. n n Contributors:ClaireColebrook,VerenaA.Conley,JonathanKemp,PatriciaMacCormack, i AnnaHickey-Moody,ChrysanthiNigianni,DorotheaOlkowski,LucianaParisi,MaryLou a n Rasmussen,MargritShildrickandMikkoTuhkanen. d ChrysanthiNigianniisaPhDcandidateattheUniversityofEastLondon.Shehastaughtat S t theUniversityofEastLondonandatAngliaRuskinUniversity. o r r MerlStorrisSeniorLecturerinAnthropologyattheUniversityofEastLondon.Sheisthe authorofLatexandLingerie:ShoppingforPleasureatAnnSummersParties(2003). Coverdesign:RiverDesign,Edinburgh EdinburghUniversityPress E 22GeorgeSquare,Edinburgh d i ISBN9780748634057 n Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr b u www.euppublishing.com r g h Chapter Title i Deleuze and Queer Theory Deleuze Connections ‘It is not the elements or the sets which define the multiplicity. What defines it is the AND, as something which has its place between the ele- ments or between the sets. AND, AND, AND – stammering.’ Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues General Editor Ian Buchanan Editorial Advisory Board Keith Ansell-Pearson Rosi Braidotti Claire Colebrook Tom Conley Gregg Lambert Adrian Parr Paul Patton Patricia Pisters Titles Available in the Series Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and Feminist Theory Ian Buchanan and John Marks (eds), Deleuze and Literature Mark Bonta and John Protevi (eds), Deleuze and Geophilosophy Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (eds), Deleuze and Music Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space Martin Fuglsang and Bent Meier Sørensen (eds), Deleuze and the Social Ian Buchanan and Adrian Parr (eds), Deleuze and the Contemporary World Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds), Deleuze and Politics Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and History Forthcoming Titles in the Series Mark Poster and David Savat (eds), Deleuze and New Technology Laura Cull (ed.), Deleuze and Performance Ian Buchanan and Laura Guillaume (eds), Deleuze and the Body Stephen Zepke and Simon O’Sullivan (eds), Deleuze and Contemporary Art Paul Patton and Simone Bignall (eds), Deleuze and the Postcolonial Chapter Title iii Deleuze and Queer Theory Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr Edinburgh University Press © in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2009 © in the individual contributions is retained by the authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3404 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3405 7 (paperback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. v Contents Introduction 1 1 On the Very Possibility of Queer Theory 11 Claire Colebrook 2 Thirty-six Thousand Forms of Love: The Queering of Deleuze and Guattari 24 Verena Andermatt Conley 3 The Sexed Subject in-between Deleuze and Butler 37 Anna Hickey-Moody and Mary Lou Rasmussen 4 Every ‘One’ – a Crowd, Making Room for the Excluded Middle 54 Dorothea Olkowski 5 The Adventures of a Sex 72 Luciana Parisi 6 Queer Hybridity 92 Mikko Tuhkanen 7 Prosthetic Performativity: Deleuzian Connections and Queer Corporealities 115 Margrit Shildrick 8 Unnatural Alliances 134 Patricia MacCormack 9 Schreber and the Penetrated Male 150 Jonathan Kemp 10 Butterfly Kiss: The Contagious Kiss of Becoming-Lesbian 168 Chrysanthi Nigianni Notes on Contributors 183 Index 187 Introduction ... so as to know ‘us’ better Deleuze and Queer Theory: two theories, one concept – one book, many authors ... You ask me: why bring all these texts together in this book? Why ‘Deleuze and Queer Theory’? What does this and mean? You wonder whether it might be the expression of an opposition that will lead to a battle, a combat; a war that will announce winners and dark horses, will declare the past dead and will celebrate a new future. Or maybe, it is a hope for juxtaposition and collaboration based on resonances, or differ- ences. An attempt for reconciliation through the annihilation of the dif- ferential parties perhaps? And as the middle space, the borderline that separates but also brings together; andas the transit word, a force of transition towards something other that always entails a coming back: the becoming-DeleuzoGuattarian of Queer Theory, the becoming-queer of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory. Andas the invisible in-between, the mystery gap, the topos of hidden erotic connections, of contagious exchange, of unnatural encounters based on imperceptible micro-attractions and incompatibilities; and as the experi- ment to think as two, to rethink through a two-fold process that amplifies what goes on in one’s thinking, that expands one single concept (queer), transforming it from a materialising signifier to an intrinsic quality of non- representational thinking. Thus, this project is primarily creative and not critical, and it is critical precisely by being creative. Rather than dismissing queer (theory), this col- lective work reaffirms the seductive power of the concept ‘queer’, and its continuing force to inspire thinking nowadays. Moving beyond, or along, lines of queer theory (in its institutionalised Anglo-American form) con- stitutes a living proof of the vital force of the concept of queerness: the force to affect and effect changes in the way one theorises, its capacity to produce deviant lines along established thinking and disciplines, its ability to queer the queer, that is, to undermine the self, to resist any normalisa- tion. Hence, this collection emerges out of the queer’s fear of being trapped 2 Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr in iteration, immobility, its loathing for reproduction, for repetition of sameness. Rather than starting from negation (which would be to dimin- ish the tremendous intellectual accomplishments set in motion by Gender Troubleand the theory of performativity), it is born out of the positive and affirmative thinking that departs from the belief that one paradigm cannot carry an entire field, if that field is going to survive and thrive. Moreover, by putting side by side the English term ‘queer’ (non- translatable in other languages and credited as an American invention) with a French thinking (Deleuze’s and Guattari’s thinking), it attempts to remind us of the often neglected intervention on the part of French think- ing(s) after ’68, in relation to non-normative sexualities and the notion of a destabilised self (for example, Foucault’s homosexual subject, Cixous’s bisexuality, Lacan’s homosexuelle, Hocquenghem’s homosexual desire). Despite the significant contribution of French philosophy, psychoanalysis and feminism to the exploration and enhancement of polymorphous, ‘per- verse’ sexualities and of the notion of a de-n ormalised self, we neverthe- less believe that ‘it is especially in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that the question of homosexuality as queering, that is, as becoming and as an ongoing differing of difference, is raised’ (Conley, this volume). You thus wonder what this volume brings that is new in relation to queer theory, how its contribution differs from other theories of (sexual) difference (for example, psychoanalysis), and even more, how it queers queer theory in a positive and affirmative way that escapes the traditional strategy of negation (queer as the non-, anti-, contra-) and while I am lis- tening to you talking, another question enters my mind: ‘Is queer theory a reflection on what it means to be queer, or does the concept of queer- ness change the ways in which we theorise?’ (Colebrook, this volume). Whereas the first question presupposes a ‘being’ that is queer, and hence that theory is a mere reflection, mirroring, moulding, a grasping of what already exists as given or produced: the queer performative ‘being’ as a culturally given way of being queer, or better, a way of doing queer that constructs a supposed preceding being – ‘the doer’, which has neverthe- less always been the deed1 – the latter on the other hand signifies a rupture in the established ways of thinking, suggesting an intrinsic queer- ness in thinking and in theorising that breaks away from a represen- tational thought, with the latter confusing what exists with what can be known (a conflation of ontology with epistemology). Where the Butlerian theory of performativity fits into the first definition, the DeleuzoGuattarian thinking is inherently queer by distancing itself from a representational conception of thinking; hence, a thinking, which far Introduction 3 from being reproductive (by representing, recognising) is primarily pro- ductive mainly by being expressive of non/extra-linguistic forces. Hence, what strikes and troubles one in the field known as ‘Queer Theory’ is primarily an insistence on performativity as the only adequate way to perceive the social world and the real and the consequent refusal to ‘see’ a positive (rather than a constitutive2) outside, a ‘beyond’ of the signifier, discourse, language: a short-sightedness in relation to body and materiality. I wonder if this is due to a passion for realism and pragma- tism, or rather to a fear of accepting anything that goes beyond us, the subject, the world as the lived cultural horizon. Is after all the hetero- sexual matrix of imposed naturalised performances the only reality we can imagine? Is language the only air we can breathe? Is text the only land we can inhabit? Is parody the only resistance we can imagine? The transvestite is a mish-mash hybrid, teeming with symbols belonging to one or another, but not ambiguous enough to be constructed through the spaces between the symbols. The male-as-female or female-as-male is an established alliance at war, rather than an unnatural alliance.(MacCormack, this volume) Yes, you are certainly right to remind me that this is not one’s choice. How compulsory and involuntary it is for the subject to play with the rules and perform a gendered body and a gendered subjectivity in order to be an ‘I’. I can’t see though why this should lead to a rigid and restrict- ing belief that what exists is what can be known, that who we are is limited to the culturally known and the interpretable acted-upon; to an obsession with the textualisation of everything and the deletion of any- thing that resists the latter; to a refusal to think outside the cause-effect relation and a consequent inability to imagine nondependent relations and non-unifying connections. Have you ever asked yourself ‘why are we so hesitant to acknowledge powers that have force and precede the act, but which cannot be known, recognised and reduced to the act?’ (Colebrook 2004: 215). Is after all the reductive mechanism of interpre- tation that takes us back to the Subject the only way to be in the world? And yet, why does an act always have to refer back to a constructed subject? Why, instead of being in (constructed by) the world, can we not become with the world away from the image of the subject? Has subjec- tion always been the case? Whereas Foucault turned back to ancient thought to insist that one need not posit a subject and sexuality behind action, Butler argues that we cannot avoid subjection. All we can do is work critically with the systems that produce us as subjects. (Colebrook 2004: 212)
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