Antu Sorainen poses important questions in her piece Queering lesbian weirdness, romanticism – and the power of antisocial genius. Namely, what does our responses, thoughts and most importantly, our moral judgments regarding the “AR case”, tell us about ourselves? What does it say about our “objects of desire” and our understanding of, hopes, wishes and definitions of queer feminist academics, queer and feminist academia, and queer and feminist life?
Is our beloved “fragile scene” in fact a collective of fallen creatures, (like any other community is), one might ask – must we now deal with the disappointment of understanding that there are in fact no safe spaces? (By the way another queer rule/lesson).
Robyn Wiegman has written extensively on the field’s “political imaginaries of the alternative”. In her work on our “fragile scene” she shows how the desire to manage our objects, although we testify to its “ambivalences” still easily falls back into a logic where we inevitably produce our own disappointments. In the worst-case scenario, condemning the world and the power structures we analyze so critically, does, when not carefully uttered, indeed primarily serve the critic herself.
We first experience, encounter and describe the world and its normative down-dragging, power-ridden structures, only to scream at the top of our longs when these structures actually show themselves. Why, do we keep being surprised? Perhaps, because no one actually wants to be cynical or bitter, although our (academic) realities keep pushing us towards that poisonous edge with a pretty consistent push.
The set-up of “not-me vs. metoo” seems to be looming over the recent reactions and discussions in relation to “a feminist professor accused of sexual harassment”, when in fact; perhaps we should be talking about metoo, youtoo and wetoo?
I have never met AR, and I also don’t know the specifics around Title IX to discuss the case, but I am familiar with Anglo-American feminist and queer theory and its epistemic habits. In fact, I am interested in the field’s “epistemic habits”, its moral understandings and cultural criticism. In particular, I am interested in how we as critics envision and think about questions of power, knowledge, desire, ethics, and politics.
In a sense, “the case of AR” goes to the core of these issues: when desire and joy, critical thinking and queer pedagogy turn poisonous and into a battleground. Where hurt has placed intimacy and anxiety has replaced pleasure. Managing our relations to our teachers, advisors and supervisors, seniors and students is a hard task. Feminists have always struggled with the question of sexuality and desire. Is it violence? Is it emancipatory? As the Sex Wars showed us, positioning oneself at either side, meant wishing away ambivalence. One thing is sure – no one denies that desire is a forceful thing. Queer desire is both dangerous and exciting because it is rooted in what culture already has excluded, what it seeks to normalize, legitimize and manage, and in that context, risk becomes a key concept.
Antu is asking for proper queer analytics, which I read as a thoughtful and critically serious practice, one that faces the ambivalences, hurt, and disappointment. This I think is at the core in analyzing and understanding the claims, arguments and positions taken up in the aftermath of the metoo campaign and the AR case.
Love and desire
Love and desire, queer thinking shows us, is a risky business! Although Platonic love, often understood as non-romantic love, acknowledges the relation between knowledge and desire, it hasn’t included women, although paradoxically it is the “platonic” and “perverse” dichotomy that haunts the cultural intelligibility of lesbian desires. As Antu writes; “Women are not socialized or expected to express any antisocial or active sexual desire or romantic feelings towards improper objects”.
This summer I re-read the book A Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment by Jane Gallop from 1997. Gallop describes how her pedagogy of desire, knowledge and power, although rooted in feminist pedagogy, queer thinking and in a world exploring mindset resulted in a lawsuit against her. What was intended as intellectually open-minded approach to the intertwinement of sexuality, pleasure and knowledge turned into a lawsuit of sexual harassment, in ways that are not completely dissimilar to the case we have been witnessing, shaking queerfeminist academia over the last months. Gallop shows that feminism’s roots are in playful and undutiful perspectives on normativity, but with entering the institution of academia feminism has entered a tricky relationship with precisely this normativity.
Rosi Braidotti has discussed (lesbian) teacher –student relations in the context of academia. Talking about the actual seduction of theory and theorists, she critically comments on the culture of “academic stars” and how it affects the reception of ideas. In an interview towards the end of the second edition of Nomadic Subjects she highlights what she calls more fundamental issues:
“How do you transfer knowledge? What is the link between the transfer of knowledge and sexuality? Until this is mapped out, we will have very inadequate queer theories because they will continue to focus on oppositional issues and concentrate on the dysfunctional rather than the affirmative aspects of this sexual culture”.
Recent discussions has made me reflect on this dynamic – the dysfunctional and affirmative aspects of theory, and of theorists and of our relations to them. How do we relate to theory and to theorists (you know that experience of finally meeting your huge academic crush, only to be utterly disappointed in facing them and your own idealized fantasy of them, people are after all not texts) and to the relations we have, as students, teachers, supervisors, readers and writers – and sometimes in secret, perhaps as, platonic or not, lovers. These relations are saturated with affect, for sure. Power is at the core of what feminists and queers have the most intimate relationship to. Still we are surprised when power shows itself even in the most intimate.
My first encounter with Avital Ronell, was when reading her introduction to Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto in 2004. These were two texts that were formative for my younger feminist philosophical self – they made a standing impression on me, and transformed my understanding of what thinking, philosophy and cultural critique (“politics”) could be. I was introduced to troubling, dangerous and queer thinking. I was thrilled, shocked, moved, excited and provoked – intellectually. I didn’t know what to think, but I knew I wanted and needed to think more! It was a moment that showed me what the pleasure of reading, thinking and writing can be – that it is about understanding yourself and your life in a culture that isn’t yours.
I experienced that emotional charge when something has changed, and it moves you in a direction, but you don’t quite know where yet. It was the experience of encountering the limits of my own thoughts and realizing, that there is so much more to philosophy – and life! – than I had previously understood. What spoke to me in reading Ronell reading this ‘butch-dykey angry, poor, and fucked up’, proto-queer figure and outcast of feminist philosophy, and what spoke to me reading Solanas, was the perspective they opened up. They showed how philosophy and everything that matters and is important in life hits the core of our existence – and our lives with each other. They made intelligible the question: how to live in a culture that in so many ways presents us with a dead life form (“patriarchy”, “gender identity”, “success” “boys being boys” etc.). Ronell’s, situates philosophy, thinking, and critique in a context of battle. She writes about fighting and screaming to be heard, about being in a place where philosophy is not liberating and soothing, but a combat and sometimes also poisoning.
Solanas in her own way was not even interested in “philosophy” (or theory), she didn’t want to waste her time on it – but she was interested in a meaningful life. A life without contempt, hatred, shame and mindless identity seeking (forms of femininity and masculinity that turn us into walking and talking essences) – shortly put: a life in in love.
If we forget this aspect of why we do criticism, intellectual work and challenge poisonous gendered cultural expressions, the risk is that we end up in ressentiment, cynicism and moral blindness.
As Braidotti, Gallop and others have remarked, approaching knowledge, desire, and power beyond oppositions is still a critical task. And this is where analyzing our own reactions, statements and tacit and explicit “objects of desire” become so pivotal to further understanding and self-knowledge – that old, self-declared aim of philosophy – so we can find spaces where we can think, reflect, love and live – together.
*Salla Peltonen is currently finishing her dissertation on epistemic habits, critique and queerfeminist criticism in philosophy at Åbo Akademi University. She is the Chair of the Society for Queer Studies in Finland (SQS). She is also a PhD student in Gender Studies at University of Helsinki writing a dissertation on homonationalism and racialization. Focusing on questions of epistemology, language philosophy and ethics, her research interests include critical race, gender and queer studies, theories of sexual difference, post-humanism, human-animal studies, and feminist philosophy. In (2017) she edited a special issue on feminist epistemic habits and critique together with Marianne Liljeström (University of Turku), for Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics.
Queer Pain 