How to Attack "Queer Homonormativity" -- Radical History Review

H-Announcements ^ | March 17, 2006 | Radical History Review

[mcvey]

Radical History Review Queer Futures: The Homonormativity Issue Much has changed since the RHR’s special “Queer” issue (No. 62, Spring 1995), in which historians and their allies explored “new visions of America’s gay and lesbian past.” Queers now unabashedly eye straight guys on cable television; films featuring gay characters and themes are celebrated by mainstream audiences, breaking box office records and winning major industry awards; “gay marriage” has emerged as the central civil rights cause for powerful organizations like the Human Rights Campaign; urban activists and civic boosters promote “gay business districts” as a means for achieving visibility and equality; and multibillion-dollar markets targeting gay and lesbian tourist dollars are booming.

For many, such articulations of gay and lesbian identity in the public sphere provide evidence of true social and political progress. Yet in the past decade, some radical activists and scholars have cited such developments not as progressive signs of liberation but as reactionary responses linked directly to the privatizing imperatives of a powerful, ascendant brand of neoliberal politics that coalesced in the 1990s. Lisa Duggan, for example, has identified this trend as evidence of “the new homonormativity…a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them.” In accordance with this new homonormativity, prominent lesbian and gay rights organizations increasingly embrace agendas that vie for acceptance within contemporary economic and political systems, thereby abandoning their earlier commitments to economic redistribution and protecting sexual freedoms. This shift has made strange bedfellows out of lesbian and gay rights organizations and social conservatives: both endorse normative and family-oriented formations associated with domestic partnership, adoption, and gender-normative social roles; both tend to marginalize those who challenge serial monogamy and those – including transgender, bisexual, pansexual, and intersex constituencies – who feel oppressed by a binary gender or sex system. Moreover, because of its economic base in the neoliberal philosophy of consumer rights rather than that of citizen rights, the politics of homonormativity exercises an influence beyond U.S. borders, through gay and lesbian tourism, the global proliferation of gay and lesbian-themed U.S. cultural productions, and economic and political interventions that claim to make “gay rights” a global issue.

Many queer and/or sex-positive radicals fear such neoliberal strategies, not only because they undermine citizens’ rights but because they threaten to erase the historic alliance between radical politics and lesbian and gay politics, at the core of which has been a struggle for sexual freedom. In order to counter the long-term consequences of historical amnesia, we need new analytical frameworks for talking about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer history that expand and challenge current models of identity and community formation as well as models of political and cultural resistance.

The RHR seeks submissions that explore the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer past in relation to contemporary conceptions of homonormativity, neoliberalism, and globalization in North America and beyond.

Some suggested topical fields include:

Genealogies of homonormativities Homonormativity and racial formations Historical analyses of the politics of marriage and procreation in relation to gay and lesbian political and community formations Historical studies of the “domestic partner” in relation to law, corporate policy, privatization, and/or cultural production Studies of how homonormativities travel across borders, including histories of gay and lesbian tourism and organized interventions into issues in the name of “gay rights” Homonormativities in relation to transgender studies and politics Urban models of “gay gentrification” and contemporary configurations of LGBT identity Histories of gay and lesbian markets and consumption Analyses of academic culture and its disciplining of glbt studies, institutional development, and academic investments in homonormativity Critiques of homonormativity from queer of color and feminist of color perspectives AIDS activism and the politics of sex(uality) in transnational frameworks Globalization, gay/lesbian identities, and cultural hegemonies State investments in the production and sustenance of gay and lesbian identities Homonormativity, government policy, and social provision (including the impact of homonormative politics on such issues as health insurance provision, social services, and “disaster relief”) Genealogies of gay and lesbian conservative political movements Sexual politics and history of the “right to privacy” Histories and critiques of identity and queer migrations Resistance to politics of homonormativity in U.S. and globally The editors of this special edition invite contributions that explore these or any themes that relate to homonormativity, queer pasts, or queer futures. We welcome short reports and reflections, documents, photo essays, art and illustrations, interviews with activists or intellectuals, teaching resources – including syllabi, original documents, and exhibit and book reviews. RHR solicits contributions from activists and academics.

Procedures for submission of proposals and articles: By August 15, 2006, please submit a 1-2 page abstract summarizing the article you wish to submit to rhr@igc.org. By September 30, 2006 authors will be notified whether they should submit their article in full. The due date for solicited, complete articles for blind peer review is January 1, 2007. Articles that are selected for publication after the peer review process will appear in volume 100 of Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in Winter 2008.

To be considered manuscripts should be submitted electronically, preferably in Microsoft Word or rich text format, with "Issue 100 submission" in the subject line.

Abstract Deadline: August 15, 2006

Email: rhr@igc.org

Radical History Review Tamiment Library, 10th Floor New York University 70 Washington Square South New York, NY 10012 rhr@igc.org http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/rhr.htm Email: rhr@igc.org Visit the website at http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/calls.htm

[mcvey]

Freepers, for those of you who read this whole thing, I could not make this up. What will happen is that this Call for Papers (CFP) will get a gudzillion submissions. Most of these will come from the big research schools where people have time to write such articles. They have this time because the professors are subsidized by the taxpayers.

If the taxpayers read this, they would demand their money back. LOL on that one!

McVey

[ClearCase_guy]

scholars have cited such developments not as progressive signs of liberation but as reactionary responses linked directly to the privatizing imperatives of a powerful, ascendant brand of neoliberal politics that coalesced in the 1990s.

I love clear writing.

[mcvey]

We proud ourselves on it! Seriously, when my colleagues write like this, they demonstrate that they REALLY BELONG to the club! McVey

[Always Right]

I am working on a piece that will describe the true history of our great leader. It is common knowledge what Abe did in those log cabins, but not many people knew that George Washington like to dress up as Geogia at parties, or that Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton liked to enjoy S&M sessions. I don't have any facts that backs any of this up, but I am sure they will print it.

[mcvey]

Here's a hint. Footnote it a lot, but make the footnotes up. From personal experience in checking footnotes in articles, I know how often my colleagues create "cooked" footnotes.

Mix well and enjoy. Oh, yes, fake your degree--that's been done a lot too.

McVey

[Mr Ramsbotham]

I love clear writing.

Hard to expect anything less from someone who thinks his rectum is a sex organ.

[IronJack]

For many, such articulations of gay and lesbian identity in the public sphere provide evidence of true social and political progress.

For others, they mark the collapse of morality, a rush to define normalcy downward, to society's ultimate detriment.

Yet in the past decade, some radical activists and scholars have cited such developments not as progressive signs of liberation but as reactionary responses linked directly to the privatizing imperatives of a powerful, ascendant brand of neoliberal politics that coalesced in the 1990s.

Certainly, that could be one explanation. Or it could be that we've fallen to "Emperor's Clothes" Syndrome, and that none dare call it perversion.

[csmusaret]

Any one who thinks homosexuals are normal should spend a couple of minutes visualizing the acts they perform for sexual gratification.

[IronJack]

I love the term "homonormativity." As though the definition of the norm by the norm is somehow a pathological condition, while aberration from that norm is the standard.

This is doublespeak at its finest.

[mcvey]

Twenty years ago, I could have used the word "perversion" in class or even "not normal." Today, I would be, at the least, written up. It would be a long time before my colleagues would talk to me (this may not be a downside) and it would always be remembered that I had said something "incorrect."

McVey

[mcvey]

Great argument. I spend too much time listening to this stuff--I didn't pick this up at all.

Thanks,

McVey

[TheGeezer]

I love clear writing.

When one becomes a liberal and adopts indifferentism as a moral basis, one ends up thinking uncritically. That leads to tortuous writing that attempts to disguise moral ineptitude as intellectual courage, substituting pomposity for complexity. The bonus is, anyone criticizing the style is called a fascist, homophobic cretin.

[VOA]

Today's teaching of history is already a horrid mess...all one need to do is
read the first paragraph under the heading of:
"Our Failure, Our Duty"
from the April 2005 Imprimis lecture by David McCullough...
http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/April/

This sort of "initiative" will just make the kids even more historically illiterate.
And lacking in the needed knowledge of the past so we can figure out what
to do in the future.

[Beagle8U]

I think California just passed some sort of law that says that all new history books used in public schools will have to note that any queer in them, gets noted as a queer. i.e...

So and so invented the solar dildo, and he was a *ock smooch.

[mcvey]

I agree and I might add that a lot of the proponents are just angry people who have found this neat way to vent at people in general.

[aliquando]

Your not alone. I read your homepage. My cousin is a closet conservative at Harvard. He is a PhD. doing research in the medical school. He found one other guy that likes to hunt and fish with him. They tell the others that they are going "hiking". I teach high school science in Georgia. I do not have to hide my conservatism one bit. I do not use class time to preach, but am not afraid to discuss my political views with other faculty.

[mcvey]

One of the terrible things about this way of reading the past is that we focus on things which have very very little to do with the causes of events that have a huge impact. For example, let us suppose that all the sailors on the ship that brought the Bubonic Plague to Genoa in 1347 were all sodomites. This comes under the "so what" catagory. The key thing is that Europeans were in bad economic shape and ripe for a plague that traveled along the trade routes between South China and Europe. But that might not be how we would tell the story under The New History


McVey

[dljordan]

"I love clear writing."

They love that stuff. You see the same thing in business writing. I got a memo the other day that was so convoluted and filled with bizspeak I printed it out to show my wife (who is a copywriter and editor) who started laughing. I guess they think it sounds educated.

[mcvey]

Beagle

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that decree is final yet.

The reason the Gay Lobby is pushing so hard in California is because it is a huge market. If they can get it passed in California, then it means the whole country will use the same textbooks.

A little inside pool going on here. I wonder if other Freepers know how the textbook market works.

McVey

[mcvey]

Yep, its the "we who understand this" syndrome.