fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop" - J. Halberstam
To even begin to understand queer political theory in general we must understand the very essence of our own politics. We must ask ourselves why we even have politics, and what we are trying to accomplish with them.
What is the unifying point on which we build our future? Consider Baedan's take (A Journal of Queer Nihilism):
... the Child is the fantastic symbol for the eternal proliferation of class society. The Child represents the succession of generations and the continuation of this society beyond the lifespans of its living members. All politics, being concerned primarily with the Child, then reveal themselves to be only ever a process by which to manage and secure the continued existence of society.
This notion is referred to by queer theorists as variations of "reproductive futurity" or "the reproduction of futurity", and it represents a foundation of civilization itself, and all political discourse.
While the The Child is not literally the children, who are as bound up in social machinations as the rest of us, if not moreso, but rather the concept of a "better future for our children" that is bound up in reproduction. Naturally queer theorists would challenge this typically taken for granted notion since we queers aren't bound up in the reproductive cycle of humanity, but rather exist in its shadows, which itself carries some cost with it:
To quote Guy Hocquenghem (The Screwball Asses):
As long as we are not burned at the stake or locked up in asylums, we continue to flounder in the ghettos of nightclubs, public restrooms and sidelong glances, as if that misery had become the habit of our happiness. And so, with the help of the state, do we build our own prisons.
This is a byproduct of that existence outside the framework of reproductive futurity, and outside of the reproductive family unit. Interestingly enough, scripture rightly exiles us from the kingdom, reflecting this.
Social conservatives attempt to eradicate, convert or cast us out, understanding the crisis of our existence with respect to the the reproduction of futurity.
Social liberals attempt to bring us into that framework through same sex marriage and otherwise attempting to normalize us. In doing so however, there's assimilation involved as a matter of course.
Quoting Lee Edelman (No Future):
For the liberal’s view of society, which seems to accord the queer a place, endorses no more than the conservative right’s the queerness of resistance to futurism and thus the queerness of the queer. While the right wing imagines the elimination of queers (or of the need to confront their existence), the left would eliminate queerness by shining the cool light of reason upon it, hoping thereby to expose it as merely a mode of sexual expression free of the all-pervasive coloring, the determining fantasy formation, by means of which it can seem to portend, and not for the right alone, the undoing of the social order and its cynosure, the Child. Queerness thus comes to mean nothing for both: for the right wing, the nothingness always at war with the positivity of civil society; for the left, nothing more than a sexual practice in need of demystification.
If Edelman is correct, this leaves the existence of queerness as queerness in question. What happens when it's completely normalized? Or is it even possible, looking at the mixed success of US race relations and black integration as first class citizens?
If it is, Edelman is effectively arguing that this would mark the end of queerness. He's not exactly wrong, as it makes queerness completely mundane, removes the taboo of it, and he (and I) would argue, separates it from its very purpose, which is to subvert. Returning to Edelman, speaking on the purpose of queerness:
To figure the undoing of civil society, the death drive of the dominant order, is neither to be nor to become that drive; such a being is not the point. Rather, acceding to that figural position means recognizing and refusing the consequences of grounding reality in denial of that drive. As the death drive dissolves those congealments of identity that permit us to know and survive as ourselves, so the queer must insist on disturbing, on queering, social organization as such—on disturbing, and therefore on queering ourselves and our investment in such organization. For queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one. And so, when I argue, as I aim to do here, that the burden of queerness is to be located less in the assertion of an oppositional political identity than in opposition to politics as the governing fantasy of realizing identities, I am proposing no platform or position from which queer sexuality or any queer subject might finally and truly become itself, as if it could somehow manage thereby to achieve an essential queerness. I am suggesting instead that the efficacy of queerness, its real strategic value, lies in its resistance to a symbolic reality that only ever invests us as subjects insofar as we invest ourselves in it, clinging to its governing fictions, its persistent sublimations, as reality itself.
This is a powerful statement, but it can be difficult to unpack. He's basically saying here that queerness is subversive by nature, and that queerness operates best in the negative, as a sort of anti-politic that challenges the very nature of our relationship with and our persistent illusions of society, of politics, of our world.
It undermines the social order, and thus is both dangerous and necessary. The reactionaries are right to fear our integration.
Returning to Edelman once again:
We might do well to consider this less as an instance of hyperbolic rant and more as a reminder of the disorientation that queer sexualities should entail: "acceptance or indifference to the homosexual movement will result in society’s destruction by allowing civil order to be redefined and by plummeting ourselves, our children and grandchildren into an age of godlessness. Indeed, the very foundation of Western Civilization is at stake." Before the self-righteous bromides of liberal pluralism spill from our lips, before we supply once more the assurance that ours is another kind of love but a love like his nonetheless, before we piously invoke the litany of our glorious contributions to the civilizations of east and west alike, dare we pause for a moment to acknowledge that he might be right—or, more important, that he ought to be right: that queerness should and must destroy such notions of "civil order" through a rupturing of our foundational faith in the reproduction of futurity?
Queerness must exist in an antagonistic relationship with civilization.
Edelman never covers the root reasons for this which leaves his polemic floundering in nihilism.
I'd argue our relationship with civilization, indeed the entire relationship of the death drive with civilization is the lifeblood of adaptation. Existing outside of, and athwart civilization, ripping and tearing at its edges we give room for new social growth and change. Same sex marriage being an example of that adaptation, but it goes deeper. Our inroads into fashion, into media, into art, into cooking, into civil rights, into outrageous sexually tinged displays like Pride that expand or change what is acceptable, made more powerful because we're outsiders. We're more likely to sacrifice the queen/throw away the playbook and create. Drag performances and the very existence of trans people challenge social gender norms and change what we think about gender expression, presentation, and identity. In a myriad of ways, large and small, we are changing society the more society is embracing us. Edelman is right to call us the gravediggers of society. We bury your dead (social detritus, like the gender binary or your marriage stricture). But we also create.
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