did somebody say foucault?
shriekingviolet posted:if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
unironic this
shriekingviolet posted:if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
ive heard people attribute this to queer theory before, how much is actually this? and also what does "queer" as a verb mean?
c_man posted:shriekingviolet posted:
if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
ive heard people attribute this to queer theory before, how much is actually this? and also what does "queer" as a verb mean?
ive actually read very little queer theory, but i'm aware that most of the actual writings are probably not that bad. i'm mostly speaking from negative experiences of trying to organize with rich white queer babies and it is total agony, but then plenty of marxoteens are insufferable too. and to be fair i know a few queer theory people who are among the best comrades i've ever had. i should actually learn more at some point but my opinion of a system of thought is always really influenced by seeing it in practice and it's hard to get motivated when most of what you see in practice is worthless shit or even actively harmful
shriekingviolet posted:what you see in practice is worthless shit or even actively harmful
thats what rhizzone is for
c_man posted:shriekingviolet posted:if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
ive heard people attribute this to queer theory before, how much is actually this? and also what does "queer" as a verb mean?
it was a problem with a ton of stuff from the last like 20 years or so. there's plenty of writers who aren't like that, though. as for "queering," i can show you better than I can tell you. where do you live? are you cute?
c_man posted:shriekingviolet posted:
if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
ive heard people attribute this to queer theory before, how much is actually this? and also what does "queer" as a verb mean?
to actually answer your actual question a little the shitty attitude that I see (either explicitly in real shitheads or subtly in otherwise good people who should know better) is "I can do whatever I want and it will be revolutionary because I am queer and my very existence constitutes resistance" which is an awful distortion of survival as resistance and a horrible mangling of the intersectional issues of race and class usually involved in that kind of thing (once again all these people are rich and white)
palafox posted:it was a problem with a ton of stuff from the last like 20 years or so. there's plenty of writers who aren't like that, though. as for "queering," i can show you better than I can tell you. where do you live? are you cute?
one of the chinese students here apparently said i was but i dont think thats what he meant
roseweird posted:most people who say they re really into queer theory haen't really read much of anything and are just enjoying being part of the Queer Community and circulating a few words and phrases that support that community and their membership in it
a thousand times this. around my city the Community is a hugely influential flagship of gentrification and it is incredibly depressing. that's probably not a unique situation
shriekingviolet posted:c_man posted:shriekingviolet posted:
if we queer everything, capitalism will just fall apart by itself! queer theory is magic!
ive heard people attribute this to queer theory before, how much is actually this? and also what does "queer" as a verb mean?to actually answer your actual question a little the shitty attitude that I see (either explicitly in real shitheads or subtly in otherwise good people who should know better) is "I can do whatever I want and it will be revolutionary because I am queer and my very existence constitutes resistance" which is an awful distortion of survival as resistance and a horrible mangling of the intersectional issues of race and class usually involved in that kind of thing (once again all these people are rich and white)
o. thanks!
c_man posted:one of the chinese students here apparently said i was but i dont think thats what he meant
he apparently meant "cute" as opposed to "cool" so take that as you will
im going to be moving on from a place where ive been doing work for like 3 years in a couple weeks and i think it'll be a good opportunity to rest a lil and take apart some of that ugly cynicism
mostly it was just him validating 'discourse' while taking potshots at marxism, like
"If a racially secured and dependent heteropatriarchy underlies Marx's origin narrative of social relations and historical agency, then capitalist property relations represent the ultimate obstacle to heteropatriarchal practice and being. In disrupting heteropatriarchy, capital disrupted man's fundamental essence."
marx: noted proponent of "man's fundamental essence".
for his own suggestions, all you hear are 'possible sites of critique', 'potential paths of resistance' and shit like that. the analysis always stops short of anything meaningful, because to demand actual political action is (by his own interpretation) to fall back into the trap of normalized, exclusionary hegemony. class unity is bad because it would interrupt the 'proliferation of heterogeneous discourse' which he values above all else.
this kind of theory is totally divorced from struggle or any practical concerns. so it's no surprise to find him stating, outright in the introduction of his aberrations in black that "this book began in the restlessness of grad school". which i think is hugely significant. a lot of contemporary theory (not just queer) i've seen emerges from these academic realms that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and which values novel and 'problematizing' interpretations over any actual call to change. I think this is why so much of the theory gets caught up in the idea of 'discourse', because it's talking that butters its bread, and revolutionary action would threaten its livelihood.
roseweird posted:i guess. it doesn't usually seem relevant to me whether there is a gay community in a gentrifying area. straight white people sure do love gay people though and follow them/import them to anywhere
actually white male homosexuals are statistically the forefront of gentrification (for pretty obvious reasons imo)
postposting posted:someone recommended to me rod ferguson awhile back who i guess came up with something called 'queer of color critique'. i haven't read enough contemporary queer theory to know how representative his work is, but the person who told me to read it seemed pretty knowledgeable, so my guess is it's not that far off.
mostly it was just him validating 'discourse' while taking potshots at marxism, like
"If a racially secured and dependent heteropatriarchy underlies Marx's origin narrative of social relations and historical agency, then capitalist property relations represent the ultimate obstacle to heteropatriarchal practice and being. In disrupting heteropatriarchy, capital disrupted man's fundamental essence."
marx: noted proponent of "man's fundamental essence".
for his own suggestions, all you hear are 'possible sites of critique', 'potential paths of resistance' and shit like that. the analysis always stops short of anything meaningful, because to demand actual political action is (by his own interpretation) to fall back into the trap of normalized, exclusionary hegemony. class unity is bad because it would interrupt the 'proliferation of heterogeneous discourse' which he values above all else.
this kind of theory is totally divorced from struggle or any practical concerns. so it's no surprise to find him stating, outright in the introduction of his aberrations in black that "this book began in the restlessness of grad school". which i think is hugely significant. a lot of contemporary theory (not just queer) i've seen emerges from these academic realms that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and which values novel and 'problematizing' interpretations over any actual call to change. I think this is why so much of the theory gets caught up in the idea of 'discourse', because it's talking that butters its bread, and revolutionary action would threaten its livelihood.
good post. it's weird- the same situation that laclau & mouffe saw in democracy, of elisions coming to haunt and change the forces doing the eliding, and that butler took to use on gender and constructions of sexual identity, is taken by ferguson to use on marx in a way that I don't enjoy-
but the book's overarching topic, that of the methods used by the bigoted sociology of the 19th and 20th century to regulate and curate its subjects, is an important one. there's other authors who wrote about this starting a couple decades prior, but I'm more solid on their anthropological equivalents. Anyway, I think you're right about the book's problems and i didn't go along with ferguson's "materialist" conclusions at all, but his research on the problems of structural inequality in sociology was very thorough and I learned things. i did. i learned them.
Edited by palafox ()
roseweird posted:lol goodness girl you really can't help yourself huh
You keep referring to me as girl as if that's acceptable or as if I recognize you as a homegirl or something. I don't, dude.