Dear Chris,
          Is this stand-up comedy?
                Wystan

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Jones [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, 7 May 2003 1:48 p.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Homophobia


Sorry, Alison, it was not abuse, unless one does etymological twisting
so that abuse becomes abject use, of course. It was queer performance. I
should explain and expand the plane of composition.

It was not for nothing that I set the composition up beginning with
Bakhtin's dialogic imagination which involves reflectivity, even if the
mirror is flawed as Patrick White so aptly put it, and hence reading
positions. This was followed by a discussion of personae and mask,
indicating a performance, following Judith Butler's suggestion of cross
dressing modified with a positive synthesis to cross the dress into
address, which was then demonstrated.

Although I referenced Dominic, I was merely lobbing the ball to his
divergent line from the divergent line which I have extended on the
question of Kantian self buggery. Aristotlian logic has already been
broken and one can assume the rules of tennis played on divergent lines
would themselves at some point break down into a new type of Nietzschean
ideal game. The reading positions indicated by dialogic imagination if
adopted in a direct line of fire would place the reader themselves in
the position of the homophobe who upholds homophobia and it is their
actions, which the reader adopts which places them in a position of self
abuse. They would be abusing themselves in this position. Doing it to
their own self. (As an aside to Dominic... i am not sure it could be
simply understood as disjunction as it involves various synthesis, but
that is getting into a technical discussion in philosophy.)

It is well documented and understood that psychoanalytic theory involves
the Kantian system. Masculine subjectivity involves a type of Kantian
self buggery, which explains the expletives used in terms of
transcendental idealism. I have merely extended this line from a
previous discussion to further entangle the Kantian knot. This can also
be understood as Nietzschean reactive forces and resentiment. The
aesthetic plane laid out is pragmatic modernist poetics using reverse
perspectivism and relativistic point of view along with Nietzschean
active aesthetic forces, which are also components of modernist fourth
person singular. It was queer modernist poetics.

The below extract may be of interest in an analysis of homophobia as
reactive forces and queer folk as active forces.

best wishes

Chris Jones.

from Hypatia Volume 14, Number 1
A Queer Supplement: Reading Spinoza after Grosz
CATHERINE MARY DALE

Unlike other kinds of oppression that do not separate a body and its
actions, Grosz suggests that homophobia is precisely the oppression that
does: it separates what a body is from what it can do, thus marking a
difference "between an ontology and a pragmatics . . . " (Grosz 1995,
214). Gays and lesbians are "not just distinguished by sex, race, and
class characteristics, but also by sexual desires and practices" (1995,
214). In order to appraise the conflicting relations operating within
the oppression of homosexuality, Grosz uses Nietzsche's noble and
slavish dynamic forces, discussing them, following Gilles Deleuze, as
active and reactive forces (see Deleuze 1983). "Every relationship of
forces constitutes a body whether it is chemical, biological, social or
political. Any two forces, being unequal constitute a body as soon as
they enter into a relationship. And this relationship is the fruit of
chance, and for Nietzsche it appears as the most 'astonishing' thing,
much more astonishing, in fact, than consciousness and spirit" (Grosz
1995, 215). Summarily, active forces are innocent, open, and aggressive,
while reactive forces are cunning and obedient. An active force "moves
in its direction without regard for anything other than its own free
expansion, mindless of others" (1995, 215). Reactive forces, on the
other hand, live "in modes of sensibility and sentiment"; they restrict
chance and appear most significantly in religion, morality, and law
(1995, 215).

Grosz suggests that resistant and outlawed sexualities such as gay and
lesbian are most often regarded as reactive forces because they struggle
against normalization, while heterosexuality is commonly viewed as an
active force with the power to command and oppress. Effectively
reversing these opinions, Grosz names homophobia and heterosexism
reactive forces "which function in part to prevent alternatives, to
negate them and to ruminate on how to destroy them; [while] gay and
lesbian sexualities and lifestyles can be seen as innovative, inventive,
productive, and thus active insofar as they aim at their own pleasures,
their own distributions, their own free expansion" (1995, 216)

[citations]
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1993. Experimental desire: Bodies and pleasures in
queer theory. Paper read at conference on Sexualities: Public Discourse
and Academic Knowledges, 7 Aug. at University of Melbourne, Australia.

---1995. Space, time and perversion. New York: Routledge.