Mark, it is really quite okay by me that you don't see. Homophobia is a
complex and difficult problem to analyse and most often operates in a
way that is unseen. The first and most important step in this analysis
is not to confuse homophobia with other forms of oppression like racism
and sexism. Homophobia operates in a very different way. It simply
cannot be understood as just another form of discrimination just like
racism and sexism.

Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari although they have gone a small way
in this direction also don't get it (so I wouldn't feel bad about not
getting it.) Foucault has gone some way in his last books before
HIV/AIDS got him.

In part, homophobia functions as communication (as viral contagion) with
the woman's body and the body of the inferior race in historically
racist discourse as vectors, so it forms a complex with sexism and
racism, both of which are separate and distinct forms of oppression. (A
complex is a structure in which each part of the structure needs the
other parts in order to form a complex.) This, in summary, is why
homophobia is not the same form of oppression as racism and sexism.
Homophobia is also essential in generating the Oedipal complex as Freud
and Lacan demonstrate. The way that Oedipus distributes itself across
the surface of the earth as a complex control mechanism in which
homophobia is a communication of diverging contradiction (that is
incompossible with the heterosexual world) produces the figure of the
homosexual as a morphology and a figure of death. While state power
directs greatest destructive force on the homosexual body which is
identified by this morphology as pathology, homophobia, without being
seen to do so, also affects everyone, straight and gay, women and men.
Another concrete example is the way homophobia communicates anti-Arab
racism, again at least in part, and which we are currently experiencing
a flood of.

It is further important not to confuse the genesis of homophobia simply
as ancient Greek and Roman pederasty which is the disciplining of the
ruling class patriarchal body of the time. Homophobia at this historical
time has a genesis connected to the wars waged by the Classical World
against what was identified as Celts and other so-called Barbarians.
This also connects to the genesis of racism and sexism. Homophobia was
produced as a communication in this historical complex. The historical
transformation of modern state power and the morphology of the
homosexual body produced in the 18th and 19th century then becomes the
figure of sickness and death and homophobia as we now experience it is
the communication of sickness and death. Homophobia affects everyone.

This is, of course, a very quick summary in a short email. There are
many things missing which support and demonstrate how homophobia works.
In blindness is our greatest insight. Homophobia is such a blindness.

best wishes

Chris Jones.


On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 09:22, Mark Weiss wrote:
> I'm sorry, Alison and Chris, I haven't the slightest idea what it means.
> I'm not denying, I just don't see it.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 08:39 AM 4/19/2003 +1000, you wrote:
> >Dear Chris
> >
> >I just want to say that I am finding your posts most provoking of
> >thought, and wish I had the time to sit down and write a proper and
> >intelligent response.  Alas, they are hoist by their own petard,
> >since time is what I require to do so, and also what I don't have.
> >But I wanted to say that anyway.
> >
> >I have also taken note of what you say about homophobia on the list.
> >I am fairly sure what you mean, having read your posts.  But I am not
> >entirely sure.  I think you are right to note it, nevertheless,
> >without listing examples.  Apart from anything else, it's tactful,
> >and keeps the focus on the issue.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >A
> >--
> >
> >
> >Alison Croggon
> >Editor
> >Masthead Online
> >http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
> >
> >Home page
> >http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>