Hi Chris,

Well, I did find this perfectly clear, and most interesting, so I'm glad to
have overheard this remark to Dominic. It's complex and deserves a much
longer reply, but I was particularly taken by your sense of this 'everywhere
space is constucted as attractive forces which are combatted with active
forces organized around axioms of human rights. . .' an interesting polarity
of strife though I am curious as to how you see this 'everywhere space' or
'the plane' since in this description anyway (and it may just be this
format or never having enough time to reply to the depth one would like etc) it
seems to have a certain given or pre-existent quality. However, since in
this 'everywhere space is constructed' you do use the word 'constructed'
perhaps you mean this space is brought into existence by virtue of the very
combat over that space? Not that one fights over axioms of human rights but
that the human rights (in various extensions) are constructed and brought
into existence by the very act of fighting for them. Well, pardon moi,
if this is a dense question,

Best,

Rebecca

Rebecca Seiferle
<a target=_blank
href="http://www.thedrunkenboat.com">www.thedrunkenboat.com</a>
-------Original Message-------
From: Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/24/03 03:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Homophobia

>
> Dominic, thanks for taking the time for those replies. This risks
becoming a complex and difficult discussion and you have inspired me to
go back and look at a book which covers the ground you are interested
in.

Lee Edelman, _Homographesis: essays in gay literary and cultural theory_
Routledge, 1994.

This book is worth reading, if you can get hold of a copy, as it uses
Lacanian and Derridean deconstruction, including references to deMann,
to analyse homophobia. If I find some more quotes which help, I may
type them up and send them.

Just one quote I found. "...the scope of this "sexual difference"
extends beyond questions of social policy alone, that like the question
of feminism, to which it may never be entirely assimilable but from
which it may never be wholly separable either, homosexuality is indeed
and "all embracing issue" whose decisive effects in the shaping of
modern ideologies of gender and sexuality  can be traced in the specific
blindness at work in his own cultural critique."

From: p32. "Redeeming the Phallus: Wallace Stevens, Frank Lentricchia,
and the politics of (hetero)sexuality." (FL is a het male
deconstructionist who claims to be queer friendly, but cannot see his
own blindness.)

Now, all this work on Lacan and Derrida in terms of homophobia has been
done. So, I begin with a different plane which is outside of the limits
of the plane used by Lacan. To understand homophobia in Lacan's terms
you have to begin not with the Symbolic, but go back to the Mirror stage
and especially the logic of the objet (a), and Lacan's two schemas,
Schema L and Schema R. (Sorry, that is all I can remember. I can't
remember the logic.) I am also outside of the plane used by Derrida,
which is also a transcendental plane, as is Lacan's, also Derrida is out
to deconstruct this metaphysical plane. This plane I have laid out
comprehends both Lacan and Derrida and is unknown and cannot be
theorised in Lacan or Derrida's terms and all the warnings Derrida gives
about a nostalgia for the lost or unknown and also the utopian nostalgia
of a hoped for future to come which is not here yet, apply. It is a
non-philosophical aesthetic plane, so to confuse it with politics is not
advisable. I want to leave my plane out of this discussion, other then
to acknowledge it is there, a plane which does exist in the now time
that I write, because all you will get from me on this is gobblygook.


>
> Goodness only knows what all this means.

Sorry about the gobblygook. All I was trying to say is you were trying
to read Foucault's philosophical plane as a transcendental plane. It
doesn't work this way. Philosophy needs to read on the terms it sets out
for itself. The problem is, in the liberal arts this doesn't happen
often for reasons to do with time and funding and whatever else may lead
to misreadings.

 Of Foucault I meant to say only that
> for all that his analysis of the "austere monarchy of sex" interrogates
the
> discursive schemata of sexual liberation, he seems to reinstate them
behind
> the scenes in speaking of a domain of "bodies and pleasures" that would
> remain uninstrumented by the discourses of sex, or that could one day be
> decoupled from their instrumentation. This "one day" lies beyond the
horizon
> of presently conceivable thought and practice;

The plane that Foucault is writing with:
a domain of "bodies and pleasures" that would remain uninstrumented by
the discourses of sex
--does exist in thought and practice. It is a very similar plane to the
one I use, except Foucault's is a plane of immanence which belongs to
philosophy. My plane is non-philosophical. (D&G _What is Philosophy_ has
a good pedagogical discussion of this.) You are, however, quite correct
not to confuse this plane of Foucault's with day to day political
struggles for gay rights. This is important. Same for my plane. It is
not a politics, nor can I claim the right to speak on behalf of
currently occurring day to day struggles being carried out by gay and
lesbian activists, since I am not engaged in the day to day struggles. I
also need to recognise that although I try only to be a footnote in the
history of the struggle, I need the modesty to understand that history
can bludgeon current activists adversely. This is not to absent myself,
but to understand and have faith in the abilities of the younger
activists which have now gone into battle, which I most certainly do. My
activities go in a different direction.

The impossible totality you discuss is a totality which is homophobia,
without the need for arrogation. Impossible because in the final
analysis the logic is total extermination of all human life. It is a
universal with a totality, which means it is finite. Universals are
finite even if defined by an infinite line, in this definition of the
term. This is the universal which homophobia occupies and in this sense
is everywhere. There is space which is outside of this everywhere in
which the struggle against homophobia can also operate. It may sound
illogical, but the logic is there, like a sort of nonsense. It is to do
with how this everywhere space is constructed as attractive forces which
are combated with active forces organised around axioms of human rights,
also.....
Sorry, too much to say and I have run out of time. This email might not
make much sense but I will send it, anyway. Perhaps best for me to go
back to Dominic's other points, rather then follow this thread. (Time
probs, of course.)

best wishes

Chris Jones.
>