[For the following, I will be drawing on the writing of one of the foremost writers on queer theory, Tim Dean. All quotes are from him, and for which I can provide references if people are interested in further reading.]
For the uninitiated, much of current queer theory is based on the Michel Foucault's criticism of 'heteronormativity.'
terms: Heteronormativity: "all those ways in which the world makes sense from the heterosexual point of view. It assumes that a complementary relation between the sexes is both a natural arrangement (the way things are) and a cultural ideal (the way things should be)."
Queer theory: an analysis of "how heteronormativity structures the meaningfulness of the social world, thereby enforcing a hierarchy between the normal and the deviant or queer."
Foucauldian queer theory: (1) "Foucault argues that power in the modern era can be distinguished by its operating productively (to proliferate categories of subjective being), rather than merely negatively (by prohibiting or supressing types of behavior)." (2) This new/modern form of power is called "biopower." Biopower: "a more diffuse form of power that actively brings into existence [subjective] modes of being through techniques of classification and normalization." (The old, purely negative form of power is called by Foucault "juridical power".) (3)Biopower is not invested in an individual (ex: the king) or in a group (ex: landowners), but "operates trans-individually through discourse and institutions." (4) One of Foucault's prime examples of the operation of biopower: "the late-nineteenth century invention of the homosexual as a discrete identity, a form of selfhood. Before roughly 1870, Foucault contends, it was not really possible to think of oneself as a homosexual, no matter what kind of sex had or with whom," b/c "the category of homosexuality didn't yet exist. Once the homosexual had been named as a type... sexual activity with a member of the same sex could be understood as not only a sin or a crime, but also a sickness and a deviation from the norm." (5) As the above makes clear, modern power "relies less on laws and taboos," that is, on the juridical mode of power, "than on the force of social norms to regulate behavior." The construction of these social norms is based on the process of identity-formation: "The greater the diversification of subjective identities, the more securely power maintains its hold on us." (6) According to Foucault's queer theory, then, "one does not resist the forces of normalization [i.e., heteronormativity] by inventing new kinds of social or sexual identity, as many sex radicals in the U.S. still seem to believe." Breaking down the population into further identity-based classifications is the technique through which biopower controls us by regulating the categories of our thought and identity. (7) Indeed, Foucault's queer theory can serve as the basis of a critique of ANY version of identity politics --black lib, women's lib, gay lib, etc. Dean again: "These forms of identity politics proved remarkably effective in generating large-scale social changes; yet their limitations stemmed from their faith in identity as the basis of political action." (8) The problem of basing gay-lib politics based on the unique and irreducible 'gay identity' became apparent with the beginning of the AIDS crisis: "Public discourse early in the epidemic aggressively stigmatized the groups of people that first manifested AIDS mortalities, primarily injection-drug users and gay men. Right-wing politicians nd the mdeia characterized AIDS as a disease of identity - something you could catch because of the kind of perso you were." i.e. AIDS was seen as a gay disease. (Remember GRID?) "Gay activists started to see how the discourse of identity that had proven so enabling in the 1970s had its drawbacks, as the hard-won political gains of gay liberation were eroded by the new rationale that AIDS seemed to provide for disenfranchisisng gay men. Rather than gradually being accepted into mainstream society, gays were abruptly recast as plague-spreading sex deviants... Public discourse showed less concern for helping those ill with the disease than for protecting the 'general population' that they might contaminate." See Simon Watney's media analysis on how the notion of 'general population' implies a notion of 'disposable population' (in a similar way that 'normal' defines itself in relation to 'pathological'). (9) Dean continues: "Hence the 'general population' can be understood as another term for heteronormative society. Those exluded from the general population - whether by virtue of their sexuality [i.e. gays], race, class, nationality [remember the Haitians, to continue the example] - are by definition queer. In this way, 'queer' came to stand less for a particular sexual orientation or a stigmatized erotic identity than for a critical distance from the white, middle-class, heterosexual norm... Whereas gay liberation had placed its trust in identity politics, queer activism entailed a critique of identity and an acknowedgement that different social groups could transcend their idenity-based particularisms in the interest of resisting heteronormative society... Queer is anti-identitarian and is defined relationally rather than substantively. Queer has no essence, and its radical force evaporates as soon as queer coalesces into a psychological identity. The term 'queer' is not simply a newer, hipper word for being gay; instead it alters the way we think about gayness and homosexuality."
Clearly, I think, 'queer theory' as begun through the work of M. Foucault has relevance to contemporary leftists who want to rethink how to tackle even basic questions including 'how does one DO politics?': "[Queer theory's] anti-identitarianism gives rise to ... the promise that we may hink and act beyond the confines of identity, including group identity, and the risk that in doing so the specificities of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ethnicity might be overlooked or lost. Queer theory is the discourse that explores those promises and risks."
Of course, M. Foucault's particular brand of queer theory is the dominant one in today's academy, but not the only one. As someone on this list pointed out, any queer theory rests on a view of subjectivity, broadly put. Whoever that was (apologies, horrible memory for names) suggested Buddhism was one such way of understanding subjectivity. Call me an old-fashioned historical materialist, but I have to seek my understanding of subjectivity elsewhere, namely science (no offense meant to the religious among us).
Personally, I believe that the closest thing we have to a 'science' of subjectivity is psychoanalysis. There is, of course, a long and distinguished tradition of trying to tie Freud to Marx, with widely different lefties putting their own spin on it, from Adorno and Marcuse to Althusser to Zizek. Marx simply did not work on such notions as how human 'desire' operates or is structured, nor how 'sex drive' relates to 'aggresivity' or 'the drive for mastery' nor why women would even want to have children given the horrifying socioeconomic situation many of hem face. Even if for the most basic reason that the reproduction of class society is the essential condition for the existence of class society -- Marxists better get used to talking about how society organizes/structures its own (human) reproduction or they'll get stuck in economism, imho. The days where one could think 'sex' apart from 'class society' should be over, especially in light of the novel development of political theory that arise from combining the two (for example, the notion of "biopower").
I have a feeling many on this list don't like psychoanalysis considering the disrepute that it has lately fallen into, but I disagree. Sure, psychopharmacology is a much more popular form of 'therapy' these days, and is quite clearly 100% scientific. Yet it is also reductionist and missing the point that [no matter how materialist-scientific one is,] the psychical structure of the mind (conscious and, so my wager goes, unconsicous) always plays a mediating role between the physical (the physical interior of the body as much as the physical exterior of the environment). (The placebo effect is just one clear example that the mind is not simply a reflection of the physical but an active agency with its own logic. Another to consider is False Memory Syndrome.) Today's answer that everything is 'genetic' if it is not cultural misses the (Hegelian) point that the subject is neither his genes nor his environment, but rather the very gap between the two (otherwise, we would, of course, be mindless zombies with no actual free will). Of course, there are at least 57 varieties of psychoanalysis, which further complicates.
Anyways, I'm clearly getting off my point, which was that there are alternate non-Foucauldian understandings of queer theory out there, especially a psychoanalytic understandig of queer theory which I hold to, and that furthermore, it would be very premature to dismiss psychoanalysis on Marxist or scientific grounds without much discussion.
Those who dismiss psychoanalysis on the grounds that it's simply a theory for Victorian-era Vienesse should find the following quote interesting: "Here we have the paradigmatic case of a properly historical dialectic: precisely because Freud was 'the son of his Victorian times' - as many historicist critics of psychoanalysis are never tired of repeating - he was able to express its universal feature, which remains invisible in [society's] 'normal' functioning. The other great example of the state of crisis as the only historical moment which allows for an insight into universality is, of course, that of Marx..." Slavoj Zizek, 'The Ticklish Subject' [One could also add Lenin, eh?]
In either case, I think that Foucault's queer theory's stance on bdsm or S-M is clear: any attempt to 'clinic-ize' such practices, to base them on a theory of the sadist or masochist as an identity, is part of the operation of "bio-power" and as such, only serves to reinforce "heteronormativity."
I guess before I go any further I should see what the list thinks? Joanna had expressed a desire for "consensual discussions" as well as one to "get educated" - Hopefully this brings us down a path where we can go beyond the typical liberal-consenting-adults type argument to something a little more radical. All these ideas do lead me to believe that the way that humans think about their own sexual practices is far more important for the way sex relates to society than which actual sex practices one does...
When it comes to sex, leftists should even engage in the problematic of what's allowed, what's deviant/prohibited. Instead we should talk about the more productive question of how we should understand sexuality's relation to modes of social control. Of course, we should also criticize Dean for demoting class to 'just another identity,' and Foucault for his radical anti-Hegelianism, but those are whole different post.
Mike DeLucia