Miles writes:
> --So by this definition, I'm queer;
You probably are. I bet there are several queers on the list.
> in my view, the relatively recent cultural phenomenon of
stable sexual identities is simply a basis for social control in
industrial societies.
I think they are also useful as way stations when dealing with provisional reality (Nargarjuna again).
> However, anyone who self-identifies as (say) a lesbian or a
gay man is not queer,
Queer is also shorthand for lgbqt.
> because they accept the culturally dominant view that people
should have stable sexual identities.
Stable sexual identities are useful in having stable intimate relationships. Problems arise when a person attaches to the identity. See Yoshie and strategic essentialism.
Duncan writes:
> I just think that its development - from "Jeez, what's the
deal with this specific action?" to "By what reasoning might
one justify crossing a picket line?" - while theoretically valid,
is odd.
Odd or not, it has led to a useful discussion.
> As in kind of erosive and painful, in light of labor's current
weakness and vulnerability.
Looking at the sorry state of labor is painful. But any approach would cause such pain.
> As opposed to, say, "Is there any way to express critical or
conditional solidarity, and can/should there be?"
Before that question can be asked, there needs to be agreement that existence is a provisional/conditional affair. One of the reasons that capitalism succeeeded was that it offered people a stable sense of self (through the cultivation of desire) which people then hid behind in order to shield themselves from the provisional/conditional nature of reality.
At capitalism's peak, LRT was all the rage. In order to combat capitalism unions, rightly, adopted LRT as a weapon. But as capitalism begins to disintegrate, LRT is a liability rather than an asset.
Capitalism today is spitting out identities like a decaying nucleus spits out muons, gamma particles, etc. This decay, rather than being a sign of the health of capitalism (an obvious error that so many people fall into), is evidence of its vulnerability at this moment in time.
My disagreement with Pope John is that instead of seizing this moment and turning capitalism's decay to labor's advantage, he would rather continue pursuing outmoded, archaic strategies, thereby allowing capitalism time to adapt to its decay and turn these multiplying identities to its benefit. A new collective is waiting to be born, but it is one that will be based on very different principles than previous ones.
As a teenager, it seemed that many of the authors I read eventually used the following quote as an epigraph for one of their books:
"The old is dying and the new cannot yet be born. In the resulting interregnum a variety of morbid symptons appear."
For some reason I committed it to memory at the time and was now able to reproduce it 30 years after I first read it. In some ways it was one of the first pieces of wisdom I ever encountered (another was the passage Sujeet quoted from "A Study in Scarlet." It is one of my favorites in the entire canon).
For me, clinging to LRT as a useful strategy is one of those morbid symptoms. LRT is familiar, comfortable and, in its time, effective. As hard as it is to abandon LRT, its continued use helps, rather than hurts, capitalism.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister