I think this primarily comes out of Joseph Mossad's argument, which Yoshie was really interested in a while back. It actually comes up in Foucault's History of Sexuality pt.1 (A New Hope) in his discussion of ars erotica vs. science sexualia (that last part is wrong, but damn if I am going to get up and look in my copy to dig up that bullshit). The problem is that this concept is so orientalist (in the Said sense... don't worry Carrol) that we Foucaultians try to repress that that moment ever happened in an otherwise fairly interesting book. If one takes Foucault seriously, making the Ahmadinejad argument would mean arguing that Iran is somehow radically outside the structures of disciplinary power (in the sense of basic medicine, census structures, modern schooling, etc), which could only occur through a basic orientalism. robert wood
> While I'm dipping my toe into the discussion: Did I miss it, or did no
> one
> respond to the argument someone made here that Ahmadinejad's claim that
> there are no homosexuals in Iran is basically true, on Butlerian and
> Foucaultian grounds? I hope someone responded to that, because it seems
> pretty ridiculous to me. When people in his audience at Columbia U.
> (where
> I think he made that claim) burst out laughing, I think their laughter
> might
> have had more to do with a liberal U.S. audience's assumption that
> homosexuality (and heterosexuality) are transhistorical, universal, etc.
> But
> nevertheless it seems ridiculous to claim that Iran (a country with at
> least
> a history of a Westernized middle class) is so culturally isolated that
> there really are no homosexuals (i.e., people who identify as
> homosexuals).
> Are there no leftists either, or liberals, or fans of Harry Potter, or of
> punk rock?
>
> --Chris
>
>
>>
>> Message: 16
>> Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:59:14 -0400
>> From: Seth Ackerman <sethackerman1 at verizon.net>
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Butler on feminist theory/queer theory
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Message-ID: <484EDD12.6030703 at verizon.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> Dennis Claxton wrote:
>> > I have some problems here, because I think there's some anti-feminism
>> > in queer theory.
>>
>> Dennis, could you fill in what she's talking about? (Or anyone else.)
>> What's the anti-feminism in queer theory?
>>
>> Seth
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
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>> End of lbo-talk Digest, Vol 528, Issue 5
>> ****************************************
>>
>
>
>
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