Outside Belongings 9780415915830, 9780415915847, 9781315865805

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Outside Belongings

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Outside Belongings Elspeth Probyn

D

Routledge Taylor &. Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1996 by Routledge Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business C o p y rig h t© 1996 bv Routledge Parts of C hapter 2 appear in .SVxy Bodies: 7 he Strange Carnalities of Feminism (eds. Elizabeth G rosz and Elspeth Probvn, R outledge 1995); C h ap ter 4 was published in GLG: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol. 2 (1995). All rights reserved. No part ot this book m ay be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in an\ te rm or bv anv electronic, m echanical or oth er m eans, now know n or here­ after invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any inform ation storage or retrieval system , w ith o u t perm ission in w riting from the publishers.

Library o f Congress C ataloging-in-Publication Data Probvn, Elspeth, 1958O utside belongings / bv Elspeth Probvn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. W om en— Psychology. 2. Gav com m unities. 3. Fem inist theory. I. Title. HQ1206.P744 1996 95-26496 305.42— dc20 CIP ISBN 13: 978-0-415-91583-0 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-91584-7 (pbk)

Positive Positive attitude attitude

acknowledgments introduction .____ _ ___ .__

vii

i

Approximating Belonging

1

2

3

On the Surface

Becomjng-Horse. ^ . Transports in Desire

uLove in a Cold Climate? ^

17

37

63

Queer Belongings m Quebec

A

S

Susoended Beginnings Of Childhood and Nostalgia

Discifilmaru Dgsires ^

93

125

The Outside or Queer Feminist Cultural Studies

postscript

155

notes

157

bibliography

165

index

177

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aci aiwvjwim iiwii Es_ My heartfelt thanks to those who read and commented on previous drafts: Marty Allor, Fadi Abou-Rihan, Ann Game, Anna Gibbs, Line Grenier, Larry Grossberg, Judith Halberstam, Lise Harou, Kevin Koppelson, Val Morrison, and Kim Sawchuk. I am particularly indebted to Marty, Larry, and Kim, who came to my rescue at the last hour to read the final version. I want to thank those who invited me to present parts of this book at conferences as well as the friends who enrich academic wandering: MarieLuise Angerer, Lauren Berlant, Julia Creet, Moira Gatens, Sue Golding, Liz Grosz, shassan Hage, Melissa Hardie, Val Hartouni, Caren Kaplan, Kate Lilley, George Lipsitz, Robert Martin, Minoo Moellem, Paul Patton, Jules Pidduck, Fitz Pool, Robbie Schwartzwald, Beth Seaton, Sherry Simon, Zoe Sofoulis, and m any others. I also want to thank my students at the Universite de Montreal, especially Diane Breton, Francois Gagnon, Fanny Roy-Huard, and my research assistants, Katarina Soukup and Julie Garneau. The members of the Groupe de recherche sur la citoyennete culturelle helped me to consider more closely notions of citizenship. My time at UCSD Women’s Studies Program challenged me to rethink Quebec in California, and the University of Western Sydney, Nepean, provided a much-needed bridge into Australian academic culture. My love as always to my family, Stephen, Jane, and John Probyn and Nick Dinnage, who, even if they don’t always follow, are steadfast in their support. I gratefully acknowledge the funding that enabled this research: FCAR-Nouveaux chercheurs, FCAR-Subventions aux equipes, and the Social Sciences and Ffumanities Research Council of Canada.

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introduction.

Approximating Belonging

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Perhaps because I grew up with a bleak architecture that enclosed its inhab­ itants and hid them away from distant neighbors, I find the architecture of M ontreal especially intriguing. The working-class and form erly w orkingclass p arts o f the city are stru n g togeth er and defined by a netw ork o f balconies; often these are enhanced by outside staircases that curve their way up to the second and third floors. In winter, these staircases m ake absolutely no sense; covered in snow, they resemble nothing m ore than icy water slides. But as soon as the spring sun em erges, balconies becom e the p laces w here life is conducted. In David F en n ario ’s term s, the fam o u s response to the question o f w here you are goin g for su m m e r holiday is “Balconville.” And as his play o f the sam e nam e m akes clear, Balconville is the space of a convergence; for Fennario, it is evidence that in certain spaces w orking-class ties and sensibilities can overcom e the traditional hard line o f linguistic separation between les A n glais et les Francos. Since the productions of his play in the late ’70s and early ’80s, there has been a furth er loosen in g o f the categorization o f all A ngloph ones as capitalist swine and all Francophones as the victims of English im perialism. As Sherry Sim on writes, “M ontreal’s hum an geography for a long time seemed to confirm the m ost elemental verities of economic domination and cultural difference

But

as m ight be expected in our increasingly hybrid present, neither the neat geom etrical divisions nor the polarizations of identity they suggest seem quite as certain today.” (1991: 22)

A m ixture o f factors (both gentrification and the appeal o f low rents) draw s a h etero gen eou s bunch o f inhabitants, but B alconville rem ains. While other cities feature balcony architecture (th ou gh in m y experience not as m any as one m igh t think), there is a certain sin gu larity to M ontreal’s balconies. In Jean-C laude M arsan ’s description, the late-19thand early-20th-century type o f housing typical within Francophone quar­ ters is m arked by distinct elem ents: notably by the habitual front balcony

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Elspeth Probyn which served “as a natural extension o f the lodging.” He speculates that “as the m ajority o f this type o f housing was destined for a newly arriving p o p ­ ulation from the rural world, where galleries and verandas were usual, it m ay be th at this equipm en t was considered to be n ecessary” (1994: 270). From balconies early in carn ation as outside p arlors, people continue to actually live on them : television sets are installed outside, as well as arm ­ chairs, sofas, herbs, flowers, or entire vegetable gardens, radios, awnings, and curtains— the whole resem bling a tent city, w ithout the veil o f canvas, on upper floors above busy city streets. Living on the outside for the su m m er entails a proxim ity to others as well as the drawing o f new frontiers. In m y own case in the area o f MileEnd (a m ixed neighborhood o f Jews, Greeks, Portuguese, Anglos, Francos), m y back balcony (or m ore precisely, la g a le rie) is a m ere foot and a half wide and joins m e with m y two neighbors, w om en with w hom I often converse. O ur m om en ts o f conversation are ordered by an inaudible rhythm so that we talk w hen we talk and at other m om en ts proceed as if we were alone in enw alled gardens: I tune out when one is entertaining her boyfriend; the o th er leaves m e alone w hen Em co u rtin g w ith a girl. By chance, it is a building with all w om en tenants except for one sole male. While we do not live free o f the fear that w om en face on the outside, we have nonetheless reassured ourselves o f the relative difficulty o f anyone reaching ou r bal­ conies. N ot a ston e’s throw away, we face the Hasidim schul where boys of various sizes play lou d ly on a w orn p atch o f concrete. As I w atch the exchanges o f tenderness and discipline betw een the boys and their rabbi teachers, the sp ectacle o f a w o m a n ’s body in sh orts goes u n rem ark ed ; indeed, I am rendered invisible until I hear a shout: “Hey lady, throw down the ball,” or a snatch o f h u m or from these serious y oun g m en: “Hey m is­ sus, throw dow n the cat.” To the east, and under the church which looks G reek O rth o d o x but h ouses Polish C ath o lics, a bunch o f tw entysom ethings have created som eth ing that looks like a ’60s com m u n e on the sec­ ond-floor roof. We share a taste for the seventies when it com es to m usic, and ABBA and the Village People stir up the hum id night air. In turn, their building abuts on som e renovated condos, the inhabitants o f which hide behind a trellis. While this m ay sound like a rom antic picture, w hat is m ore striking is the very ordinariness, and indeed the fundam ental shabbiness, that ren­

Approximating Belonging ders M ontreal “u n ejo lie la id e ” (as the apt if rather sexist expression w ould have it). It is its so-what singularity that begs certain questions. As m y neigh­ bor Sherry Sim on asks, “N ot only do im m igran ts but also those w ho are ‘from here’ share increasingly com plex form s of cu ltural allegiance. How are we going to find an adequate symbolic language to account for the frac­ tured and plural identities o f those (m ore and m ore n u m erou s) who are com m itted to Quebec and yet participate in several cultures?” (1991: 23). For me, living in this jum bled quartier and city brings to the fore sev­ eral preoccupations that have been part o f m y w ork over the last several years. The experience o f quite literally living on the ou tside d u rin g the su m m er m onths (though as I describe in the third chapter, winter brings another type o f articulation o f bodies and belonging) speaks o f som ething m ore than the term identity can catch, a cohabitation that goes beyond the lim ited concept o f tolerance. Quite simply, this experience inspires a m ode o f thinking about how people get along, how various form s of belonging are articulated , how individuals co n ju g ate difference into m an n ers o f being, and how desires to becom e are played o u t in everyday circu m ­ stances. It lends an urgency to questions about the m ateriality o f cultural locality and revitalizes that staple of cultural studies inquiry: How do indi­ viduals m ake sense o f their lives? For m e, it also m ean s an o th er way of going about asking these questions; in very banal ways, I p u t to w ork what I think was a com plim ent when one o f m y colleagues called m e “une sociologue de la p e a u ,”

“a sociologist of the skin.”

While I take the conceptual elem ents for this project from several sources, I want to briefly consider the conceptual reach o f the notion o f a “sociology o f the skin.” Basically it com es down to a heightened sensitivity to the sensibilities, to being captured by other m anners o f being and desires for becom ing-other that I call belonging. For instance, I am drawn by exam ­ ples: I seek to exam ine exam ples as interstitial m om ents in the work of artic­ ulation. Here I take articulation in Stuart H all’s sense: the process whereby “the articulation of different, distinct elem en ts.. .can be rearticulated in dif­ ferent ways because they have no necessary ‘belongingness’” (1986: 53). The exam ple o f the balconies in M ontreal has no necessary m eaning, yet it exem plifies for m e a certain m ovem ent as different and distinct elem ents are brought together, if only m om entarily. Lines o f class, gender, sex, gen­ eration, ethnicity, and race interm ingle as people hang out. The balcony is

...J.

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for m e a site where one sees an ongoing inbetweenness. It is a sm all instance, but it highlights the necessity o f getting at the m inuteness o f m ovem ent that occurs in the everyday processes o f articulation. This m ode o f proceeding by way o f on e’s skin th rou gh the m in u te d o c u m en tin g o f so-w hat events and exam p les carries so m e risks and requires furth er explanation. W ithout belaboring the skin im age, I use it here to foregro u n d a certain th eoretical and political co m m itm e n t and awareness that Hall characterizes as feeling “the pressure on our language, to show its workings, to open itself to accessibility” (1992: 289). For me, this foregrounds an engagem ent with the tangible, the m aterial, and a d evo­ tion to trying to realize the virtual as the actual. To replay D on n a H araw ay’s question, “Why should our bodies end at the skin?” (1985: 96), I also want to ask why skin should end at our individual bodies? For w hat I am trying to capture in these essays is the sense th at belonging expresses a desire for m ore than w hat is, a yearning to m ake skin stretch beyond indi­ vidual needs and wants. I am then com m itted to finding and experim ent­ ing with different m odalities o f registering the sensation o f that longing. It follow s that I risk privileging m y own perspective. While I am well aware th at I w alk a thin line th at at any tim e m ay disappear into narcissism or endless auto-reflexivity, I m aintain that the body that writes is integral to the type o f figuring I wish to do. It is a body th at is fully part o f the outside it experim ents with. If the angles from which I look and which I seek to cre­ ate are unrepresentative, they are nonetheless part o f the w orld as I see it becom ing. Feminist, dyke, desiring: the exam ples that interest m e at times point to the banality o f violence, but m ore often they speak o f instances w here individuals are, consciously or not, cau gh t up in w orking against racism , gynophobia, and h om ophobia. From w here I write, the w orld is pretty w onderfully weird and diverse and perverse; it is w hat encourages m e to hope that transversal connections between individuals are an every­ day actuality, and th at the virtu al politics o f su ch e n gagem en ts can be m aterialized. In term s o f disciplinary belongings, this is a project that strives to be fully interdisciplinary. This requires an acute attentiveness to w riting, to reading, to looking, to being interested. Like the processes o f articulation which involve m aking evident the m ovem ent together o f different distinct elem ents, I seek here to mobilize different levels o f phenom ena: words and

Approximating Belongi things, soun ds and sensations, theories and fiction. As an extension o f a previous book, Sexing the S e l f ( Probyn, 1993), m y argum ent here continues with a certain use of experience, autobiography, and writing. If in that book I laid out a certain theoretical fram ew ork to su p port a nonessential use of the self, here I strive to elaborate a writing practice that is at once th eoret­ ical, sociological, experiential, and political. It is a practice focused on inter­ vening in the social, an outside that is the condition o f possibility for my w riting. I proceed by trying to get w ithin the m ach in ery o f w hat I am describing— to becom e a p art o f it. T akin g to h eart D ele u ze ’s w arn in g against “ ap p ly in g” theory, I attem p t to w ork th ro u gh and w ith certain philosophical insights as from within I m ove forw ard and out along other surfaces. While this book m ay be “ab o u t” m any things, it is propelled by the need to engage an alternative form o f theoretical practice th at fo re ­ fronts the perils and joys o f writing. And again such w riting finds its con­ ditions o f possibility in m ore careful m odes o f listening, reading, hearing, and seeing. It can therefore never be a question o f w riting p u rely for its own sake; as a practice it is com pletely dependent on how one m oves with and within the social. Here, as elsewhere, I am inspired by the exam ples o f Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Quite simply, I see life differently because o f their w rit­ ing. And while I know that they are m aligned on several fronts, it seem s to m e that m any readings fail to appreciate or even com preh end their sense o f hum or, o f joy, and o f the deep urgency o f rem em bering that the art of living or o f becom in g is a creative en d eavor— the only one m o st o f us have. For instance, in his preface to The Order o f Things, Foucault recalls that his book “first arose o u t o f a passage in Borges, ou t o f the lau g h ter th at shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landm arks of m y thought— our

thought, the th ough t that bears the stam p of our age and our geogra­

phy” (1973: xv). This passage always rem inds m e o f the necessity o f a cer­ tain sense o f wonder so crucial to critical thinking and writing. Borges cites “ ‘a certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is w ritten that ‘anim als are divided into: (a) belonging to the Em peror, (b) em balm ed, (c) tam e, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the p re­ sent classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innum erable, (k) drawn with a very fine cam elhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m ) having just broken the w ater pitcher, (n) th at fro m a lon g way off look like flies’” (cited in F o u cau lt, 1973: xv).

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ElspetEProhqn Foucault goes on to say that his laughter is tinged with unease; this order­ ing o f anim als shakes the very ground which we think we order. It partici­ pates in “breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustom ed to tam e the wild profusion of existing th in g s,.. .to dis­ turb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Sam e and the O th er” (1973: xv). For Foucault, it is not m erely that the encyclo­ pedia indicates an in congruous order; it also presents us with the dim en­ sion o f the heteroclite: “In such a state, things are ‘laid’, ‘placed’, ‘arranged’ in sites so very different from one and another that it is im possible to find a place o f residence for them , to define a common locus beneath them all” (1973: xvii—xviii). While m y own project didn’t exactly arise out o f laughter, it did start from sheer curiosity and an idiosyncratic wish to trace by hand the outside o f the city in which I have lived for longer than any other place. M ontreal is a place th at im p oses official lim its to b elon gin g, like the sign laws requiring French to be predom inan t that until recently banned any public appearance o f any other language— and yet it is also a place th at exerts a stran ge and som etim es inexplicable attraction. Beyond M ontreal, I have had a lifelong fascination with belonging, an interest that already disturbs any “n atu ral,” “au th en tic” belonging. H anging ou t in airports and train and bus stations, I w onder about fam ilies with their possessions, heading off to m ake another life. I think o f the ever increasing num bers o f refugees and the ap atriated — their trem en d o u s cou rage is both h u m b lin g and terrifying. B u t again, if you have to th ink ab out belonging, p erh ap s you are already outside. Instead of p resum in g a com m o n locus, I w ant to consider the ways in which the very longing to belong em barrasses its taken-forgran ted n ature. M ore than an im plicit play on outside belonging as already beyond

b elon gin g and identity, I w ant to raise the ways in w hich outside

belon gin g operates now not as a substan tive claim bu t as a m an n er o f being. Sim p ly p u t, I w ant to figure the desire th at individuals have to belong, a ten acious and fragile desire th at is, I th ink, in creasin gly p e r­ fo rm ed in the know ledge o f the im possibility o f ever really and tru ly belonging, along with the fear that the stability o f belonging and the sanc­ tity o f belongings are forever past. While one m ight chalk this fear up to p o stm o d ern ism , or m ore likely to a pessim ism w rou gh t ou t o f the eco­

Approximating Belonging nom ic crises that m ost have lived through, I think that the desire to belong lives on, placin g us on the outside. And in a clim ate m ark ed by a w ide­ spread politics o f polarization, it is o f the u tm ost urgency that we take into account this desire to belong, a desire that cannot be categorized as good or bad, left or right— in short, a desire w ithout a fixed political ground but with im m ense political possibilities. As a th eo retical term and as a lived reality, I pose the term outside belonging

against certain categorical tendencies and the rush to place differ­

ences as absolute. This is notably a modus operandi o f that ever-grow ing ph e­ n o m en o n th at passes for identity politics, a politics now played w ith a vengeance by any num ber of ideologically incom patible groups: from con­ servatives as they police the fron tiers o f certain gro u p s ( “ the teenage m o th er”), dism antling program s o f affirmative action in the nam e o f anti­ identity politics, to a “m e -to o ” strain w ithin cu ltu ral th eo ry (to use Richard D yer’s phrase [1994]). Increasingly, it seem s that even in progres­ sive circles the h eart has fallen o u t o f con sid eration s about identity. Identity has becom e a set o f im placable statem ents that suppress, at times, questions about w hat identity really is for. In the face o f the fixity o f the categorical logic o f identity, I seek to instill som e o f the m ovem ent that the wish to belong carries, to consider m ore closely the m ovem en t o f and betw een categories. In the chapters that follow I argue for singularity in order to capture som e o f the ways in w hich we con tin ually m ove inbetw een categories o f specificity. While I acknowledge the necessity o f zones of specificity, rather than placing them in a hierarchical ranking I want to pay attention to how they are lived out as sin gular. One way to em phasize the p ro d u ctio n o f sin gu lar outside belongings is to place them along with the spaces that Foucault calls het­ erotopic. F o u cau lt first raises the idea o f h etero top ia in his discussion o f Borges. A gain st “ u to p ias,” w hich are com fortin g, fab u lo u s no p la c e s , “H eterotopias and

are d istu rb in g .. .because they m ake it im possible to nam e this

that, because they sh atter or tan gle co m m o n nam es, because they

destroy ‘syn tax’ in advance, and not only the syntax with which we con­ struct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things to ‘hold togeth er’” (1973: xviii). In keeping with the ways in which the exam ple o f the C hinese encyclopedia disturbs the geography o f our

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syntax, h eterotop ias break up the very grou n d, the “ tabula th at enables th ou gh t to operate upon the entities o f our world, to p u t them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to nam es that desig­ nate their similarities and differences” (1973: xvii). Again, against a certain logic o f identity which proceeds th ro u gh division and designation, u lti­ m ately p ro d u cin g polarization , the concept o f h etero top ia provides an analytic space in which to consider form s o f belonging outside o f the divi­ siveness o f categorizing. After all, the spaces in w hich we seek belonging ( “ the spaces that claw and knaw at u s”) “are not a kind o f void, inside o f w hich we could place individuals and th in g s” (F o u cau lt, 1986: 23). The sights and sounds of the spaces in which I som etim es belong are integral to the ways in w hich I live and think b elon gin g, the ways in which space presses upon us and is in turn fashioned by desires. H eterotopia designates the coexistence o f different orders o f space, the m ateriality o f different form s o f social relations and m odes o f belong­ ing. As fem inist and queer geographers rem ind us, space is sexed and gen ­ dered, and sex and gender are “spaced” (Bell et al. 1994). While elsewhere (1995) I have argued that it is crucial not to collapse the m aterial and his­ torical ways in w hich sex and gender are distinctly p ro d u ced , it is also im portan t to understand that these spaces are delineated th rough coinci­ dence and not through exclusion. They are produced th rou gh specificity and lived out in their singularity. As Foucault puts it, we “live inside a set of relation s th at delineates sites which are irreducible to one an o th er and absolutely not superim posable on one an o th er” (1986: 23). H istorically, heterotopias em erge and change: there have been het­ erotopias o f crisis, reserved places that hold various orders o f sexual m an i­ festation s— from m en stru atin g w om en to the space o f m ilitary service, which allows a society to have its youn g m en sexually experim ent outside o f hom e (and on w om en and m en o f another nationality or class), to the honeym oon trip, in which “youn g w om en ’s deflow ering could take place ‘now here’” (1986: 25). A ccording to Foucault, this type o f heterotopia has given way to heterotopias o f deviation, sites “in which individuals w hose behavior is deviant to the required m ean and n orm are placed ” (1986: 25). At the heart o f his argum ent is a conceptualization o f the production and regu lation o f social fo rm s and sites o f p rox im ity — the p ro x im atin g o f social relations: “H eterotopia juxtaposes in one real place several different

Sp^mmdMgMon^ng spaces, ‘several sites that are in them selves incom patible’ or foreign to one an o th er” (Foucault, cited in Soja, 1995: 15). As Edward S oja p u ts it, these are “places where m any spaces converge and becom e entangled” (1995: 15). B elon gin g and h etero top ia th u s foregro u n d the space o f m o v e­ m ent— the changing configurations o f social relations— and the m o v e­ m ent across space. It is perhaps not surprising that this book is littered with exam ples o f various form s o f locom otion: trains, planes, horses. They are exam ples which coincide with Foucault’s citing o f heterotopic spaces— the ship: “a floating piece o f space, a place w ithout a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the sam e time is given over to the infinity of the sea” (1986: 27); the train: “It is som ething through which one goes, it is also som ething by m eans o f which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also som ething that goes by” (1986: 24). These are then exam ­ ples o f the inextricable doubledness o f heterotopic spaces: at once inside and outside, they propose that “a thing’s place [is] no longer anything but a point in its m ovem en t” and that “space takes for us the form o f relations am on g sites” (1986: 23). One o f the central argu m en ts o f this book is th at the ou tside (le dehors )

is a m ore adequate figure for thinking about social relations and the

social th an either an in terior/exterior or a cen ter/m argin al m od el. The notion o f outside supposes that we think in term s o f “relations o f p roxim ­ ity,” or the surface, “a netw ork in which each point is d istin ct.. .and has a p osition in relation to every oth er point in a space th at sim u ltan eo u sly holds and separates them all” (Foucault, 1987: 12). I am well aware o f the risks o f proposing such figures over those of a m ore traditional vocabulary. Som e m ay contend that conceiving of the social in term s of the outside and as surface allows for a flattening out o f the structural inequalities that con­ tinue to do violence, that as term s they erase acknow ledgm ent o f oppres­ sion, th at they evacuate interiority, etc. While these ob jection s m ay be m otivated by a justified concern that a political agenda is being jettisoned in favor o f superficiality, I think th at there is som e con fu sion here. For instance, Flayden White argues that “there is no center to F o u cau lt’s dis­ course. It is all surface— and intended to be s o . . .Foucault’s discourse is wil­ fully superficial” (cited in Halperin, 1995: 211). In turn, White seem s to con­ flate several separate points. To be sure, the question o f the su rface and style are intim ately connected, if we u nderstan d style to be a m an n er o f

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Elspeth Probyn writing that is inseparable from the object of, and the political m otivation for, writing. Perhaps the problem in part is that surface is taken as if it were an object rather than a process. This is why I prefer to think in term s o f ren­ dering surface

or surfacing , the processes by which things becom e visible and

are p ro d u ced as the outside. And even w ith ou t any ap p reciation o f F o u c a u lt’s historical analvses o f how the visible is p ro d u ced , it seem s m erely stubborn to insist that there is no relation between the outside and the inside and the forces that produce at any m om en t som ething that we call the surface. As I attem p t to show, the su rface is n o t to be p osed as ineluctable but rather as a wav o f configuring the lines o f force that co m ­ pose the social, lines o f force that are by their very n ature deeply m aterial and historical. In a different vein, Biddy M artin argues that attention to the surface and the outside denies the affectivity o f interiority. Given M artin ’s early and productive reading o f Fou cau lt (1982), it is intriguing that her argu ­ m ent against the surface should bypass F ou cau lt’s sense o f surface. In ref­ erence to current Am erican queer theory, she argues that “su rfac e s.. .take priority over interiors and depths and even rule conventional approaches to them out o f bounds as inevitably disciplinary and con strain in g” (1994: 106). Ffowever, rather than ruling out the positivity o f the surface as a con­ cep tu al figurin g o f the social, her co m m e n ts speak m ore to a certain “insiderist” trend in cultural criticism. O f m ore concern is her claim that, too thorough an evacuation of interiority, too total a collapse of the bound­ aries between public and private, and too exclusive an understanding of psy­ chic life as the effect of normalization can impoverish the language we have available for thinking about selves and relationships, even as they appar­ ently enrich our vocabularies for thinking about social construction. (1994: 106)

While again the ground o f M artin’s critique is A m erican queer stu d ­ ies, the opposition of interiority on the one hand and social construction on the other is som ew hat m isleading. In contrast, I w ant to focus on the ways in which the surface presupposes a rendering visible o f the forces which constitute the outside and the inside as dichotom ous. I wish to em phasize the ways in which belonging is situated as threshold: both

Approximating Belonging public and private, personal and com m on, this entails a very pow erful m ode o f subjectification. It designates a profoundly affective m an n er of being, always perform ed with the experience o f being w ithin and inbetween sets o f social relations. It precisely em phasizes and m oves with that experience. M oreover, belonging cannot be an isolated and individual affair. C onceptualizing social relations and subjectification in term s o f the outside renews an awareness o f their very relationality. Perhaps m ost im portantly, the longing in belonging on the outside forces us to think about the role o f desire in a fully social sense. Here I am p articu larly inspired by D eleu ze’s use o f desire and by Elizabeth G ro sz’s work on figuring lesbian desire (1994b).1Briefly put, desire is productive; it is what oils the lines of the social; it produces the pleats and the folds which constitute the social surface we live. It is through and with desire that we figure relations o f proxim ity to oth ers and oth er fo rm s o f sociality. It is w hat rem akes the social as a dynam ic proposition, for if we live w ithin a grid or netw ork o f different points, we live th ro u gh the desire to m ake th em con n ect differently. To bring w hat seem s to be far away up close rem ains for m e the object o f writing. The desire to belong propels, even as it rearranges, the relations into which it intervenes. Desire touches off and sets into m otio n different possibilities, a m o v em en t o f attractio n that Foucault sees in “a w om an ’s gesture in a window, a door left ajar, the smile of a guard before a forbidden th resh old ” (1987: 28). It will becom e obvious that in these essays I am concerned with the sin gu larity o f lesbian desire. By this I do not m ean th at we can pose one essential, authentic lesbian desire; rather, I wish to articulate desire as that which gives life to static categories that w ould underpin claim s to inclusive essentialism . Put in other term s, singularity is what em erges after we have en u m erated our differences— m o m en ts and m ovem en ts th at establish contact across a geography o f division. In the course o f these essays, I also grapple with different uses o f the term queer. W ritten as they were across the m o m en t o f queer th eo ry ’s full em ergence, these pieces are at tim es cau g h t up in the eu p h oria o f q u eer’s possibilities; at tim es I m ove away from ideas I consider to be restricting. In one of the clearest expositions of queer th eory’s positivity and constraints, Judith Butler argues that “if the term ‘queer’ is to be a site o f collective contestation, the point o f departure for a set o f historical reflections and fu tu ral im aginin gs, it will have to

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rem ain th at which is, in the present, never fu lly ow ned, bu t always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction o f urgent and expandin g political p u rp o se s” (1993: 228). She cau tion s as well that “as expansive as the term ‘q ueer’ is m eant to be, it is used in ways that enforce a set o f overlapping divisions” (1993: 228). Whereas Butler sets out the “tem porality o f the te rm ” (1993: 223), I wish to consider its spatiality: both w here queer plays o u t and ways to m ake it an active p rop ositio n so th at it re-creates exp erim en tal space. A long with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I want to consider queer as m ovem ent, to tu rn queer into a verb (a sense already evident in B u tle r’s proposition that the noun queer itself is twisted and queered). As Sedgw ick notes, “The w ord ‘queer’ itself m eans across— it com es from the Indo-European root— twerkw , which athw art ”

also yields the G erm an quer , Latin torquere (to twist), English

(1993: xii). If, in Sedgw ick’s form ulation, queer is an “im m em orial

c u rre n t.. .relational, and stran ge,” this idea plays out for m e in the desire to w ork alon g w hat she calls “ the fractal intricacies o f lan gu age, skin, m igration, state” (1993: xii, 9). It is in this way that desire, outside belonging, and w riting are about the m odes o f effecting m ovem ent, m ovem ent aim ed at creating a m o m en ­ tu m for change in social relations, a way o f enacting “relationships o f effec­ tu atio n ” (G ordon , 1981), “ relationships o f differentiation, o f creation, o f innovation” (Foucault, 1984: 28). What I trace here is the positivity o f desire as it produces new relations and relationships am on g individuals, things, groups, etc.— a current that short-circuits the categorial order o f things. It should be clear that working within positivity does not necessarily result in a celebratory rhetoric; rather, desire as social force com pels us to think beyond the term in al points o f either celebration or ressentiment. I write in order to rem ind m y self o f the ways in w hich belon gin g hinges on not belonging, to raise the ways in which the m anners o f being at the th resh­ old m ay provide another perspective from which to view the com plexities o f identity, difference, subjectivity, and desire. My aim here is to draw up a certain “general to p o lo g y o f th in kin g, w hich alw ays start[s] w ith the ‘neigh borin g’ o f sin g u la rities.. .a carnal and vital top o grap h y ” (D eleuze, 1986: 126). Before m oving on, I wish to sim ply and, I hope, clearly set out som e o f the epistem ological and political stakes o f the m ode o f theorizing that I

endeavor to em body. I start from the recognition that we are in the m idst o f becom ing-other, a statem ent that is hardly startling. I follow with the fairly obvious observation that one possible role am ong m any for those of us who write and think about the social is to get as close as possible to the m utation s o f m ovem ents, to catch ourselves within the transversality o f ou r tim es. To do this adequately and with as m u ch ju stesse as possible, I engage a certain style, a m ode o f getting about, that com prehends as it su r­ passes the ordinary sense o f aesthetics. As those fam iliar with Foucault will know, style and aesthetics com ­ bine in a project aim ed at diagnosing actuality at the sam e tim e that “lines of actualization require another m ode o f expression” (Deleuze, 1989: 192). As part o f a diagnostic o f the becom ing-other o f ourselves and o f the social that we inhabit, I find it necessary to proceed along the skin— skin which is both surface and redolent o f certain orders and ordering o f sociality. It is scented with possibilities: the virtual becom in g actual before o n e’s eyes, ears, hands. Proceeding th ro u gh exam ples, fragm en ts, bits and pieces, I take up anything and everything I can in the hope o f rendering a m u lti­ tude o f specificities into a glim pse o f singularity. This is, as D eleuze puts it, to go “from one specific place to an oth er, from one sin g u lar p oin t to a n o th e r.. .producin g thus effects o f transversality and no longer u niver­ sality, functioning as a privileged point o f exchange or crossing” (1986: 97). My own project is but one point o f exchange, one exam ple of m u lti­ ple criss-crossing, but I hope that m y observations com e to the surface, leaving traces on the outside that m ay encourage other m ovem ents, hopes o f becom ing, and alternative belongings.

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1

On the Surface

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Start with a proposition: instead o f inquiring into the depths o f sociality, let us consider the social w orld as surface. Follow with questions: What to do with all the various longings for belonging? What to do with the range o f desiring identities that are displayed all around? Here I slide from “iden­ tity” to “belonging,” in part because I think that the latter term captures m ore accurately the desire for som e sort o f attachm ent, be it to other p eo­ ple, places, or m od es o f being, and the ways in w hich individuals and groups are caught within w anting to belong, wanting to becom e, a process th at is fueled by yearn ing rath er than the positing o f identity as a stable state. This m ovem ent o f desiring belonging is for m e a defining feature of our postm od ern , postcolonial times, part o f the contem porary “perplex­ ity o f livin g,” to use Walter B e n ja m in ’s phrase. B e n ja m in ’s ph rase is, in turn, taken up by H om i Bhabha in his argum ent about the conditions of “dissem ination.” If the “perplexity o f living” captures for Bhabha the com ­ plexity o f the postcolonial situation, it also recalls for m e som ething o f the queerness o f all form s o f living, the very u m hem lich -ness o f social life. This is n o t to collapse the n otion s o f queer and p o stco lo n ial bu t to consider belonging, at this historical conjuncture, as queer. Keeping these histori­ cal processes distinct, I w ant to learn from different m anners o f becom ing and o f belonging. B en jam in ’s phrase inspires m e to study the inbetw een­ ness o f belonging, o f b elon gin g not in som e deep au th en tic way but belonging in constant m ovem ent, m odes o f belonging as surface shifts. In this chapter, I argue that it is necessary, at this time, to insist on the surface nature o f belonging. I use B en jam in ’s phrase as a way of im m ediately fore­ g ro u n d in g som e o f the stakes in p ro p o sin g this shift to the surface, o f retu rn in g a sense o f perplexity to the stu d y o f desiring identities and o f longings to becom e. If I w ant to reinvigorate the idea that living is bewil­ dering, strange, and som etim es w onderful, I also w ant to em phasize the m agic o f ordinary desires and retu rn a feeling for th at m agic to cu ltu ral studies. This is a call neither for a naive attitude o f celebration nor a stance o f innocence before the brutalities o f contem porary life. It does, however, depend on a sharpened acuity to the m achinations and configurations of

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Elsp£ffi“PmEyji desires as they play out on the surface— a surface upon which all m anner o f desires to belong are conducted in relations o f proxim ity to each other; a m ilieu in which different m odes of belonging fold and twist the social fab­ ric o f life, so that we find ourselves in unexpected ways using desires for belonging as threads that lead us into unforeseen places and connections. In the course of these essays, I attem pt to render som eh ow m ore evident, som eh ow m ore tangible, som eh ow m ore sin gu lar the very so-w hat expressions o f cu ltu ral belonging in which I m ove. I start from m y own experience o f being cau g h t up in m ovem en ts o f belonging, and like the scribe poring over texts she traces as she illum inates them , I wish to walk within w hat Edward Said calls “w orldliness,” where “sensuous p articu lar­ ity as well as historical con tin en cy.. .exist at the sam e level o f surface p ar­ ticularity as the textual object itself” (cited in Bhabha, 1994: 140). Particularity and sensuality, surfaces and the outside, im ages that hit and m ove one to return to the m inuteness o f the social surface, the refusal to gen eralize— these are key th em es, the th eo retical u n d erp in n in gs o f which I will endeavor to explicate. They also direct m e to thinking about ways o f telling, m odes o f being in the w w ld, and technologies o f writing. Thus, before I turn to the theoretical problem atics that m ove this book, I want to briefly cite a tale of magic, a story that catches at one way o f seeing the interrelation o f history, place, and sexuality, one m ode o f perform in g the tran slatio n o f lesbian desires across continents, ages, and fo rm s o f knowledge. In her novel, The D yke and the Dyhhuk (1993), Ellen Galford takes up the figure o f the dybbuk. While the tale is firm ly situated w ithin the tenets o f Jewish m ythology that give rise to this spirit-figure, the mission of G alford’s dybbuk is to abet the vengeance against a certain Gittel by Anya, who is, in her owm words, “neither one thing nor the o th e r— N ot quite Je w .. .not quite Gentile.” Her fury at Gittel does not quite efface the m em ory o f their times together: “N ot quite a w om an — because I wanted to do things with G ittel th at only a m an was su p po sed to do; n ot quite a m an — because I wanted Gittel to do the sam e things back to m e ” (223). Kokos, the dybbuk, is materialized by a curse that Anya has put upon Gittel for having dropped her for a good Torah scholar. It is, says Kokos, a m asterpiece o f a curse, “a verbal edifice of Byzantine intricacy” with “passages burrow ing into the dis­ tant fu tu re” (6). The gist of the curse is that Gittel “should disappoint her

On the SuZface husband by bearing only daughters; and that the surviving first-borns of the fem ale line should be sim ilarly afflicted unto the thirty-third generation” (7). The line of the curse then stretches across centuries of m igrating fem ale first-borns, only to gather itself in London, where love and history play out in the final fem ale first-born falling in love with the original curse-spinner (Anya, now translated into a savvy butch cab driver). It is a splendid tale and one that through a singular dyke sensibility tells o f the experience o f being “betw een two lin es.” While retaining its own singularity— am ong other things, w ritten within the codes o f lesbian rom an ce— it n on eth eless replays w ithin the register o f fiction w hat Bhabha calls the experience of m ig ratio n .. .[which] in the nation of others, becom es a time of gath erin g.. .gatherings in the ghettos or cafes of city centers; in the uncanny fluency of another’s language; gathering the signs of approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses, disciplines; gathering the m em ories of underdevelopment, of other worlds lived retroactively; gathering the past in a ritual of revival; gathering the present. (1994: 139)

While m y project has different inflections from Bhabha’s, and certainly is o f a different order th an G a lfo rd ’s, it endeavors to m ove in the sam e m an n er. T hus, while B h ab h a’s attention is to “ the su p p lem en tary narrative o f nationness that ‘ad d s’ to w ithout ‘adding u p ’” (1994: 160), in tracin g o u t the surface o f sexu al/n ation al/sexu al b elon gin g I seek to e n u m erate sin gularities in such a way th at they m ay overpow er any generalization, any sim ple adding up to a general statem en t o f identity. As B habha states, the point o f cu ltu ral criticism is to “keep open a supplem entary space for the articulation of cultural know ledges chat are adjacent and adjunct but not necessarily accum u lative” : “The ‘difference’ o f cultural know ledge that ‘adds to ’ but does not ‘add u p ’ is the enem y of the im plicit generalization of know ledge or the im plicit hom ogenization of experience ” (1994: 163). In a quite different p roject, th ou gh one th at is co m p lem en tary to Bhabha’s, the Italian philosopher Giorgio A gam ben lays out very abstract and elegant term s for an alternative conception o f relations o f sociality, term s that refuse the doubled lines o f essence or generality. Key to his con­

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ceptualization o f “the com ing co m m u n ity ” is the notion o f “la singularity q uelcon que” (1990). Michael H ardt translates quelconque as “w hatever” and notes that, “as A gam ben m akes c le a r.. . ‘w hatever’ ( qualunque or quelconque ) refers to precisely that which is neither particular nor general, neither indi­ vidual nor generic” (1993:1). Quelconque can also be translated as “so-w hat,” and I like both senses o f the term . For if “w h atever” fits easily w ithin a queer lexicon, quelconque as “so-w hat” catches up with a dreaded question, that potential response to all cultural critique: “So what?” A gainst a certain line within cultural studies which aggrandizes the ordinary, rom anticizes the banal, and turn s us all into p op u lar heros, the interjection o f “so what?” is deeply hum bling. At the sam e time, the phrase so what

serves as an injunction to think belonging and relations o f sociality

in their very singularity— to think belonging in term s o f m anners o f being, yet again a being that refers not to an ontological ordering o f essences but to the very c o n ju n c tu re th at brings forth its m an n ers. Or, as A gam ben argues, “The W hatever here relates to sin gu larity n ot in its indifference with respect to a com m o n property (to a concept, for exam ple: being red, being French, being M u slim ), bu t only in its being such as it is” (1993: 1). Being is thus divorced from an inscription o f generic properties. A gam ben charts a way o f thinking belonging that insists on the ontological experi­ ence o f being w ithin relations o f belonging even as it refuses an ontology o f belonging based in the individual possession o f an intrinsic quality. To continue in the vein o f initial clarifications, the relation o f singularity to specificity needs to be posed. While singularity is not a new concept, A gam ben m akes it the cen tral ten et o f his book, all the while refusing to specify the distinction between specificity and singularity. Thus, left on m y own to confuse m atters, I understan d “specificity” to refer to zones o f possible form s o f belonging: being lesbian, being Welsh, being w om an , being red, etc. To use yet oth er term s, the m o v e m e n t from specificity to sin gu larity can be u n d erstoo d as processes th at render the virtual actu al— the ways in w hich the gen eral becom es realized by individuals as sin gular. Sim p ly p u t, we do not live ou r lives as gen eral categories: as a lesbian I sh ou ld do this; as a fem inist I o u g h t to do that. While there have been tim es when the im peratives o f the category m eant that individuals becam e subsum ed under the rules o f the identity category to which they wished to belong, it seem s now that the specificities o f those

HalfiZSiriSZe identities m ay offer alternative m odes o f individuation th at spill over the boundaries o f the category. Specificity can be un d erstoo d as the necessary zones o f difference, but these zones, be they o f race, class, sexuality, or gender, are the points from w here we depart in order to live out our singular lives. O f course, the specificities o f difference are crucial, but they m ust not be allowed to trans­ late into an ensem ble o f exhortations that constrict— for instance, when identity becom es a set o f hard and fast rules that police com portm en t. Of course, I am saying n o th in g new, especially to those w ho have been the object o f such scrutiny. For instance, m y understanding o f the w orld has benefited greatly from the courageous w riting o f lesbians o f color whose w ork fo rm s the grou n d o f any cu rren t th in kin g abou t the stran ge and som etim es strained articulations one has to perform between and am ong categories o f difference— w om en like Jew elle G om ez, w ho w rite o f the processes by which they have arrived at form in g “a ten u o u s yet definite co m m u n ity ” with others; w om en who speak o f their relation to fem ale­ ness, to com m unity, o f their attachm ent to other w om en, to fam ilies, of different “ relationsh ips to the ideas o f m alen ess, fem aleness, and Blackness” (G om ez, 1995: 135—136). In a sm all way, I also hope to encourage the m ovem en t away from thinking and living difference and specificity as negative: to continue with others the task of conceiving specificity as the ground from where we m ove into the positivity o f sin gularity. W orking from desiring identities and belongings then foregrounds the way in which we are propelled into form s o f living with ourselves and with others. This is to turn identity inside out so that instead o f capturing us under its regime o f difference as a negative m easure, the desire o f belonging becom es a force that proffers new m odes o f individuation and of being. Zones o f specificity and difference, at differ­ ent tim es and under certain circum stances, then m ay be yielded and lived out as singular. To furth er m uddy the theoretical waters, I u nderstan d singularity in m uch the sam e way that F ou cault uses “ necessity.” M. H annah help­ fully characterizes a m ajor aspect o f F ou cau lt’s m eth od— “his descriptive p u rsu it o f the van ish in g p oin t w here the very ‘su rfa c e ’ o f th in gs (for exam ple, discursive events), their otherw ise m u te, prein terpreted exis­ tence, bespeaks their necessity, where possibility im perceptibly disappears

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Elspeth Probyn into actuality” (1993: 358). Singularity is thus rendered, not posited; it is to be p ro d u ced in the p rocesses o f red u cin g possibility (as w ith a sau ce or stock). In H an n ah ’s vivid im age, “It is best to think o f possibility as disap­ pearin g n ot th ro u gh the a m p u tatio n o f large ch u n k s accou n te d for by m onolithic causal forces, but instead through a com plex, uneven erosion, like the cleaning o f skeletons by flesh beetles” (358). To be m ore prosaic, the process o f singularizing form s o f belonging passes through the m inute d escrip tio n o f the specificity o f th in gs, the “ ad d in g t o ” d irected not at “adding u p ” to som e totality but at a description o f “exclusive actuality” : w hat em erges from w hat is said now, here, and now here else (F ou cau lt, 1972: 27-28).1 It should be clear that singularity cannot be understood as a v o lu n ­ tary p erform an ce, an individualized state o f affairs w hereby we happily p roclaim or exchange identities like changes o f clothes. The m ovem en t betw een specificity and singularity is a process that is at tim es hard tro d ­ den, at others even impossible. Again, my use of belonging wishes precisely to capture the ways in which individuals m ay wish to belong, know ing full well that belonging is not an individual action, that it is always conducted within limits. Just as difference is m ore often than not first realized when it is described in a throw n epithet, we negotiate our desires for belonging as through a m aze o f club rules (including M arx’s rule about not w anting to belon g to any club th at w ould have him ). W hat I w ant to get at are the ways in which the range o f specificities that we m ay inhabit com es together in singularity. As A gam ben argues, sin gu larity is rendered w ithin and ou t o f the m aterial constraints and historical lim its o f “being-said,” the lim its o f dif­ ference as a personal possession: In this conception, such-and-such being is reclaimed from its having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class (the reds, the French, the Muslims)— and it is reclaimed not for another class nor for the simple generic absence of any belonging, but for its being-such, for belonging itself (1993: 1—2) Agam ben posits that if belonging is not defined by any property, its possi­ bility is always circum scribed by lim its, the lim its o f “being-called” : “not

On the Surface being-red, but being-ca/led-red” (1993: 10). Obviously, attention to the per­ form ative and the p erlocution ary n atu re o f language is now a com m o n them e (for exam ple, in the w ork o f Judith B utler or Eve Sedgw ick). And less recently, the role o f language in the attribution o f difference was one o f the key points that Stuart Hall took from A lthusser when, at the end of his essay “Signification, R epresentation , Id eology ” (1985), he raised the exam ple o f teaching his son that he was black and not brown. If not a novel point, it bears repeating that the terrain o f difference is deeply inscribed by the historical lim its im posed by “being-called.” These lim its then consti­ tute a condition o f possibility for belonging as well as the conditions for calling into question the in scription o f difference: “B ein g-called— the property that establishes all possible belongings (being-called-Italian, -dog, -C o m m u n ist)— is also w hat can bring them all back radically into ques­ tion ” (A gam ben, 1993: 10). I adm it that when I first read A gam ben’s book La communaute qui vient: lin e theone de la singularity quelconque , I

was attracted by the spareness and the

abstraction of his propositions. However, 1 will also avow that while I lound him appealing, there was a certain crypticality and unintelligibility to his enonces.

Nonetheless, or m aybe because of this, I was struck by his articula­

tion o f b elon gin g as fu n d am en tally im p erson al but crucial. For, at the time, as now, I was trying to figure m odalities which could radically deper­ sonalize identity yet not do away with those desires for belonging, those desiring identities I saw all around me: on the street, at queer conferences, in fem inist journals, etc. For those fam iliar with A gam ben’s work, it will be clear that I deform him just as I am inspired by his work. I m ake no apol­ ogy for this; in fact, it is inevitable that given the pressures that inform my own thinking (m ost notably of fem inist and lesbian and gay critical th eo­ ries and practices), I sh ould do so. M ost significantly, I in ject desire, and m oreover lesbian or queer desire, into considerations of belonging. While it is desire u n d erstoo d not as an individual possession but rath er as a rela­ tional force am on g individuals, desire rem ains for m e crucial in thinking about belonging. And, as will becom e evident, 1 read A gam ben alongside Deleuze, w hom in turn I read with Foucault. All this said, it was reading A gam ben, now a few years ago, that set m e off, or rath er accom pan ied m e as I considered the weird and queer turns that belonging takes in M ontreal. Because of its bilingual and m any-

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I I s p e t E P f f iy i

cultured m ateriality, M ontreal em bodies a constant inbetw eenness. This inbetweenness can be perceived in any num ber o f ways: from the constant way that one is always in between two languages, cu ltures, and histories (even as it “ officially” has only one lan guage, and hence c u ltu re) to the ways in w hich M ontreal is posed as ap art from the rest o f Q uebec (for instance, w hen it com es to “ to leran ce” tow ard gays, lesbians, fem inists, im m igrants, etc.) at the sam e tim e that it functions m etonym ically for the whole o f Quebec. It is a space that contains a m u ltitu de o f “being-calleds” : a place o f incessant attem pts to linguistically nam e, a culture spun within the slippages o f translation. As I th ough t about the singularities o f belonging within M ontreal, it also happened to be winter, a season that in this clim ate always raises the questio n o f why anyone in their righ t m ind w ou ld w ant to be here, let alone profess belonging. B ut it was not quite by chance that the rigors o f w inter tu rn ed m y m ind to q u estio n in g form s o f b elon gin g, for if, as B h abh a says, to speak o f the English w eath er is “ to invoke, at once, the m ost changeable and im m an en t signs o f national difference” (1994: 169), then to live the M ontreal winter is to be faced with a welter o f m inute signs signifying the param eters o f belonging. From rem arks like “You m u st find it hard here in the w inter,” spoken by those who have always lived here, who truly belong, to the sight o f saris trailing in the snow, to brash youn g Q uebecois dudes w earing thin leath er jackets open to the w aist as they figh t the w inds how ling dow n R ue Ste. C ath erin e, w inter here is an ensem ble o f seem ingly im m anent signs o f difference. But this is not to con­ sider winter as having som e deep m eaning: it has little intrinsic quality, it is perform ed at a level o f so-whatness. Winter is som eth in g th at is difficult to conceive o f as a desired property, alth ou gh surviving it is necessary. It does, however, call forth m anners o f being-such that are perform ed in the hardness o f a winter cityscape: a city in w inter sem iotically pitted against the p u re w hiteness o f the coun try; a dirty, slutty, slush y city w here the non-indigenous stand out; a place that we have nonetheless com e to in the hopes o f som ething or other— o f happiness, o f change, o f m erely getting by. A place o f m ixed longings, the m ythic point o f arrival for you n g gays and lesbians driven from the isolation o f the outer regions, it is, as Bhabha puts it, “ to the city that the m igrants, the m inorities, the diasporic com e to change the history o f the n ation ” (1994: 169—170). D raw n to the toler-

DSIEelSHace ance o f specificities th at su p po sed ly thrives in the city, individuals then com e to live it in singular ways. B u t the sin gu larity rem ain s unpossessable. Weighed dow n by the in n u m erab le layers o f p rotection against the w eather, silenced in the m inus-40-som ething cold, there is utterly no reason why anyone should want at this m om en t to belong. This scene returns m e to the way in which A gam ben u n d ercu ts any tran scen den tal quality th at m ig h t rise above belon gin g, th at m ig h t place belon gin g on a tran sce n d en tal level. Explicating the Latin phrase for “w hatever,” he notes th at “quodlibet ens is not ‘being, it does not m atter w hich’, but rather ‘being such that it always m atters’. The Latin always already contains, that is, a reference to the will ( libet ). W hatever being has an original relation to desire” (1993: 1). Here the com m on sense of “w hatever” as being anything and everything, as no m at­ ter which, as being inconsequential, on the sidelines, etc., is turned inside out. Lor m e, if not for A gam ben, it is the very forcefulness of desire, desire as force, that can turn the anything and everything into a question o f the sin gu larity o f the desire to m ake the “ no m atter w h ich ” m atter. Those placed on the sidelines, as inconsequential, then disrupt the sequencing of the dom inant order, shift the view o f the center by living the periphery in the m etropole. While Agam ben does not nam e the “w hatever” as such, the term s of his thinking closely describe the position, the m anners, o f being p ostcolo­ nial. Indeed, the “ com in g c o m m u n ity ” could be seen as the b ecom in g postcolonial o f the West. This is, o f course, not to lose the singularity o f the “m eaning o f h om e and belon gin g” for those who have com e “across the ‘m iddle passage,’ or the central European steppes, across those distances, and c u ltu ral differen ce” th at Bh abh a defines w ithin the experience o f m igration (1994: 139). And whereas for Bhabha it is a question o f the p ost­ colonial and w om en, and not explicitly o f the queer, I take the risk o f artic­ u latin g queer and p ostcolon ial. It is, o f course, a considerable risk th at could do great dam age to the distinct specificities o f conditions o f possibil­ ity o f different form s o f belonging. However, it is also undeniable that in cou n tless cu ltu ral expressions o f the colony and the p ostcolon y , from Law rence to M itford, the colon ial is queerly sexed. As Sabina Saw hney argues o f Law rence’s India, the entire continent is figured in term s o f an object o f desire to be seduced by England (Sawhney, 1995: 205). In Nancy

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ElspetE Probyn M itfo rd ’s novel Love in a C o ld C lim a te , it com es as no su rp rise th at C edric H am pton, the heir to the M ontdore estate, is both C anadian and queer. Even worse, he hails from N ova Scotia, described as “a transatlantic Isle of W ight

‘N o th an k s’.” As the n arrator p uts it, ‘It was our idea to live in

capital cities and go to the Opera alight with diam onds, ‘Who is that lovely w om an?’ and N ova Scotia was clearly not a suitable venue for such doings” (1949: 179). It was beyond the pale, indeed the unthinkable, for the lady of the house: “She had never felt interest or curiosity tow ards those u n su it­ able people in Canada, thev were one o f the unpleasant things o f life and she preferred to ign ore th e m ” (179). In due course, C e d ric’s queerness ov ercom es his u n fo rtu n ate colon ialism , and he and Lady M on td ore becom e bosom pals: “I found Cedric, in a pale m auve silk dressing gow n, sitting on her bed. They were both rubbing cream into their faces ou t o f a large pink pot. It sm elt delicious, and certainly belonged to h im ” (194). In this case, one can say that both the colonial and his lady are queered. W ithout generalizing from this one instance, Love in a C old C lim ate is nonetheless a telling instance o f the ways in which a p ostcolon ial queer “m arginalizes and ‘singularizes’ the totality of national cu ltu re ” (Bhabha, 1994: 168). Cedric plays to the hilt w ithin what Bhabha calls “the anterior space o f signification” (167); he brings forth and to the surface th at m ost loudly known of secrets— the queer sexuality of the English upper classes— from its place within the guarded confines of institutionalized homosociality (running from cradle to coffin through prep and public schools, the army, and the officers’ club). Mitford adroitly condenses the ignorance and the dis­ dain of the English for their colonies with the flaunting of queerness in the figure of Cedric. What cannot be openly adm itted (the banality of h o m o ­ sexual practices am on gst the English rulin g classes) is then clearly p ro ­ claim ed upon the body o f the relocated postcolonial, the postcolonial turned to the m anor. Again, this is not to conflate the conditions of possi­ bility o f the queer and the postcolonial. It is, rather, to recognize that they are both historical conditions o f m an n ers o f being, o f “being such th at it always m atters,” played out within the d om in an t order, an order th at is slow ly m is-recognizing itself. Hence, the belonging that I rem ark is that which refuses the essential purity o f the m argin and “insinuating itself into the term s of reference of the dom inant d iscou rse.. .antagonizes the implicit power to generalize, to produce sociological solidity” (Bhabha, 1994: 155).

QaltKeSurface

If this being-such can be seen in the m anners o f the postcolonial and the queer, it is only in asm uch as we refuse the discourse o f identity that seeks to allocate belonging through a certain articulation o f difference— the type o f discourse whereby difference is tolerated by the dom inant order as long as it is encountered only in ethnic restaurants, incarnated in hair­ dressers but not sons; difference tau gh t in its ow n separate class but not across the curriculum ; difference eulogized in the liberal strains o f “being, it does n ot m atter w h ich ” ... “Som e o f m y best friends a r e ________ .” Against this continuing use o f difference, we need to mobilize the exigency of singular difference, to unapologetically encourage its positivity: belong­ ing heard not in the pleas for recognition uttered from the sidelines but desire enunciated in such a way as to fundam entally rearrange the place­ m ent o f power, centers and peripheries. The m ode o f being here is carried in the will and the force o f desire to produce belonging as surface, to turn the logics o f design ation inside out. In cu ttin g the lines o f equivalence inherent to dom inant notions o f identity, o f equations o f belonging posed in term s o f inherent right, we can perhaps render incom prehensible the phrase “go back to where you belong.” One way to reply to such statem ents is to take them at their surface, their face value, to reto rt th at I do belong here, to sh ou t, “We’re queer, w e’re here, get used to it.” A m ore elaborated strategy m u st also entail a refusal on the part o f the postcolonial and the queer to respond; it m u st play on retort, on the tw isting hack o f the order o f the statem en t rather than the w ell-m an n ered reply to its term s—-not the respon se w hich is enunciated within the dom inant term s, not in resistance with its con n ota­ tions of m argin and m arginalization, but the retort which takes on au th or­ ity as it folds the term s upon them selves. Or, as Achille M bem be argues, instead o f a logic of resistance “the em phasis should be on the logics of con­ viviality, on the dynam ics of dom esticity and familiarity, which inscribe the dom inant and the dom inated in the sam e epistem ological field” (1992: 14). The focus here is trained on the relations o f proxim ity between the two, a closeness that upsets the protected space of the dom inant— the lady o f the Em pire and her queer postcolonial heir sharing his pot o f face cream . While M bem be’s argum ent focuses on the singularities o f the p o st­ colonial in C am eroon (and therefore cannot be generalized), drawing on Foucault’s concept of governm entality, he also details a conception of post-

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ISpSEEmEyn colon ial pow er th at m ay help to clarify oth er situ ations. C en tral to his argum ent is the “banality o f p ow er” within the postcolony— the ways in which “the cham pions of state pow er invent entire constellations of ideas; they select a distinct set o f cu ltural repertoires and pow erfully evocative concepts” (1992: 4). The subjects within the postcolony retort these images, tu rn in g the “ com m andem ent” against itself in a baroque display o f “ the obscene, vulgar and the grotesque” (1992: 1). If, for M bembe, “the notion o f the ‘p ostcolon y’ sim ply refers to the specific identity o f a given histori­ cal trajectory: that o f societies recently em erging from the experience o f colon ization ,” then “to accoun t for p ostcolon ial relations is th u s to pay attention to the w orkings o f pow er in its m inute details, and to the princi­ ples o f assem blage which give rise to its efficacy” (1992: 2, 4). M bem be’s argum ent points precisely to the ways in which the play o f pow er is on the surface, as can be seen “in all the m inor circum stances o f daily life, such as social n e tw o rk s.. .culinary practices, leisure activities, m odes o f con sum p tion , dress styles, rhetorical devices, and the political econ o m y o f the b o d y ” (1992: 23). A w orld away, bu t on a sim ilar w ave­ length, a postcolonial regime o f knowledge plays ou t in m y own banal spot in any num ber of ways: in flam n g and sitting in cafes as a national pastim e; in the spectacular consum ption o f nicotine, alcohol, and drugs under the eye o f a prudish federal gaze; in the seductive walk o f som e o f the best-dressed w om en in N orth America; and so forth.2 This is certainly not subjection to pow er in the sense of an assujettissement located in the internal recesses o f the colonized psyche. It is pow er p roducing— desire produ cing m odes o f sub­ jectification flaunted at the level o f the body: an intim ate relation p rod u c­ ing the social as outside, as a plurality of surfaces. From a different context, we can also learn from w hat T om as Y barra-Frausto calls the hybrid chicano aesthetic o f “rasquachism o ... a sensibility attun ed to m ixtures and con­ fluence. . .a delight in tex tu re and sen su o u s su rfac e s” (cited in Bhabha, 1994: 7). Or yet again, in a different situation, G u illerm o Gom ez-Pena tells o f the California/M exico m eetin g point as he speaks “from the crevasse, desde aca, desde el m edio. The border is the ju n ctu re , n o t the e d g e .. . ” (1993: 44). W ithout flattening the im portant distinctions that exist in such local m od es o f rep resen tation , it is no n eth eless in stru ctiv e to consider w hat they propose: the position o f the jun ctu re as an inbetween state, the m om en t o f articulation whereby, in G om ez-Pena’s case, T ijuana rem ains

DiOE£S*3ace distinct from San Ysidro even as they are hyphenated, a border cu ltu re criss-crossed by bodies, a surface seen from the patrollin g helicopters. In the different tones o f Y barra-Frausto, confluence becom es tangible, the flow ing m ovem ent o f surfaces. As Y barra-Frausto and G om ez-Pena m ake explicit, representing, or w hat I w ould prefer to call the rendering surface o f the conditions o f the p o stcolon y requires oth er m odes o f w riting: the confluence o f c u ltu ral form s them selves p u t to service in the task o f tracing the surfaces o f every­ day lives. It is, o f course, a m ode used by m any postcolonial writers: in the m ixture o f theater, prose, and theory o f Gom ez-Pena and C oco Fusco; in the tran slatio n o f theory and poetry th at is the w riting o f A n zald u a; in Issac Julien’s beautiful film essays; in Joan N estle’s or D orothy A llison’s or M ab Segrest’s South ern lesbian postcolonial stories, histories, and History. The list could be long, but enum eration is not m y intent. And while these exam ples and others are illum inating, they tend to m ove from a different p oint o f d epartu re, projects that proceed w ithin specific conditions and yield their own singularity. Inspired by such work, I cannot be satisfied by rep eatin g or citing it as evidence; I m u st also try to explicate m y ow n process o f ren d erin g surface the c o m m in g lin g o f fo rm s (o f sociality, o f exam ples, o f thinking). Thus, from within theory I wish to clarify the sta­ tus o f the surface and the necessary connections to a theory o f singularity and the question o f the outside. I do so by returning to Foucault, but this time to a little book that he steadfastly referred to as not belonging to his oeuvre: “N obody paid any attention to this book, and I’m very glad. It is m y secret house, a love affair that lasted a few su m m ers” (cited in Machery, 1992: II). The object o f love was the w riter R aym on d R oussel, and the book was R aym ond R oussel (1963/1992), which in an interview he called “the archaeology o f a passion” (F oucault: 1985). It is a curious thing: F ou cault bent over, follow ing the m inuteness o f Roussel as one m ight trace by finger the curves o f a m ap in relief, as one m igh t learn by finger the quirks o f a lover’s body. Fou cau lt says o f R oussel’s w ork that it “turns on a singular experience (I m ean to say that it has to be p u t in the singular): the connection of language with this inexistent space which, below the surface of things, separates the interior o f their visible face and the periphery o f their invisible k ernel” (1992: 155). By all accounts, Roussel was decidedly queer, apparently h om osex­

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Elspeth Probyn ual and very quirky. It is, o f course, not R oussel’s hom osexuality per se that draws Foucault. R oussel’s sexuality is only o f interest inasm uch as “the pri­ vate life o f an individual, his sexual choices and oeuvre are interlinked, not because the oeuvre translates the sexual life, but because it com preh ends both the life and the text” (1985: 104). Roussel is com pelling on several lev­ els. The m ost evident is his attention to la chosalite, the thingness o f things, the m eticu lo u s way in which he focu sed on im ages, im age-as-im age, as surface and n o t as the expression o f a signifier: “ the privilege o f these im a g e s.... A discourse absolutely w ithout depth that runs on the surface o f th in gs” (Foucault, 1992: 144). While F oucau lt speaks o f R oussel in p as­ sionate tones, it is rapture before the exam ple of the solidly so-w hat nature o f the work, the m atter-of-fact meticulosity o f the details that “add to ” but do not “add u p .” Roussel is perhaps at his m ost com pelling in his posth u m ou sly p u b ­ lished book, Comment j ’ai ecn t certains de mes livres (1963) ( H ow I wrote some o f my books),

a bizarre tract wherein he explains his procedure ( lep roced e ) by which

a phrase, taken by chance, form s and p erfo rm s a w hole story. As Pierre M achery explains, the procedure “consists in a direct intervention on the signifying m ateriality o f w ords which proceed and direct their fictional econ o m y” (1992: xxiii). In R ou ssel’s own words, “I chose two words nearly id e n tic a l.. .for exam ple b illa rd (billiards) and p illa rd (a plu n derer). Then I added to them sim ilar words but taken in two different senses, and thus I obtained two sentences nearly identical” (1963: 11). In this case, billard and p illard

form the genesis o f R oussel’s book Impressions d ’A fn q u e, the story of a

white explorer who writes a book about a black king and plunderer. Now, for the contem porary reader there are obstacles to appreciat­ ing R oussel’s work. For a start, the stories carry the sort o f generic racism o f R o u ssel’s tim e. I also find his books rath er u n readable (on e o f th ose uncom fortable situations where the idea outw eighs the interest). Roussel is, in H ollyw ood-speak, “ high concept.” Sadly enough, he lived with this know ledge, and apart from being briefly taken up by the Surrealists, he lived in the vain hope o f being understood and o f finding glory through his writing. In F ou cau lt’s estim ation, and citing Roussel, it w asn’t a case of “an exasperated desire for celebrity, but a physical statem ent: ‘What I wrote was encircled by radiance. Every line was repeated to thousands o f copies and I wrote with thousands o f quills that blazed’” (Foucault, 1992: 199). His last

D ai& ISiiaiD e book was w ritten “in the hope th at I m ig h t have a little p o sth u m o u s renown for m y b ooks” (Roussel, 1963: 35). A com pelling im age o f (and for) a writer, his en orm ous dedication and the way that he crawled inside ordi­ nary, found phrases in order to m ake them tell fantastic stories is fascinat­ ing, hum bling, and slightly ridiculous. For his part, Foucault sim ply said, “I wrote on Roussel precisely because he was all alone, som ew hat abandoned and sleeping on a sh elf at Jose C o rti’s [the b o ok seller]” (1985: 104—105). Despite F o u cau lt’s denial that Raymond Roussel had anything to do with the rest o f his w ork, R oussel appears as exem plary o f a m ajo r fo u cau ld ian them e: here the necessity o f “penser a u trem en f m eets up with a w riter who becom es an anonym ous elem ent w ithin the technology o f writing, who forces the internal cohesion o f language to appear on the surface o f the text. This “obscure desire that entertains anyone who w rite s.. .one writes to becom e other than on eself” then m eets up with the fact th at it is the “m odification o f on e’s m ode o f being that one aim s for in the act of w rit­ in g ” (Foucault, 1985: 104). Beyond the question o f Roussel’s readability, it is the underlying con­ cept turned surface, a m ethod scrupulously involved in m aking “language yield tow ards th in gs,” that fascinates. It is an absolute absorption in the order o f language and its p oor relation to things: “T hings present th e m ­ selves in their stubborn existence, as if they were skilled in an ontological obstination which could shatter the m ost elem entary rules o f spatial dis­ tribu tio n ” (Foucault, 1992: 137). In M achery’s estim ation, the p rocedure “proves that there is no second language which w ould be the tru th m ir­ roring the first, but that the truth o f language is entirely within itself, that is to say, in its indefinite proliferation” (1992: xxvi). O ne m igh t also add th at it is the tru th o f th ings entirely w ithin them selves that is apparent when Roussel gives us the space o f the surface, things m inutely docum ented in their exteriority. A rranged on the surface, things take on their full relations o f proxim ity: “T heir position is never defined in relation to the w hole but according to a system o f directions of proxim ity passing from one to the o th e r .. .‘to the left,’ ‘in front o f them to the left,’ ‘above’ ...” (Foucault, cited in Philo, 1992: 145). And if this project sounds fussy, I wish to em phasize the m undane n ature o f such an enter­ prise, its very worldliness wherein sensuality, contingency, and particu lar­ ity are played out in a so-what m anner on the surface o f things. It proposes

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ElspSEEroIiyji a schem e o f things resolutely w ithout hierarchy; “p o sth u m an ist” avant la lettre , R oussel’s

depictions flatten out any possible norm ative distinction. As

Chris Philo proposes in his reading o f Foucault, Roussel, and Baudrillard, such attention awakens us to “the social w orld as a m essy a n d .. .disordered geography o f ‘plates,’ ‘continents,’ or ‘fractal zones’ slipping, sliding, and skiddin g into, under, and over one a n o th e r” (1992: 158). For Philo, the attraction to the surface m oves us away from “depth accounts o f social life, w here m ore fu n d am en tal levels o f social reality (w hether these be co n ­ ceived o f as econ om ic, p sych ological, or w h atever) are called u p on to explain less fundam ental on es” (1992: 158). Here Philo catches the essence o f the su rface and why it is fu n d a ­ m en tally im p o rta n t to c u ltu ral studies. For the su rface is n o t an o th er m etap h or nor yet another fad w ithin intellectual circles: it is a profound reordering o f how we conceive o f the social. In arguing for a conceptual­ ization o f belonging on the surface, I am arguing against m arkin g identi­ ties within a hierarchical m ode, w hether the inner m easure is oppression, dom ination, inequality, or whatever. As Bhabha states, the actual living of “the locality of cu lture,” the articulation o f cu ltural differences and identi­ fications, sh ou ld aw aken us to the fact th at it is alw ays m ore co m p lex “than can be represented in any hierarchical or binary structuring o f social an tagon ism ” (1994: 140). And it is deeply insufficient to think that we can com preh end form s o f belonging by seeking to refer them to an underly­ ing structu rin g principle, a stable and guaranteeing referent. At the sam e tim e that the “w h atever” aspect o f belonging on the surface forces us to relinquish the idea o f guarding difference jealously as a personal possession whereby “m y difference” m akes m e better than you, it also works against a happy pluralism . For the question o f “being such th at it always m atters” con stan tly com pels us w ithin the processes o f sin gu larizin g specificity. C on ducted on the surface, this requires us to constantly place ourselves within relations o f proxim ity o f different form s o f belonging. And at the edge o f ourselves we m utate; we becom e other. In m ore clear-cu t term s, there are, I think, several exigencies dem an d ed by this m od e o f th eorizing. In no p articu lar order, then, we m igh t start with w aking up to reality, that is, if we understan d reality to be, as Lawrence Grossberg argues, “a structure o f effects, m arked by a m u l­ tiplicity o f planes and effects and the ways they intersect, transverse and

DnJBe^SjdScje disrupt each o th e r” (1992: 48). And as I argue at som e length in the final chapter, this is to consider, to take to heart, the task o f being theorists on the outside, as tran slatin g across planes. Lest this lan gu age sou n d ephem eral, I sh ould quickly add th at this process o f articu lation on the surface dem ands a renewed rigor and awareness of the historicity o f things, the ways in w hich the anteriority o f things m u st be m ade to appear on their surface. S u rface belongings and desiring identities refuse to stand still; inbetween being and longing, they com pel connections, p rod u cin g th em ­ selves as other. Such belonging is form ulated in neither exclusionary nor inclusionary term s but in its sheer perplexity and yearn ing bypasses the m ean n ess o f individualized identities. Such form s o f sociality, driven by desire, p rod uce unexpected conn ections as they rub against each other, displaying on the surface their anteriority— the deep historicity o f why, how, where, and with w hom we m ay feel that we belong. M inute, m eticu ­ lous, and m undane, these com m onplace desires challenge me. If I propose the surface as a m ore adequate chronotope than m odels o f depth and inte­ riority, it is because I search not for causality but for transversal conn ec­ tions. W ithout falling into the trap o f a realist epistem ology or falling prey to delusions o f om niscience, it is the search for surface conn ections that anim ates m y thinking. And as I hope to show through the m assive m obi­ lization o f sm all exam ples that fills the pages to follow , these desires for alternative relations and connections can only be considered superficial if seen through an optic that excludes their im portance, puts them aside in the search for a deeper m eaning. As the statem ent attributed to Freud (at least by generation s o f stu d en ts) puts it, som etim es a cigar is ju st a cigar (which then m akes the cigar all the m ore interesting). Before tu rn in g to the next chapter, where I try to pry desire away from Freud and his follow ers, I add a final wish or w arning. If the surface is but another optic, another way o f viewing the social, it is only o f use if it stretches our analytic reach, if it allows for other ways o f seeing and con­ n ectin g the various exam p les o f ou r varied lives. If it en cou rages m e to write from an oth er angle, it is m y hope that it also encourages a surface reading: a considered reading, but one which is interrupted by the reader’s own exam ples, connections, and reconnections.

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BecomineHorse Transports in Desire

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My m oth er had a passion for horses, one that she transm itted in different ways to her d augh ters, yet not to her son. In hindsight (and adm ittedly with a bit of filial licence), this passion could be seen as a longing for free­ dom , a desire to becom e other. C ertainly som e sort o f yearning could be heard in a recurrent dream that she recounted to us several tim es during her life. She described it as located in a p ostap o caly p tic tim e, after the dreaded bom b o f the 1970s had been set off. In the dream , she hid from the devastation in an underground bunker with her favorite horse. When they finally ventured out they found a landscape devoid o f any hu m an feature, barren yet striking in its desolation. She then rode off across the land in the full know ledge that she and the horse w ould die because o f this final but necessary ride. My m other always finished narrating the dream with a sim ­ ple phrase: “Well, you know that I like horses better than people.” That at the time this didn’t strike m e as strange was in part because it was w hat I w ould have done, in p art because o f the context o f the early 1970s and the pervasive fear that the world really w ould end. This fear was fueled by the low -flying A m erican bom ber jets th at continu ally roared over the otherwise circum spect valleys o f mid-Wales. A round that period my m oth er and I spent m ost o f our time involved with horses. Having no m oney, she w ould find them on the cheap— at auctions where they were either classified as “ ag ed ” and fated for the glue factories in B elgium , or were psych ologically abused creatu res w ho had barely survived the patented cruel breaking m ethods o f a p rom in en t seller o f horseflesh. If I grew up w ith pony-club stories ab ou t perfect little girls on their w ellbehaved m o u n ts, the actuality was rath er different. And if m y m o th er dream ed o f the upper-class hunts o f the south o f England, in our context riding was a rou gh passion, one th at was addictive for the speed, the m otion, the feeling o f and the desire for being at the very edge of control: a wild run n in g together o f horse and girl. Officially, m y fam ily’s m yth places us not with equus but under the sign o f the train, recounting, recanting the story o f m y C anadian m oth er

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m eetin g a sligh tly h u n g-over British arm y officer on the CPR (the C anadian Pacific Railway C om pany). The story goes that she was leaving the West to get a job in E xtern al Affairs; he was b ro u g h t over to teach C an adian soldiers h om e from the w ar how to p arach u te o u t o f grain silos— a C old War sort o f thing. As the great train rolled on and on through the prairies, my m o th er’s com panion told her to offer that young m an a drop o f whisky. Three m onths later she was an arm y wife. So, like m ost, I was born departing— w atching from the sidelines the ways in which children seem to know as if by intuition w ho belongs and who d oesn ’t. This then returns m e to the principle o f m ovem en t w ithin belonging, and ways o f getting about differently: m ovem ent that seeks not a straigh t p ath but rath er revels in the inbetw een, th at picks up things along its way, that is derouted by sm all ethno-autobiograph ic shards— a tum blew eed o f a th eoretical p ro ject th at gath ers up m em ories, w ishes, dream s, anecdotes, or sayings scribbled on city walls. It seem s to m e that the p rocesses o f belon gin g are alw ays tainted with deep insecurities about the possibility o f truly fitting in, o f even get­ ting in. For exam ple, I think o f the w onderful Indo-C anadian film M asala (1993), where the stories o f Indian im m igran ts who have “m ade g o o d ” in C an ad a play across the figure o f the fu lly C anadian first-gen eration son. H ow ever, the rep resen tation o f the son, Krishna, forefron ts the in be­ tw eenness o f w hat it m eans to be C anadian, Indian, all p ortrayed in the shadows of planes that pass above him — planes that are for all in the film a constant rem inder o f the fatal Air India crash and the tragedy o f Indians return in g: retu rn in g to a hom e th at is both India and C anada. M a s a la is exem plary in the way that it singularizes these specificities and m akes clear that belonging is an inbetw een state. It forefronts the ways in which these desires will always be diverse even as it catches at the im m ediacy of belong­ ing, bringing forth im ages of leaving, carting on e’s possessions and baggage from place to place. Thus, w hile belonging m ay m ake one think o f arriv­ ing, it also m arks the often fearsom e interstices o f being and going, o f long­ ing, o f not arriving. Departing, getting going, going on, getting (it) on, getting b y .. .these are necessary term s. They are also term s that I need to m ake rhym e with desire, a desire to keep on going, a desire to keep desire m oving: a nebulous touch, a shifting o f desire for a w om an, a w om an past and a w om an p re­

Becoming-Horse sent. These im ages o f desire are not m erely whim sical; rather, as concrete m em ories they em bed them selves in the possibility of desire now. Images and fragm ents: m eeting in a doorway, a handshake, a kiss, seeing m y fea­ tures rearranged as I sm ile back at her. Desire here is not m etaphor; it is a m ethod of doing things, of getting places. Desire here is the m ode o f con­ nection and com m unication between things, inevitably giving way to the literalness o f things. Perhaps because I’ve never had a d river’s licence, I’ve always been com pelled by alternative m odes o f locom otion, m odes such as horse-rid­ ing, biking, and sw im m ing that will get you from point a t o b but along the way will rearrange the pitch, the angle, and the perspective of the journey. They are also very em bodied form s o f tran sp o rtatio n , form s that, after Deleuze, one could call m odes o f becom ing, becom ing-horse, becom ingbicycle, becom ing-sw im m er: the ways in which one becom es fully part of a m ach inery o f m ov em en t— legs p u m p in g, arm s p u llin g, back straining, m uscles m elding. As Carol Anshaw writes in her novel on sw im m ing and desire, it is an aquaphysics th at can w ork only w hen the sw im m er, the sw im m in g, and the w ater becom e oth er th an their separate functions: “She hyperventilates to expand her lungs, flattens her soles— Now com es the critical m o m en t, the one in w hich she needs to leave even h erself behind and becom e purely w hat she can do, translate m atter into energy, becom e velocity ” (1993: 5). In th eoretical term s, this idea o f becom in gvelocity can be situated within the realm of the spinozian-deleuzian, ques­ tion not what is a body, but w hat can a body do? (Gatens, 1994; Grosz, 1994). In this chapter I consider desire as m ovem ent; in particular, I want to raise the question o f how we m ight form ulate a singular and queer use o f desire. To foreshadow the argum ent, I write against incarnating desire in an individual body in order to m ore fully realize the singular relations that are created through the m ovem ent o f desire. This also entails recon­ sidering how we go about “interpreting” desire within a project o f cultural criticism — to think of criticism as Rosi Braidotti does, as a process wherein “the category boundaries crum ble away and w riting and th ou gh t are con­ jugated together in a new relational m o d e” (1991: 280). I want to m aterial­ ize desire as that prod uctive force which com pels a theory o f belonging that in its singularity m ay exceed m uch o f w hat passes for contem porary identity politics.

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I should be clear that what I propose is only one possible line of analy­ sis, a line that in turn m eanders. I am fundam entally com m itted to a rela­ tional logic in m aking som e relations clear, in m aking up others. T hat said, this is m ore o f an exp loration than an exposition o f som e hard-and-fast position. As a problem atic, it is held together by the insistent and constant questioning o f the singularity o f belongings. If it is lesbian belonging that com pels m e here, it is only inasm uch as it is rendered singular, a singularity that cannot be posed in advance and that m u st not be posited as negating oth er singularities. If for reasons that are sim u ltan eou sly personal, th eo­ retical, and political I am drawn to figuring the singularity of lesbian-queer belonging, this cannot be seen as advocating an essential queerness. In any case, as I argued in the previous chapter, it is always a question o f render­ ing zones of specificity into singularity, the force o f desire to create and dis­ rupt belonging. M ore specifically, this is to think not what is essential about desire, som eh ow located in som eth in g called a lesbian being, but rath er how we engage in m am eres — m an n ers o f being expressed in sm all m o v e ­ m ents o f belonging— the singular “so-w hatness” o f desire as lines o f con­ nection and com m unication between beings, ways o f being, and things. This brings to the fore the problem o f figuring th at m ovem ent. To use a term that has becom e problem atic, how do we go about “represent­ in g ” desire? Given m y form ation in com m unication studies, this leads m e to think about the place o f desire in m odels o f com m unication, represen­ tation, and interpretation. While the interconnection o f com m unication, tran sp o rt, m ovem en t, and desire m ay be an idiosyncratic one, it is n ot overly far-fetched. These term s share a sim ilar relational m otive; they are all about tracing lines between different points. Too often, they are used to designate an end point, but they can also be used to think about the inbe­ tw eenness that they fundam entally suggest. So these term s are not co m ­ m unication as privileging the final reception, not tran sport as arriving at the term inus, and certainly not desire as located in an object; rather, they m ay point us to m om en ts o f being— like the m om en t w hen the trapeze artist has let go o f one ring but h asn ’t yet grasp ed the o th e r.1 This is an im age o f m o m en tu m and chance that captures for m e w hat belonging is all about. While it m ay or m ay not be a scary im age (th in k o f how au d i­ ences gasp, all the while knowing that she will grasp the other ring), I use it to rem ind m yself o f a sense o f precariousness that is necessarily part o f our

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being and belonging and that should be included in our theories. For desire is a profoun dly upsettin g force. It m ay totally rearrange w hat we think we want: desire skews plans, setting forth u n th o u g h t-o f possibilities. But, as a term w ithin traditional m odels o f com m u nication, desire has tended to reassure the established order o f things. It has either been to tally m issin g or has served to op erate as the ever u n attain ab le referent: the lack that guarantees signification, a lack that is traditionally figu red as w o m an or other. As G rossberg argues, accepted m o d els o f c o m m u n ic atio n assu m e “ a relation sh ip betw een tw o discrete and independently existing entities: w hether between individuals, or betw een audiences and texts, or between signifieds and signifiers” (1992: 38). This o rgan ization o f the co m m u n ic atio n p rocess is m o st evident w ithin p oststru ctu ralist readings o f com m un ication and culture: “The term s of the com m un icative relationship— the very existence o f texts, m eanings and audiences— are them selves the result o f the continuous production o f difference, the gap, between th em ” (Grossberg, 1992: 40). Here desire as lack is the oblique term th at n o n eth eless su stain s su ch stru c tu re s and w orks to p ro d u ce a con ception o f the social w hich Felix G u attari categorizes as “a tripartition between a field o f reality, the w orld, a field of representation, the book, and a field o f subjectivity, the au th o r” (cited in G rossberg, 1992: 48). This divvying up o f the social can be heard in any num ber o f opposi­ tions which pose m odes of knowing through the logic o f signifier to signi­ fied. And between the two term s yawns a gap, a frightening abyss that leads to a reification of the signifier and a fetishization of the gap— the lack o f cor­ respondence that assures m eaning. It is as if, deeply perturbed by the ways in which things d on ’t m eet up with words, we construct their point o f m iss­ ing as a stru c tu ral lack, a teleology fueled by sheer im possibility. As F o u cau lt so clearly rem inds us, “in every society the p rod u ctio n o f dis­ course is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a cer­ tain num ber o f procedures which have the role o f exorcising pow ers and dangers, of m astering hazardous events, of dodging the heavy, the fearsom e m ateriality” (1971: 10—11). Cliche though it m ay be, one can’t help but feel that at play here is the specter o f the very possibility o f the m eaninglessness o f life. In N ietzsche’s w ords, having m oved from irrationality, “now as a ‘ rational’ being [man] subm its his actions to the sway o f abstractions; he no

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longer suffers him self to be carried away by sudden abstractions, by sensa­ tions, he first generalizes all these im pressions into paler cooler ideas, in order to attach to them the slip o f his life and actions” (1972: 6). It is the slip o f life and actions, the slip betw een being and longing, th at we paste over, th at we search to avoid w hen we erect an edifice o f com m un ication based in lack. As G rossberg argues, “What is crucial here is the rejection of the m odel o f culture defined by the need to construct a correspondence between two parallel, nonintersecting planes— language and reality” (1992: 48). These planes are held apart, their frigh tenin g dis­ cursive m ateriality controlled, th ro ugh the supposition o f desire as lack. This structuration then plays out in the search to separate different orders, to fixate on som e principle that w ould guarantee m eaning in chaos. How else to explain the bizarre displays o f en un ciation w ithin the sph ere o f identity politics whereby “difference” is perform ed as highly individualized: “my difference as a ______ ,” as som ehow terrifyingly fragile and com peti­ tive, as if your difference will nullify m ine. A refusal o f this logic whereby difference is always accom panied by the other as “m y” lack can be clearly heard in Deleuze and G u attari’s argu­ m ent against the laws of signification, “the three errors o f lack, law and signifier” : “It is one and the sam e error, an idealism that form s a pious con ­ ception of the unconscious

From the m om en t lack is reintroduced into

desire, all o f desiring p ro d u ctio n is crush ed , red u ced to being no m ore than the production of fantasy; but the sign does not produce fantasies, it is a p rod u ctio n o f the real and a position o f desire w ithin reality” (cited in G rossberg, 1992: 49—51). At once so sim ple and so evident, the idea th at desire produces within the real— indeed produces the real— is also a veri­ table ru p tu re with m any m od es o f con cep tu alizin g being in the w orld. Desire as fully social encourages a m ode o f thinking in which “events have to be taken literally, in the facticity o f their singular existence, rather than as texts to be in terpreted” (Grossberg, 1992: 49). This conception o f desire begs the difficult q uestion s th at A gam ben poses: “How is it possible to speak w ithout presupposing, w ithout hypothesizing and subjectivizing or su bjectin g w hat one speaks about? How is it possible n ot to speak on the presupposition o f a thing, but to say the thing itself ?” (1987: 23). While these are open if not im possible questions, they direct m e to ways o f connecting or o f entering into things, becom ing-things rather than seeking their deep,

Becoming-Horse discrete, inherent m eaning. The thing itself is to be found on the surface along with other things, their m eaning only to be found in how they m ay or m ay not connect. In tracing out lines o f belon gin g I am interested in how they m ay converge, their principle being one o f desire that translates across , “desire cir­ culating in this arrangem ent o f heterogeneity, in this space o f ‘sym biosis’: desire being one with the arrangem ent of heterogeneity, a co-functioning” (D eleuze, 1994: 60). In refusing to distinguish between the social and the sym bolic, the real and the discursive, this is to render desire as entirely social, as lubricating lines o f governance and power, and those of subjectification. This is clearly heard in the term s that D eleuze uses to talk about the arrangem en ts o f desire, or rather “l’agencem ent de desir”— desire as engaging in the way that gears are engaged and engage each other. This engagem ent brings together heterogeneous orders o f things: “For exam ­ ple, feudalism is an agencement which p u t into play new relations between the anim al (th e horse), the land, d eterritorialization (h orse racing, the C rusade), w om en (chivalrous lo v e ).. .etc.” (Deleuze, 1994: 60).

QueiEJffl^ Horses, planes, and tra in s.. .strange points o f departure. As objects, they seem so im possibly phallic, already trapped within disciplinary sets of lug­ gage, epistem ological belongings. I think of how Raym ond Bellour inter­ preted the horse in H itchcock’s film M am ie. A gainst the w ealth o f possibil­ ities suggested by the su m p tu o u s shots o f M arnie and her horse, Bellour argues that “M am ie’s fetishistic love for F o rio .. .typically takes the place of a m an and children” (1977: 84). It is an interpretation that can only be con­ ducted from within the safe fram ew ork o f psychoanalytic film theory, one th at in this case m isses H itch cock ’s incredible m ise-en -scen e o f M a m ie ’s desire. Think of the close-ups of Marnie caressing her horse as he responds; consider her im passioned plea, “Oh, Forio, if you w ant to bite som eone, bite me” ; and recall the long shots o f w om an and anim al blurred together across the landscape. Faced with all this, Bellour m anages to doubly take away M a m ie ’s p leasu re with her horse w hen he posits th at on the one hand, it is m erely the “pleasure o f the sign ified.. .the horse, anim ality, the phallic substitute” and on the other, this im age is “the condition necessary to the constitution o f [H itchcock’s] phantasy” (1977: 85—86). In this inter-

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EEaeffiBaEyin pretation, the im age o f the horse im pales desire as the desire for the ph al­ lus, and, in the case o f M a rm e , for the family. It cannot be M a m ie ’s desire; it always-already displaces hers as the condition o f an o th er’s desire. As condensed as B e llo u r’s reading m ay seem , it is hard to escape p sych oan alytic in terp retation s o f desire. In fact, it m ay be th at oth er approaches to culture have shied away from the notion precisely because o f psychoanalytic cultural criticism ’s hold on desire. In turn, and given the pervasiveness of psychoanalytically influenced readings, it is not surprising that, with notable exceptions, psychoanalytic assum ption s either inform or creep into considerations o f queer desire. This then plays ou t in a ten ­ dency to individualize desire and erects an “ o th e r” in ord er to secure m ean in g. As Biddy M artin argues, the “ o th e r” often com es as either w om an or fem inism . While convinced o f the poten tial o f queer studies, M artin states, “I am w orried w hen an tifou n d atio n alist celebrations o f queerness rely on their projections o f fixity, constraint, or subjection onto a fixed grou n d, often on to fem in ism or the fem ale body, in relation to w hich queer sexualities becom e figural, p erform ative, playful, and fu n ” (1994: 104). Here fem in ism is objectified and fou n d lacking, ju st as it is forced to perform the role o f the necessary lack. This is certainly not to say that queer theorists avoid lesbians— on the contrary, as lesbians we have never been so cou rted — it’s ju st th at som e th eorists (m ale, fem ale, and transgender) are m ade distinctly uneasy when the lesbian com es as fem i­ nist; with or w ithout dildo, she becom es the dreaded figure o f castration and lack. A lthough, for m any reasons, I have not taken the tim e necessary to fit in with fem inist psychoanalytic theory, I am im pressed by those w ho have. I am even m o re im pressed by th ose w ho have possessed this m achine, who m ade it belong to them and for them , only to depart from it. They also tend to be rare. A case in point is Elizabeth Grosz, who a few years ago and after years o f w orking th ro u gh Lacan, up and left psych o­ analysis. The m ove seem s to be sim ple, even if the logistics o f leaving prob­ ably were not: “I d o n ’t want to talk about lesbian psychologies, about the psychical genesis o f lesbian d e sire .... I am m u ch less interested in where lesbian desire com es from , how it em erges, and the ways in which it devel­ ops than where it is going to, its possibilities, its open-ended fu tu re ” (1994a: 68-69).

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In th at m y argu m en t is n ot against psychoanalysis bu t rath er for another use o f desire, I will not enter into a discussion o f the strengths and lim its of psychoanalytic cultural criticism.2 Rather, I want to rework desire in order to lose the points of arrival that are im bricated in it. As one o f my points o f departure, I tu rn to D eleuze, who reads desire th ro u gh and in tension with Foucault. As Foucault and D eleu ze’s exchange m akes clear, the very w ord encapsulates tenacious tendencies: Deleuze recalls Foucault saying to him “with m uch kindness and affection

I can n ot stand the

w ord desire; even if you use it differently, I can ’t help m yself thinking or living desire = lack, or that desire says repression” (1994: 63). To briefly m ap out the term s o f their disagreem ent, F o u cau lt sees desire as a contam inated term ; at one point, he argues th at “desire is not an event but a p erm an en t feature o f the subject: it provides a basis onto which all that psychologico-m edical arm ature can attach itself” (cited in Halperin, 1995: 94). In the stead o f desire, Foucault turns to “pleasu re,” in p art due to the fact th at it “is virgin territory, unused, alm o st devoid o f m ean in g. T here is no ‘p a th o lo g y ’ o f p leasu re, no ‘ab n o rm al’ p le a su re ” (cited in H alperin, 1995: 94). While this distinction seem s clear cut, in his later work Foucault studies how sexual practices and pleasures were problem atized in order to analyze the ways in which Western m an has consti­ tuted him self as a subject of desire. In a sense, one could say that F ou cau lt’s analyses o f desire allow us to now return to the term , that it has been rid of naturalized conn otations and path ologizin g m otives. In any case, and in com bination with D eleuze’s effort to free desire from its institutionalized m oorings, it seem s rather unproductive to m aintain a categorical refusal o f the concept. For exam ple, in his book on F ou cau lt, David H alperin states, “Unlike desire, which expresses the subject’s individuality, history, and identity as a subject, pleasure is desubjectivating, im personal: it sh at­ ters identity, subjectivity, and dissolves the subject, however fleetingly, into the sensorial con tin u u m o f the body, into the unconscious d ream in g o f the m in d ” (1995: 95). In that H alperin’s book bypasses Deleuze and is also nearly devoid o f recent fem inist foucau ldian w ork on the body, it is p er­ haps inevitable th at F o u cau lt’s com plicated relationship betw een desire, pleasure, bodies, and pow er should be reduced to the sensory body on the one hand and the dream ing m ind on the other. H alperin ’s rem arks follow from F o u c a u lt’s discussion o f the plea-

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Elspeth Probyn sures of gay m ale sex, in particular the s/m practices that flourished in the bath houses o f the 1970s. While these exam ples are illum inating, H alperin m akes a direct equation between m arginalization and queer, arguing, “to m arginalize: that is, to qu eer '’ (1995: 111). If we invert the equation: to queer, that is to say, to m arginalize, we find ourselves back in the thick o f celebra­ tory queer c u ltu ral theories w hereby m ain stream c u ltu ral icons are queered and rendered deviant. Even as he refuses to see the positivity o f desire (and the positivity o f F o u cau lt’s use o f positivity), H alperin’s argu ­ m ent is anim ated by an unproblem atized notion o f m arginality, individu­ ality, and sexual pleasure as resistance. Strangely enough , in his enthusi­ asm for F ou cau lt, H alperin com es close to precisely reterritorializin g “pleasu re” in m uch the wav that D eleuze w arns against. To continue with the term s o f the desire-pleasure debate, D eleuze m ain tain s th at it is precisely p leasu re th at “in terru p ts the positivity o f desire.” Pleasure operates a “re-territorialization” ; it disarm s desire within a “grid o f identifications” (M assum i, 1992: 51), and “in this way, desire is retu rned to the law o f lack and to the n orm o f p leasu re” (D eleuze, 1994: 64). If F o u cau lt’s notion o f pleasure coexists with a deleuzian understan d­ ing o f desire, it seem s to m e that the latter extends the form er as it passes th rough F ou cau lt’s theorization o f pow er and subjectification. For desire is central to D eleuze’s notion o f the lines o f flight, key to thinking about how to conceive o f relations, conjugations, conju nctu res in a logic o f de­ routin g the reterritorialization, the setting o f norm alized ways o f being. And it m ust be noted that this re-territorialization o f desire into norm can p roceed at m any levels: evidently th ro u gh state and social san ctions o f “n o rm al” heterosexuality but also through the setting up of territorialized m odes o f being gay, lesbian, queer, or whatever. In the face o f the tendency for sexuality to be thus reduced, recaptured, Deleuze again returns to the m ovem ent o f desire, to see “sexuality as engagem ent [Vagencement] of desire historically variable and determ inable, with its points o f deterritorialization, o f flux and o f com bin ation” (1994: 64). Thus, as a problem atic, desire com pels m e to work along the lines constantly set off between and am ong longing, leaving, being, bodies, im ages, m ovem ent. It sh ould also cause us to be wary o f reterritorializing any practice (be it queer or other). If, as D eleuze says, F o u cau lt’s “idea that apparatuses o f pow er have an im m ediate and direct relation w ith the body is e ssen tial” (1994: 64),

Becoming-Horse equally im portan t is the fram ew ork that Deleuze gives to study the rela­ tion of desire and the com position of the social. To very roughly sketch out the conn ections, for D eleuze, “a society, the field o f the social does not contradict itself, but first and forem ost, it fle e s.. .[and] the lines o f flight constitute the rhizom e or the cartograph y” (1994: 62). Lines o f flight are then the engagem ents o f desire, desire which is “only defined by zones of intensity, th resh old s, gradients and flu x .” In tu rn , it is across bodies ( “a body that is biological as well as collective and political”) that these engage­ m ents are m ade and unm ade; “it is [the body] which carries the points of deterritorialization o f the en gagem en ts [of desire] or the lines o f flig h t” (1994: 63): not my body but a body. D eleuze’s th ough t gives flesh to an intuition that desire can be used to scram ble traditional thresholds between the social and the subjective: “It is in this sense that desire seem s to m e forem ost, and to be the elem ent o f a m icro-an alysis” o f the social (D eleuze, 1994: 61). G ro sz’s chapter on D eleuze and G uattari in her book Volatile Bodies is a clear exposition of w hat she calls “ u n exp ected ly p ow erful w eapons o f an aly sis.” As she argues, “D esire does n ot take for itself a p articu lar object w hose attain m en t it requires; rather, it aim s at n o th in g above its ow n p roliferation or self­ expansion. It assembles things out of singularities and breaks things, assem ­ blages, dow n into their singularities. It m oves; it does.” (1994a: 165). This conception of desire is especially exciting for fem inist analyses of the m ate­ riality o f the body as it frees w om en from being positioned and objectified as the “guardians of the lack constitutive o f d e sire .. .insofar as the opposi­ tion betw een presence and absence, reality and fantasy, has traditionally defined and con strain ed w om an to inhabit the place o f m a n ’s o th e r” (Grosz, 1994a: 165). This deleuzian conception of desire and m ovem ent “demassifies” the body: “Bodies are defined not by their genus and species, nor by their ori­ gins and functions, but by what they can do, the effects they are capable of, in passion as in action ” (D eleuze and Parnet, 1987, cited in G rosz, 1994a: 169). Bodies, and desire, are only of interest inasm uch as they engage with others. Sim ply put, a body, m oved by desire, propels itself into netw orks and m ilieux o f bodies and things. In turn, the m ilieu m ust be conceived of as a dynam ic arena o f social action. In D eleuze’s description, “a m ilieu is m ade o f qualities, substances, forces and events: for exam ple, the street

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irsp M E c o ly n with its m atter like paving-stones, its noises like the cry o f the m erchants, its anim als like the horses yoked, its dram as (a horse slips, a horse falls, a horse is b e a te n .. . ) ” (1993: 81). As a concept, the m ilieu begins here to take on its full im portance: it is the ground o f desire, a ground that m u st be ren­ dered in the very detail o f its singular qualities. D eleuze’s description o f m ilieu com es from his article “Ce que disent les enfants” (1993), a profound rereading o f Freu d’s “Little H ans,” perhaps the casebook stu d y o f O edipal fixing. D eleuze frees Little H ans from his position as belonging to Freud and to the history o f psychoanalysis, which he characterizes as this “rage of possessiveness and o f the personal [in which psychoanalytic] interpretation consists in finding the person and his posses­ sions” (1993: 86). He looses Little Hans from the grip o f Freudian principles and lets him once again wander the streets, his desire to m eet up with the rich little girl taking him by the h orses’ stable. Deleuze argues that Freud reduces this m eandering “to the father-m other: bizarrely enough, the wish to explore the building strikes Freud as the desire to sleep with the m oth er” (1993:81). Instead o f desire thus fixed and identified, Deleuze proposes a car­ tographic logic whereby “m aps su p erim p o se .. .it is not a question o f look­ ing for an origin, but rather o f evaluating displacem ents' (1993: 83—84). In D eleuze’s retelling o f Little H ans’ story one can glim pse another m ode o f reading, or interpretation, even as these term s are proven inade­ quate. For if interpretation presupposes an inner m eaning, here D eleuze undoes the elem ents that Freud has knotted together in his m oral tale. As Grosz puts it, “a D eleuzian m odel insists on the flattening ou t of relations betw een the social and the psychical so that there is neither a relation o f causation (one- or two-way) nor hierarchies, levels, grounds, or fou n da­ tions. The social is not privileged over the p sy ch ical.. .nor is the psychical privileged at the expense of the social” (1994: 180). In D eleuze’s own term s, “T he p h a ra o h ’s tom b, with its in ert cen tral roo m at the b o tto m o f the pyram id, gives way to m ore dynam ic m odels: from the drift o f continents to the m igration of peoples, the m eans by which the unconscious m aps the universe” (1993: 84).3 At one level, Deleuze frees up the richness o f the psy­ chic and the social precisely by refusing to give them dich otom ous stan d­ ing. In discussin g Little H an s’ affective universe, D eleu ze states th at it w ould be abusive to see as Freud does, a sim ple derivation o f the fatherm other: “as if the ‘vision’ o f the street, frequent at the tim e— a horse falls,

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is beaten, struggles— w asn’t capable o f directly affecting the libido, and has to recall his parents having sex” (1993: 84). On another level, “the identifi­ cation o f the horse with the father touches on the grotesque, and carries a m isunderstanding o f all the connections the unconscious has with anim al forces” (84). It is not that the little boy transposes the horse (with its g ran dfait-pipi) onto the father, nor is it that horse has som e m ythical standing; rather, in a com m o n way, Little Hans becom es-horse, entailing an “intensity which distributes affects, the liaison, the valency, which constitute each tim e the im age o f the body, an im age always reworkable or tran sform able in rela­ tion to the affective constellations that determ ine it” (D eleuze, 1993: 85). B ecom ing-horse thus designates a m om en t o f valency and o f m icro-com ­ bination between the im age the boy has o f his body in relation to the horse. This inbetween m om en t should not be m isunderstood as a sim ple projec­ tion onto horse o f being a horse but rather entails a certain dissolution of the body-im age as know n, as my body, in favor o f anoth er im age, that o f b ecom in g-h orse. T his b ecom in g involves “ a kind o f w ildness, pivots o f unpredictability, elem en ts w hose trajectories, con n ection s, and fu tu re relations rem ain u n p red ictab le” (G rosz, 1994a: 174). A lth o u g h it could su ggest a certain rom anticism o f becom in g one with the anim al, it is, in D eleuze’s description, a rudely im personal state: “It is the determ ination o f becom ing, its proper power, the pow er o f an im personal which is not a generality, but a singularity at its highest: for exam ple, one does not do the horse, no m ore than one im itates such a horse, but one becom es a horse, in attaining a zone o f proxim ity where one can no longer distinguish from w hat one becom es” (1993: 86). Elsewhere, Deleuze and G u attari describe how “ the acto r R ob ert de N iro w alks ‘lik e’ a crab in a certain film sequence; but, he says, it is n o t a q uestion o f his im itatin g a crab; it is a q u estio n o f m ak in g so m eth in g th at has to do w ith the crab enter into com position with the im age, with the speed o f the im age” (cited in Grosz, 1994a: 226). While these processes o f becom ing obviously carry profound im pli­ cations for how we consider questions of subjectivity, individuality, and the m akeup o f the social world, I want to turn to the m ore precise question of D eleuze’s m ode o f retelling the story o f Little H ans’ adventures. It strikes m e that as he gives us an account o f Little Hans becom ing-horse, we can

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Elspeth Probyn also see Deleuze becom ing—Little Hans. Beyond the ordinary sense o f inter­ pretation and its lim iting connotations, Deleuze describes and becom es the boy within the m achinations of all the elem ents o f his m ilieu. This is not to say that he em pathizes with the boy; rather, Deleuze displaces Little Hans, and that displacem ent m obilizes the m ilieu in all o f its social, psychic, ani­ m al elem ents, freeing up lines o f m ovem en t, sou n ds and tangibilities. Becom ing—Little Hans—becom ing-horse entails a running together and a flatten in g out o f these elem ents. As G rosz says o f the deleuzian “fram e­ w ork” (as she too perhaps strives to find a term m ore adequate than “rep­ resen tatio n ” or “in terp retation ”), “ this m eans that individuals, subjects, m icrointensities, blend w ith, con n ect to, n eigh borhood, local, regional, social, cu ltural, aesthetic, and econom ic relations directly, not th ro u gh m ediation of system s of ideology or representation” (1994a: 180). If we cannot, strictly speaking, talk o f a deleuzian “in terp retation ” (un less it be som eth in g like G lenn G o u ld ’s m achinic “in terp retation ” o f becom ing-Bach), Deleuze has delved into the style of several philosophers and o f philosophy itself. As he m akes clear in a discussion of Spinoza, style is to be understood as encom passing “three poles, the concept or new ways o f thinking, the percept or new7w ays o f seeing and hearing, the affect or new ways o f exp erien cin g” (1990: 224). In a rath er rem arkable text th at opens Pourparlers ( “Lettre a un critique severe”), D eleuze speaks o f w hat it is to write and to read: “To write, is a flow am on gst others, and one which has no privilege in relation to others, and which enters relations of current, o f counter-current, o f eddies with other flows, flows o f shit, o f sperm , of words, o f action, o f eroticism, of m oney, of politics, etc.” (1990: 17—18). And o f reading, he writes: “This m anner of reading in intensity, in relation with the outside, flow^ against flow7, m achine with m achines, experim entations, events which for each has nothing to do with the book, the shredding of the book, m aking it function with other things, w h ate v e r..., etc., this is a w ay o f [being in] love” ( “ une m aniere am o u reu se”) (1990: 18). What I take from this discussion is another m ode o f going about fig­ uring relations: a m anner o f cultural criticism (for lack o f a better w ord) c o m m itted to p u ttin g desire to w ork, to the tangibility o f m ilieu, to p u ttin g the elem ents o f the m ilieu into flight, to becom ing that which one describes in becom ing. While this is not a new idea per se (Loucault always m aintained that one writes in order to becom e other, in order to lose one­

lecoming-Horse self), it dem ands an absolute com m itm ent to attention and acuity. It is also, as should be very clear, a resolutely im personal and depersonalizing m ode. And it is p erh ap s here that the real difficulty lies: for even as I am c o m ­ pelled to d o cu m en t, observe, w atch for sm all lines o f fligh t, m in u te instances of inbetweenness that signal a becom ing-other, there cannot be a return to an elevated, authorial perspective. That personage, as we m ight agree, has for too long stood on a conception o f the other, m y other, held in place as the lack. Rather than a relation of alterity, the m ode I am su g ­ gestin g seeks to provoke oth er relations o f proxim ity, effects w hich D eleuze describes as “shadow s on the surface o f bodies, always betw een two b o d ies.. .It is always a body that casts shadow on the oth er” (1990: 175). Taking from Bergson (as Deleuze does), this is to reconceive of the body as im age, as “th e: place o f passage of the m ovem ents received and throw n back, a hyphen, a con n ectin g link betw een things w hich act u p on m e and the things upon which I act” (cited in M assum i, 1992: 185). An exam ple of the ways in which images connect with bodies in order to en join oth er im ages can be heard in a weird little exchange betw een Foucault and Helene Cixous. In it, and avant la lettre , they queer im ages aris­ ing from M arguerite D u ras’s M oderato Cantalnle. The im age of a breast brings Foucault to talk about the m ovem ent o f la drolene (which m ay com e closer to being a French translation of queer than would Sedgw ick’s troublant [1993: xii]). Cixous then defines the breast in relation to “the im a g e .. .a regard [a look] o f such extrem e in ten sity” (1975: 10). For F ou cau lt, the relation between the im age and the gaze of the looker is rendered “d r o le .. .in the sense of som ething strange, avid, not quite graspable” (1975: 10). In this sense, im ages are only queer in asm uch as they are avid for relations that seek other relations. For if the queer im age does indeed do som ething, it is in its capacity for connecting and reconnecting relations (sexual and other). The singularity of queer desire m ay reside in the ways in which it puts the body, bodies, and bits of bodies to work hyphenating con­ nections. The m o m en tu m here is rhizom atic, with stem s o f im ages carry­ ing both their roots and shoots; the im age constantly turns itself inside out. Or, as Foucault pu t it in one o f his rare com m ents on lesbians, “sexual rela­ tions are im m ediately transferred into social relations and the social rela­ tions are understood as sexual relations” (1989: 272).

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Oirls''0ncIZOirIs'''.3.ricl'.JHiorscs As I th in k about how im ages m ay recon n ect in oth er ways, an im age passes: o f girlfriends m elded to geth er by h ot horseflesh , bodies stru n g together by the sm ell of elderflow er branches slapping away the flies. The identity o f the individual bodies is o f little interest; rather, it is the way in which they are held together by a singular girl-practice of becom ing-horse: a m ilieu o f becom ing-horse, becom ing-w om an that is constituted within the changing elem ents o f sociality and bodies. I am , o f course, far from alone in thinking that there is som eth in g w on derfu lly th rillin g ab out the m o v em en t o f w om en on w om en on horses. From N ation al Velvet to My Friend F licka, horses figure in film in any num ber o f ways. M ore often than not, the im ages in these horse films con­ cern the strength o f fem ales. For exam ple, the young Liz Taylor sets out to win the G rand N ational not to secure M icky R oon ey’s heart but to con ­ tinue a line o f physical feats that runs from her m o th e r’s attem pts to swim the English Channel. The desire to becom e-horse is unm istakable in scenes that show Liz in her bed repeating and caught up in the m otion o f riding, her arm s stretch ed forw ard, her legs straining. As w ith D eleuze and G uattari’s description o f De N iro’s crab, these shots catch the lines o f flight betw een girl and horse and dwell on the inbetw eenness o f two m achinic entities. In tu rn , these im ages play back and forth w ithin a m ilieu o f girls, allow ing them to engage with the com position and the m om en tu m o f the im age. This becom ing-horse has little to do with actually having a horse; rather, it is a current within the stru ctu re o f girls’ lives, a m om en t th at is characterized by a trem endous experim entation o f images, especially those o f o n e’s ow n body. At least in o u r society, y ou n g girls are p articu larly focused as the site o f reception o f im ages. And while too often it is a site that is pathologized,4 m ore attention should be paid to the ways in which bodies becom e hyphens for connecting various images, a sw apping ground for different im aginary m aps and cards o f what one is becom ing. Instead of rendering this inbetweenness pathological in its nonunity, we need to con­ sider the open possibilities enacted w ithin a m ilieu o f co n n ectin g body parts (m y em erging breasts against yours). There is a m om en t in the social stru ctu ration o f girlhood when one m ay feel with great acuity “the p ro ­ d u ction o f intricate m achinic con n ection s w hich distribute intensities

Becoming-Horse across bodies and objects, experim enting with the plane o f consistency of desire itself” (G rosz, 1994a: 226). The im ages o f girls and horses then play within this, creating and allowing for lines of desire that connect elsewhere and in other ways. C ontra Bellour, and others who w ould see in the attraction o f horses but a rehearsal for the “big event,” one could say that in the eyes o f Marnie, Sean Connery was m erely a poor substitute for her horse Forio, or that it is the m an who gains from the horse and not the other way around. In any case, the m ilieu o f horses is for the m ost part a fem ale dom ain. As far as I rem em ber from the pony-club stories and experiences o f m y youth, it was always girls and girls and horses together, with nary a boy in sight. Within popular culture this generalized coupling of girls and horses ( “pony m ad ”) then operates in opposition to that o f girls and boys ( “boy crazy”) in order to produce a norm ative sexual structure o f femininity. But equine associa­ tions vary, and they always im plicate other social structures. For instance, w hile in oth er p arts o f the w orld British horsiness is seen as m iddle or upper class, horses in the rough farm ing region o f m y childhood did not constitute a status sym bol, and ours in particular certainly co u ld n ’t have been considered as such. This is not to suggest a dem arcation between the lived and im ages— in m y own concrete exam ple, im ages from elsewhere played alongside “real” horses, as when girlfriends from tow n cam e out to our village to ride out their fantasies on m y unw illing nag. Im ages take off from lived singularities just as they feed into them . And virtual im ages of horses have traveled widely, and indeed have been an effective strategy of British colonization (o f lands and girls). Be it in India, Canada, or Australia, wherever girls’ horse stories have landed, they aid and abet a certain stru c­ tu rin g o f fem ininity, social class, and the establishm ent o f a stru ctu re o f feeling o f youn g girls’ sexuality, even as they m ay be p u t to work to deterritorialize these structures. It sh ou ld be equally obvious that not all girls are interested in the processes o f becom ing-horse, processes that cannot be generalized, just as their directions cannot be assum ed in advance. Within certain m ilieux, at certain times, im ages m ay be pried loose from a m ore conventional m o o r­ ing and catch up certain bodies in lines of becom ing. But, as Deleuze argues follow ing Spinoza, they “do not have objects as their direct referent. It is the state of bodies (affections) and the variations o f force (affects) which send them off

ss

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Elspeth Probyn one to an o th er

They have for referent a disordered m elange o f bodies

and obscure variations o f force, follow ing an order which is that of Chance or a fortuitous encounter between bodies” (1993: 175). In this vein, im ages o f girls and girls and horses have no referent oth er th an the m elan ge of bodies and affections that m av send them off. If the ordering logic is one of chance or o f fortuitous encounters fol­ low ing the vagaries o f desire, there is a historicity to the m ilieu in which they play. There is an archive o f the connections between girls and horses: a repertoire of im ages of w om en-becom ing-horse, im ages o f the conn ec­ tion, and im ages th at con tin ue to forge oth er con n ection s. One o f m y favorites com es from C olette, a w riter who has inspired m any w om en in becom ing-cat. In The Pure and the Im pure , C olette strings togeth er a series of im pressions recalling what she calls “the noble season of fem inine passion.” The book, which was first privately published in 1932 as C esp la isu s after her phrase “Ces plaisirs q u ’on nom m e, a la legere, physique” ( “These pleasures which are lightly called physical”), is a m arvelous feat o f w riting and one that catches at and is caugh t up in various form s o f becom ing. C onsider w hat she says o f her account of the long-lived love o f Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonbv, the Ladies of Llangollen: “How reluctant I am to han dle dispassionately an yth in g in creation as p erilou sly fragile as an am orous m enage o f two w om en !”— a m enage she then describes as c o m ­ posed o f a “roof unstable and im m aterial, shored up by apposed foreheads, clasped hands, united lips” (1971: 91). Bits o f bodies float th ro u gh o u t and are conn ected and reconn ected th ro u gh passion and desire— desire for other w om en and passion for w riting: “I resum ed m y post at the side of the w orktable, w here m y w o m a n ’s eyes follow ed, on the pale blue bonded paper, the hard and stubby hand o f a gardener wTriting” (59). C o lette’s w riting is exem plary in its depiction o f m ilieu. She traces the w ays in w hich lines of desire flow and are slowed by the redirections of social status and enforced gender, only to resum e again in another corner w7here “once the slow -thinking m ale had been banished, every m essage from w om an to w om an becam e clear and overw helm ing, restricted to a sm all but infallible n u m ber o f sig n s” (69). While there are references to horsew om en scattered through out, one o f the m ore com pelling chapters traces the figure o f “ La C h ev aliere.” C olette recalls how La C hevaliere gathered together a m edlev of w om en from the highest strata o f society

Becoming-Horse who, sm elling o f “the exciting scent of h orses... tried to render intelligible for us their success with w om en and their defiant taste for w o m e n ” (65—66). These f in -d e -s ie c le Parisian hutches joined their taste for w om en with an appreciation o f horseflesh. Colette revels in the m ilieu com posed o f w om en, class, desire, scent, and style: “Som e o f them w ore a m onocle, a white carnation in the button-hole, took the nam e o f G od in vain, and discussed horses com petently. These m annish w om en I am calling to mind were, indeed, alm ost as fond of the horse, that w arm , enigm atic, stubborn and sensitive creature, as they were o f their youn g protegees” (65). For her tim e, and due in p art to her ow n u pbrin ging, C olette is rem arkably sensitive to the class differences that pervade this horsy set. When she writes that “ these ladies in m ale attire had, by birth and from infancy, a taste for below-stairs accom plices and com rades-in-livery” (63), she also details the lines of desire that connected w om en o f such different social status. In the tradition o f the time and class, as young girls the aristo­ cratic w om en had been given over by their parents to servants, to fit in “dow nstairs” as they m ight. From their childhoods spent within the com ­ plicated lines o f pow er, class position, gender, and desire, “ these w om en who had been dispossessed of their rightful childhoods and who, as girls, had been little m ore than orphans, were now in their m atu rity the fond instructors o f a younger generation” (65). In a tableau that traces the lines o f flight from the assem blages of forced m arriages, orphaned childhoods, and rigid fem ininity, C olette writes o f a generation o f w om en like La Chevaliere, who “m ost often bruised herself in a collision with a w om an— a w om an, that whispering guide, presum ptuous, strangely explicit” (68). As she m ourns the passing o f these w om en, she eulogizes their equestrienne, lesbienne existence: “The dust of the bridle paths in the Bois still haloes, in countless m em ories, these equestriennes who did not need to ride astride to assert their am biguity” (69). From her description, we can hear a seam ­ less articu lation o f horses, bodies, and lesbian desire th at allow ed these w om en to m ove gracefully outside heterosexual clum siness, the transition from pedestrian butch to the state o f fluidity; once “m ounted on the twin pedestal o f a chestnut c ru p p e r.. .they were freed of the awkward, toed-out stance o f the ballet dancer that m arred their w alk” (69). If, in C o le tte ’s description, lesbian desire flow s m ore freely once m ounted, in The Well o f Loneliness we have quite another set of im ages of bod-

5,7

5 8 -

EEoeffilEmByn ies exchanged in desire. Yet, in their singularity, they too cross the bodies o f a horse and a w om an . Indeed, R adclyffe H all goes fu rth e r th an La Chevaliere and effectively transubstantiates the body o f Stephen G o rd o n ’s first object o f desire, C ollins, the h ousem aid (again “below -stairs”), into th at o f her first horse: “ Laying her cheek against his firm neck, she said softly: ‘You’re not you any m ore, y o u ’re C ollin s’” (1968: 42). As Hall pu ts it, “Collins was com fortably tran sm igrated.” These are for m e singular im ages that raise the m ovem ents o f desire th at are exch anged th ro u gh horses, sm all glim pses o f b ecom in g-h orse, b ecom in g-w om an . For in stance, in H all’s accou n t, horse, desire, and w o m an are folded u p on th em selves as body u p on body converse “in a quiet language having very few w ords but m any sm all sounds and m any sm all m ovem ents, that m eant m uch m ore than w ord ” (cited in W hitlock, 1987: 571). As Alison H ennegan aptly states, it is a “description that can eas­ ily apply to satisfactory love-m aking” (cited in W hitlock, 1987: 571). Now, in th at H all’s ch am p io n in g o f theories o f inversion are w ell know n, som e m ight be tem pted to say that this equine transubstantiation o f her lover for her horse translates as a psychological substitution o f the lover for the horse and hence for the phallus. However, H all’s reading of H avelock Ellis’s theories on sexuality also p u ts lesbian desire w ithin the n atu ral order. As Jean R adford argues, “ her inverted love is G od-given, [but] she is not, it seem s, allowed to enjoy it” (1986: 107). If she cannot take p leasu re in her G od-given desire, th an ks to her social p osition , she is allowed to enjoy her love for Collins th rough her horse. H all’s use o f the horse enacts another becom in g-horse whereby the horse, the lover, and Stephen partially dissolve in order to reconnect in another direction, one that fulfills for Hall her desire for w om en. For us it m ay be a rather to rtu ­ ous route, but given the m ilieu in which it is perform ed, it m akes a certain sense. Thus, w ithin the social restraints o f her tim e, Hall reconn ects her “n atu ral” state o f inversion with an object o f nature in order to co n su m ­ m ate her love. Draw n on by desire, in the novel horse and lover are m ade to intersect at Steph en’s body, refracted off H all’s body clothed in the sci­ entific theories o f her tim e and m asculine riding outfits. These are, o f course, selective exam ples taken from a repertoire that could include m any others (there is a wide and seem ingly endless variety o f equine connections and reconnections). These im ages o f girls and girls

and horses can n o t have an essence, or fixed reference; set off in tan dem with one body, they m ay or m ay not m eet up and tou ch o ff desire in an o th er’s. Within an alternative m ode o f cultural interpretation, clearly it m akes no sense to read these im ages as tied down in a relationship o f signifier to signified, nor is it satisfying to pin th em as fixed referents o f the phallus. A long the sam e line, I w ould be hard p u t to argue that they have an intrinsic, inherent lesbian m eaning. Rather, w hat is interesting here, and indeed striking, is the way in which they m ove as lines o f desire between lesbians and horses and lesbians. Equally, they m u st be read as initiating altered and alternative relations within a m atrix o f class, race, and ethnic­ ity as well as sexuality. While they cannot be allowed to condense into categorized notions of being, they can, however, carry longing; they throw us forw ard into other relations o f becom ing and belonging. Nicole Brossard articulates this idea in a rath er m o re elegant way w hen she w rites th at “ the im age is a vital resource th at form s com plex proposition s from sim ple and isolated ele­ m ents. Each tim e an im age relays desire, this im age thinks, w ith u n su s­ pected vitality, the drift o f m eaning. So it is that im ages penetrate the solid m atter o f our ideas w ithout our know ledge” (1991: 196). Taking up m u n ­ dane fragm ents in its m ovem ent, the im age is riven by desire, the desire to becom e other, a m achinery o f horse and lesbian desiring. For exam ple, in a poem by R uthan n Robson, an im age of a “stam pede o f wild horses” carries the narrator forw ard into a realization “that w hat you w ant is to becom e.” And w hat she wants to becom e is caught up in the im age o f “two w om en w ithout b erets.. .two m ares at the river” (1992: 110). Or again, in A nzaldua’s story o f a w om an who finally realizes she can love her lover, the final im age is one o f how “It w ou ld start here. She w ould eat h orses, she w ou ld let horses eat h er” (1990: 388). The im age, thus freed from its post within a stru ctu re o f law, lack, and signification, can begin to m ove all over the place. It then causes dif­ ferent ripples and affects, effects o f desire and desirous affects. T urn in g away from the gam e o f m atch in g signifiers to signifieds, we can begin to focus on the m ovem ent o f im ages as effecting and affecting m ovem ent. As G rosz has argued, this is “ to look at lesbian relations and, if possible, all social relations in term s of bodies, energies, m ovem ents, inscriptions rather than in term s o f ideologies, the in culcation o f ideas, the tran sm ission o f

6d

Elspeth Probyn system s of belief or representations” (1994b: 77—78). By way of horses and lesbians and becom ing-horse, I wish to suggest that the im age becom es that with which we think and feel our way from body to body, as vectors thrust forw ard by the energies created in their dif­ ferent relations o f proxim ity and distance. B ecom in g as th at inbetw een m om en t, the disengagem ent and re-engaging o f different parts cannot be about policing im ages for their content. In B rossard’s essay o f unraveling desire in “the green night of labyrinth park,” she w onders w hether “in the very carnal night of solstice, is the im age lesbian because in reproducing it I w ant it to be sob ’ (1991: 196). This is a tricky p oin t in th at in p art it is th rough the desire that it be so, a desire aim ed at m aking it so. While the idea that the im age is lesbian because I want it to be so m ay sm ack o f either wishful thinking or voluntarism , Brossard rem inds us that this wishfulness m ay be actualized only through the force o f desire and the ways in which im ages are reproduced. These hopeful lesbian im ages (im ages that we wish were lesbian) w ork not in relation to any su pposed point o f authenticity but in their transversal m ovem ent, in the ways in which they set up rela­ tional lines o f desire. The im age is lesbian only in asm uch as it allow s for carnal lines of connection, the way it engages desire and the way in which desire m oves it. To be absolutely clear about it, the im age is queer not in and o f itself but in relation to other im ages and bodies— a m ovem ent that refuses to be policed at the sam e tim e that it says com e to m e, as it bends the line, causing changed relations o f proxim ity. As Brossard writes, “The im age slips, su rp risin g re/source th at slips endlessly th ro u gh m eanings, seeking the angle o f thoughts in the fine m om en t where the best o f inten­ tions guiding me, w orn ou t by repetition, seem about to close in silently on them selves. [But] the im age p e rsists.... It goes against chance, fervent relay ” (1991: 196). In B ro ssard ’s description we feel the fu ll force o f the im age, the hope that it carries in its subjunctive fashion, that m ovem en t o f desire when desire questions itself: Is she looking at me? Is she interested? Is she available? (Or, as a Swiss friend used to say, “Does she have the sam e life as us?”) The im age teeters, skitters between despair and longing; it gath ­ ers force just when the conditions of its possibility seem to be about to close in on it.

Becoming-Horse

Desire's Method The m adness o f possibilities. But is there a m ethod in all of this m ovem ent? Or again, you m ight say, why do we need a m ethod, given at best the socio­ logical drudgery, at w orst the pseudo-scientific pretensions associated with such a term? Part o f the problem is the w onderful way in which desire runs all over the place. Beyond a taxo n om y o f good or bad m an ifestation s o f desire, w hat interests m e are questions about how to use queer desire in such a way that it is not condensed in an individualizing logic and m easure. Put another way, the question is how to use desire so as to p u t it to w ork as a sin gular and queer form o f m ovem ent, so th at desire points us not to a person, not to an individual, but to the m ovem ent, the different relations betw een various body parts: desire set o ff in c o m m o tio n , triggered in con n ection with the m otio n o f the m u scles o f her neck. It sh ou ld be clear th at I am talkin g about the relation o f im ages, p arts o f bodies and things, not individuals.3 This is to construct the im age as having “ a certain e x iste n c e .. .situated half-w ay betw een the ‘th in g ’ and the ‘representation’” (Bergson, 1990: 1). The productive force of desire can then be seen as it in cessantly spins lines betw een the “ th in g ” and the “ rep resen tatio n ,” with desire as the force th at con n ects or discon nects im ages and things. Desire “does not have, strictly speaking, an object, but m erely an essence that spreads itself over various o b jects” (D eleuze, 1991: 110). Or, as F o u cau lt calls “ la p e n s e e -e m o tio n ” it is a “ m o v e m e n t w hich an im ates the sou l and p rop agates itself sp o n tan eo u sly from sou l to s o u l.. .bringing forth pleasures, uneasiness, m anners o f seeing, sensations that I have already had or that I intuit that I m ust feel som e day” (1994: 249; 1982: 244). And it is here that we can glim pse in action the difference of kind that queer desire seeks to relate. Far from essentializing queer desire within som e individuals, this is to argue that this desire is an essence that spreads itself over things. As we catch our bodies con figu red on bodies, desire “com m unicates a kind o f rem iniscence, an excitem ent that allow s [her] to follow ” (D eleuze, 1990: 111). There is no question that we are already within the engagem ents of desire, engaged and being engaged. And we are perhaps already beyond the interpretation o f im ages that seeks the origin o f m eaning, that seeks to fix im possible equivalences, that wishes to interpret im ages for their authentic queerness. Rather, the task at hand is to seek out becom ings, becom ing-

.6.1

62

pfcpPfh prnhyn horse-becom ing-lesbian. And, as is perhaps clear through the m eanderings o f this chapter, I use the polym orphous ways o f desire in a polyvalent m an ­ ner. To briefly retrace the path I have forged, this is to p u t desire to w ork in lines o f flight, lines that scram ble the subjective, the sexual, the social. In this fram ew ork, becom ing-horse is a strategy for figuring the undoing and the red oin g o f the lines betw een and am o n g entities. The figure o f becom ing thus foregrounds the positivity of desire as a social force, a line that rew orks other social forces o f class, gender, ethnicity, and race. As a theoretical strategy, and as a m ode o f cu ltural criticism , desire com pels us to write fully o f and within the m ilieux that give m eaning to life, m ilieux that constitute the singularities o f social life. The challenge o f w riting is to becom e w hat one is describing becom ing. This statem ent in tu rn belies a serious com m itm en t to the flow and flux o f social and political life as it is anim ated by desire. In sim ple term s, desire is where we start from and what we go with. While this m ay sound very ephem eral, I’ll wager that nothing cou ld be m ore concrete and pressin g. For, as m y m o th e r u sed to say, if wishes were horses, w om en w ould ride.

3

‘Love in a Cold Climate” Queer Belongings in Quebec

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Fragm entSQ fa ^

Landscape

The other night I dream ed that the KKK had com e to get m e. Dressed in cheap black suits with Michael Jackson insignia, they looked, sounded, and m oved with the bravura of Thatcherite “wide boys” o f the ’80s. As they sur­ roun ded m y ap artm en t, they yelled at m e: “ M au d ite g o u i n e ” “F u ck in ’ lezzie.. .w e’ll get you; die dyke.” I woke up the next day feeling rather shaky. As m y particular nigh t­ m are laded, I read in the m o rn in g p ap er th at the sch ool buses th at the local Hasidic com m un ity uses had been defaced with anti-Sem itic graffiti. While one fath er said h op efu lly th at “ the little ones are too y o u n g to u n d erstan d ,” these actions are a cruel m ockery o f a public-service ann ouncem ent currently running on television: show ing a new born baby and a graveyard, the voice-over rem inds us that “at these two m om en ts it doesn ’t m atter who our neighbors a re

Stop the H ate.”

The night preceding this latest violence, R adio-C anada had aired a telefilm by the em in en t Q uebecois film m ak er M ichel B rau lt. Entitled “Shabat S h a lo m ,” the film replays a previous incident w hen the plan to build a synagogue in the posh quartier o f O utrem on t was m et with vari­ ous form s o f rejection. The film takes up this story but m oves it ou t of the M ontreal region and centers on a sincere white Francophone teenage boy and his crush on a black Jewish, but not orthodox, girl. In addition, the boy bonds w ith his Hasidic neighbors, m u ch to the con fu sion o f his father. A long with the obvious good intentions o f Brault, the film was interesting for the way in which it contrasted representations o f happy Hasidic hom e life w ith a barren im age o f a sin gle-paren t Q uebecois father. This was indeed a m otherless tale of the nation. Two days later, the subject of the KKK returned. This time, however, it was apparently responsible for graffiti written on the office door of a pro­ fessor in sociology and ethnic relations at the Universite Laval in Quebec City. A ccording to the radio report, along with other im ages o f hate there was a draw ing o f a plane with $300 m arked next to it. While it was fairly clear that this was but a shorthand version o f racist “go back to where you

EEpfiffilPmEyn belon g” slogans, the radio host reporting on this incident had a hard time figuring out the m eaning of this sign, perhaps because in our deregulated skies $300 w ould get you a plane ticket from Quebec City to M ontreal (a distance o f som e 300 kilom eters). Or, it w ould get you from M ontreal to Florida, where seem ingly half the Quebecois popu lation hangs ou t in the winter. The question o f Q uebec leaving C an ada, and indeed o f who was Quebecois, had (once again) been raised that week with Jacques Parizeau’s prediction th at Quebec w ould be a sovereign state by June 25, 1994. The leader o f the opposition confidently foresaw th at he w o u ld n ’t need the vote o f “non souche” 1 Quebecois to bring about independence. Thus, in a year and a bit, and on the day after the holiday of Saint Jean-Baptiste, the patron saint o f Quebec and o f Quebecois nation alism , a separate state w ould be fou n ded with the votes o f th ose w ho co u n ted — th ose w hose fam ilies count back to the first French settlers.2 A gainst this im age o f Quebecois destiny, the week had begun with a, by now, annual outrage. At least once a year, som e o f the new spapers in Florida publish a p hotograph o f a “typical” Quebecois tourist ( “pure lam e ’ b u t dressed in Lycra)— beer belly h an gin g over his bikini briefs. N o t a pretty picture, n ’est-ce pas. However, as if to reassure the rest o f the w orld that M ontreal is m ore than the point o f departure for overw eight snow ­ birds, the city coincidentally unveiled o u r new logo. In it, the “ o ” o f M ontreal is replaced with red p uck ered lips. In the logic o f the G reater M ontreal Convention and Tourism Bureau, “it figures the lips are fem inine (M ontreal is, after all, a lady), classy, seductive and [they] reflect the city’s j o i e de vivre ” (T h e M on treal G a z e tte ,

January 28, 1993). At the sam e tim e,

M ontreal’s English-language newspaper, The G azette , ran an ad which read: “As ‘M ontreal’ as a two-cheek kiss.” Replete with yet m ore red lips, the text continued on a distinctly deleuzian line to argue th at “w hen it com es to charting the changes and trends th at define w ho we are— or w ho w e’re becoming —

y ou ’ll find all the info inside The G azette .”

TellingTaies It is now over a year since I first stru n g those stories together, and as I sit down yet again to try to m ake sense o f what I want to say, m y w ords return to trouble m e. Each tim e I revise and rew rite this essay, so m eth in g gets

“E v ^ E Z E E l l I m a t e ” thrown out. And yet, it is never those tales that are chopped. Part of this has to do with the fact that m y argum ent here proceeds through a certain use o f discursive debris. Thus, a few winters ago, I set out to capture a m o m en ­ tary sense o f what it m eans to experience identity in Quebec. My point was to use com m on and banal exam ples that random ly occur in order to write o f how identity plays out in one indifferent locale. O f course, these exam ­ ples passed th rough m y body and were caught up in m y desire to under­ stand this thing called Quebecitude (Quebec-ness). Looking back on it now, these tales still express som e o f the routinely bizarre nature o f identity in Quebec, som e o f the m undane ways in which m y adopted hom eland garbs itself in the trappings o f nation-ness, sexuality, and gender. However, if these tenets hold true, the body across which they pass has changed. For the sentim ent that first m oved m e to write this essay was caught up in a lingering desire to experim ent with, perhaps even to prove, m y belonging in Quebec. I now seem to have m isplaced that desire. In part this m ay be due to geographical m eanderings: over the last year, like m any an academ ic, I have spent tim e shuffling from one point to another. This m oving around and talking with people blissfully ignorant o f the question “What does Quebec w ant?” has jostled m y sense o f belonging. Elsewhere this lack o f longing to belong m ight not be terribly serious. However, here in Quebec, identity is an institutional project, projected on the longing for an absolute origin, predicated upon the com m on know ledge that as a p ro­ ject it will fail. It is difficult to consider living here w ithout being touched by the constant appeals to belong. I now find m yself on the oth er side o f that longing. However, like those stories that I am unable to erase, I cannot sim ply p u t aside the ques­ tion o f w hat it m eans to belong in Quebec ju st because I happen to have had a failure o f desire. And if at the outset I had hoped that in the w riting I w ould further the intricacies of m y belonging in Quebec, the loss o f desire does not obviate the need to think through the particular piquancy o f sex­ uality and nationality that constitute Quebecois expressions o f identity. For personal reasons and driven by a theoretical exigency, I need to figure the ways in which specifically Quebecois representations o f identity run into very singular lines o f belonging. A gainst general notions o f nations as gen ­ dered and sexualized, I raise here the ways in which national belonging is always articulated w ithin and across history: a history o f colom alization in

fa

6R.„.

Elspeth Protayn w hite-settler countries and a theoretical and p o p u lar history o f figuring nation s w ithin an established regim e dependen t on certain equations of gender, sexuality, and m arginality. Only in m akin g concrete the w ork of such discursive equivalences can we begin to consider the sin gu larity of belonging: the m odes and m anners o f local being called forth at any given tim e and in specific spaces. Only in disabling the epistem ological grou n d ­ ing o f identity can we begin to th in k in m o re quixotic and fluid term s, term s that are beyond a norm ative and transcendental project o f collective identity— a being in belon gin g en m esh ed w ithin the m achinic e n g ag e­ m en ts o f lon gin g, again d eterm in ed by historical context, yet a being, I think, capable o f rearticulating itself. The line I follow here constantly m oves th rou gh w hat is taken as a particularly Quebecois set o f belongings— the im aginary possessions that are created in the nam e o f an identity project, the belongings that a nation, a group, a people cobble together from the past and the present. The point then is to push at these belongings, such fetish-objects o f identity, in order to glim pse where they break down: where identity gives way to a sin gular­ ity o f “bein g - s u c h ” In A gam b en ’s w ords, this is to fo rm u late “belon gin g it s e lf.. .being-sac/i, which rem ain s constantly hidden in the condition of belonging ( ‘there is an x such that it belongs to y’) and which is in no way a real predicate, com es to light itself: The singularity exposed as such is w hat­ ever you want, that is, lovable” (1993: 2). I take A gam ben’s argum ent as a challenge and as a political com m it­ m en t to analyze the v eh em en t expressions o f Q u eb ecitu d e— a statefunded p ro ject o f iden tity-form ation distributed across individuals— to recognize the odious creases in its belongings, the way in w hich a set o f possessions is constituted as belonging to one group (white French settler society) at the expense o f others. At the sam e time, the challenge o f such an analysis lies n ot in a redistribution o f those belongings in such a way that all can have a piece o f the national action— rather, it is in the m aking stran ge o f belongings, in queering their epistem ological u nderpinn ings, that we m ay be able to conceive o f a m an n er o f belonging not predicated on possession. While one m u st think th ro u gh categories o f difference in order to grasp the co m p o sitio n o f any given identity, once we have posed those specificities we need to question the ways in which the specificities o f iden­

69

“ Love in a Cold Climate”

tity com e together: the conditions o f their em ergence and circulation, the m aterial circu m stan ces th at m an age their m ovem en t. As C h ristian e Frem ont argues, “If, in metaphysics, a singularity carries to infinity that which constitutes the essence of topological singularities (namely, to decide upon the nature of a globality from the point of a certain number of local events), singularity has to be defined as a m etaphysical point that includes in itself, in the m ost adequate m anner possible, the greatest possible number of conn ection s... singularity presents this particularity, that within it the connection of the local and the global is the strongest but at the sam e time the least visible”

(1991: 115-116, 119). In this sense, I see singularity as that point of dense connections, that point that carries within it the strongest connection o f the local and the global, that singularizes specificities into a m om entary structure of belong­ ing. These are not isolated m om ents; rather, as Deleuze argues, “sin gu lar­ ities, in their connection with the whole, are subject to other singularities. T hey are affected by these oth er sin gularities; in their in teraction with them , they are transform ed both into structures and into other singulari­ ties” (cited in May, 1991: 29).

Dyke Dives As an exam ple of the dense connections that m ay pass unnoticed, I want to briefly tour the shifting sites of lesbian belonging in M ontreal. Flere “the c o m m u n ity ” is in actual fact m any and is divided alon g linguistic lines (A n glo and Franco lesbians seem to rarely m eet) as well as generation al lines (the visible Franco “ c o m m u n ity ” tends to be older and retains ties from a 1970s lesbian-fem inist engagem ent, whereas the A nglos tend to be younger and m ore involved in Am erican-style queer theory and politics). These vectors are in turn inhabited by actual bodies striated by lesbian her­ itages. For exam ple, here som e hutches and fem m es in their fifties had a som ew hat easier time surviving the butch-fem m e feuds within fem inism , in part because they didn’t read English. Linguistic nationalist politics habitually enter into all corners of the city, and class geography now overlaps with a gay one. M ontreal is after all

m

EEpM EEm Byn

a city divided (or thinks o f itself as such) into the m ore affluent and A nglo West and the traditionally w orking-class Francophone East. If this gener­ alization is already disturbed by the m iddle-class and m ainly French-speak­ ing quartier o f O u trem o n t to the n orth or by the w orking-class and lin­ guistically m ixed quartiers to the south, as a topological statem ent it then breaks open on the line o f the M ain, B oulevard Saint Laurent, the street that com es up from the river and is scored by the m arks left from its flows o f im m igran ts: Jewish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Latino, Chinese. From the low er depths o f the red-light district to the upper reaches o f gentrification, this street has traditionally been staked as a sort o f n o -m an ’s land in linguistic battles. While languages constantly shift on the M ain, m ove two blocks east to the longest-surviving separatist lesbian bar and you will rarely find an English-speaking dyke. But com e into that bar and consider how the lines o f class, genera­ tion, and state policy m ove and su p p o rt such a statem ent. Take, for exam ­ ple, that glorious butch over there, the one w ho owns a C am ero, the one w ho picked m e up, happily p u ttin g m y dripping bicycle into her brandnew car. A lthough she speaks a bit o f English, she confided in m e that she has never had an an glo lover. She is p art o f th at generation o f w orkingclass Fran cophones w ho had to “speak w h ite” in order to survive in the an g lo -d o m in ate d business w orld. B u t th at cu te baby bu tch over there couldn ’t p ut a line together in English to save herself. And she doesn’t have to. Born at the turn o f the 1970s, she was raised with the French face-ing o f M ontreal ( “ le visage fran ^ ais”) and provincial educational policies that tend to relegate learning English to the status o f basket m aking: nice but not essential. By the sam e token, her sw eet Italo-Q uebecoise girlfriend was required by law to do all o f her sch oolin g in French, and as a result, she speaks French w ith ou t an accent, English to m e, Italian at hom e, and writes strangely in all three. Looking around this bar, I follow the very different lines o f lesbian being th at con gregate here. While the fact th at we are all speak in g in French seem s to give the scene a hom ogen eou s veneer, it is im possible to give a gloss on Francophone Quebecois lesbian identity. Indeed, any gener­ ality, be it about Q uebecois-ness or lesbianism , flounders. Her butchness is inflected as surely as her voice with an East End hardness; a history o f badly paid jobs and a suspicion against “les anglais ’ lingers in her eyes as she looks

at m e. And w hat does she see? Perhaps a fem m e, but one that has “ /a tete carree ”

o f an A nglo, the aggressiveness o f class privilege, an accent not o f here

but vaguely foreign, p u t on, too fancy. At tim es she d o e sn ’t u n derstan d m e, d oesn ’t expect to; at times, I no longer follow. As an ex-bartender and waitress, I have learned a lot in bars. And as I sit here m using on dyke difference, I am rem inded o f the two m ost im p or­ tant bar tips: one, do not ground your identity in bars; two, do not search for depth in bar talk— take it in its very quelconque-ness, its so-whatness. Thus in stru cted , I m ove to trace the scratch ed surface o f b elon gin g here. Listening to everyday expressions of Quebecois identity, I am rem inded of its theoretical impossibility; I am rem inded that people do routinely accept it as an actuality. Thus, while it m ay be m y experience that having an iden­ tity is an im possible idea, it is som eth in g that nevertheless circulates as a feasible goal and increasingly as evident fact. That identity is problem atic is hardly news within theoretical circles w here identity is, o f course, fragm en ted , decentered, and all the rest. However, it seem s to m e that the discourse o f identity as fragm ented con­ tinues to be abstracted from the local ground in which one lives on e’s pre­ sum ably decentered life. As I hear these accounts o f fragm entation, I w on­ der w here the au th o r lives: Is it the p u ll betw een a necessary level o f abstraction and everyday life that fragm ents? I wonder why there is so little discussion o f how these “facto rs” that fragm ent m igh t be em bodied and how they play ou t in Peoria (or B loo m in gton or B u rlin gton or Regina). Bluntly put, and given the intellectual hegem ony o f A m erican scholarship in this area, the contem porary theoretical tenor is one o f a very A m erican “n ow h eren ess” and “everyw hereness.” A gainst this disem bodied tone, I seek ou t the ways in which the local, rendered as singular, can be p u t to work to suggest expressions other than the general. From where I write, it is im possible to think about belonging within Quebec w ithout considering the ways in which I ’identitaire turns on the exi­ gencies o f ontology and desire. Indeed, as rhizom atic im ages, im ages that continually intertw ine one alongside the other, nationality and sexuality constantly rub against each other. M oreover, against a critical m ode that is content to speak of “intensity” w ithout a trace o f passion, I am convinced that an argum ent for the singularity o f belonging m u st pass th rough and across the sin gu larized body w hich writes. As D eleu ze says, “It is not

12_

Elspeth Probyn e n o u g h .. .m erely to think this th eo retically

Concretely, if you define

bodies and th o u gh ts as capacities for affecting and being affected, m any things change” (1992: 626).

Marginalia In Q uebec, identity m o st often rhym es w ith m argin ality. Identity here is the expression o f a com plex epistem ology, a way o f arran gin g things, p u ttin g in place kn ow led ges accord in g to geograph y, history, and colon ization . While the term marginal m ay sou n d like a quaint and oldfashioned com plaint, spoken with a Quebecois accent it sum s up an official system held in place by the know ing con stru ction s o f gender, sexuality, and race. A long with Stephen M uecke, I w ould argue that “the usefulness of center-m argin is com ing to an en d ” (M uecke, 1992: 187). For M uecke, and from the A ustralian context in which he speaks, the constructs o f centerm argin “depend on notions of cultural dom inance wedded to the counter­ discourse o f m u ltic u ltu ra lism ” (1992: 187).3 W hile these d iscou rses and c ou n terd iscou rses are also at w ork here, identity debates in Q uebec routinely use the argu m en t th at Quebec is a specific cu ltu re, a “distinct society,” due to the factors o f language and colonization. These historical elem en ts are then taken as p ro o f o f Q u eb ec’s m argin ality w ithin the Canadian and N orth Am erican context. In turn, cu ltural representations routin ely p ortray Q ueb ec’s specificity as m argin al to the m ajority , as peripheral to the center, as fem ale to the m ale. These discursive slippages serve to displace attention to the actual lines o f singularity that com pose the m ateriality o f belonging in Quebec. It has often stru ck m e th at alth o u gh m o st o f the p o p u latio n lives very near and has experienced real borders, “m arg in ” and “m argin ality” are used first and forem ost as discursive operators. I take this term from Jean M ichel Berthelot (1992), who argues that certain term s act as discur­ sive operators which chiasm atically create discursive relations other than those they seem ingly represent. As such, the m argin -cen ter equation is p osed as self-evident w hen in fact it is always getting up to other things, forging other discursive directions. It is, o f course, for specific reasons that the singular relations o f dif­ ference that m otivate Canadian and Quebecois discourses o f identity have

“ Love in a Cold Climate been figured th rough the discursive regim e o f m arginality and m inority. A certain understanding o f colonial history and geography wells up into the present, producing pride in m arginality as well as fear o f being isolated. An exam p le o f “geograph ical p rid e” can be heard in the way th at Quebecois film director Jean-Pierre Lefebvre describes the country: “two oceans, th ousan ds o f lakes, an in com parable river; four striking seasons which annually m ake us relive the ritual of absolute death and life” (cited in Allor, 1993).4 On the other hand, exam ples of “geographic fear” have cir­ cu lated widely in the debates over the Free Trade negotiation s with the United States and Mexico, and in the prognostications o f w hat will happen after Quebec separates. M arginality as a discursive operator allows for dire discourses about econom ic isolation, refiguring the population as stranded “drawers of water and hewers of w ood.” If there are good reasons for feel­ ing m arginal and isolated, m arginal status tends to produce autom atic and exclusive, excluding, responses. Other im ages of geography, isolation, and m argin ality com e to m ind: one ostensibly C anadian, the oth er very Quebecois. The first is an anim ated short film p rodu ced by the N ational Film Board o f C an ada that I saw m any years ago. As I recall, C osm ic Z oom (already dating itself as very 1970s) opens with the scene of a boy in a canoe fishing on the St. Lawrence river. We “z o o m ” in on a m osquito on his arm and then penetrate dow n th ro ugh his skin and into the very atom s. The cam era then w hizzes up and ou t o f the b o y ’s body, con tin u in g u ntil it reaches the farthest galaxies, only to tu rn around and descend, finishing with an aerial shot o f the boy on the river. Given the National Film B oard’s m andate to provide Canadians with im ages of them selves across the entire land, the m ovem ent and the tim ing of this short are intriguing. While it is c o m m o n to accuse ou r federally funded film m ak ers o f being borin g bureaucrats, the im ages here can be seen as perverting the official im pera­ tive o f national identity. Produced a year before the Parti Quebecois cam e to power, Cosm ic Zoom resolutely gives a circum scribed, local, and vertical depiction o f a river that, in fact, does cross provincial borders. If the river is stopped in its natural m om en tu m to flow over into other areas, the indi­ vidual boy is show n to be n o th in g but ato m s, ato m s w hich in tu rn are shown to be nothing com pared to the galaxy. As an official docum ent, this representation foregrounds the question, “M arginal to w hat?” Indeed, the very term s of identity are shown to be w ithout foundation: the m osquito is

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E ju st as im p o rta n t as the boy; the M ilky Way (as yet u n claim ed by any nation that we know of) is show n to be rather m ore grand than the vari­ ously claim ed (by Quebec, Ontario, C anada) St. Lawrence seaway. M y second ex am p le con cern s th e p o et/sin g er/so n g w riter G illes V ign eau lt’s quasi n ation al an th em “M on pays ce n ’est pas un pays, c ’est l ’h iver” ( “My co u n try is n o t a country, it is w in ter” ). W hile V ign eau lt re tu rn s us to n atu re, he articu lates a rath er p ecu liar syn ecd och e. In a p lace w here it snow s for at least six m on th s, V ig n e au lt’s p h rase stark ly p ro d u ces the n ation as a vast and p resu m ab ly em p ty w inter. H ere the tem porality o f w inter blurs the space and the tim e o f the nation. M odern Q uebec is again retu rn e d to the state th at V oltaire w rote o ff w hen he su m m ed up “La N ouvelle France” as “quelques arpents de neige” ( “a few acres o f snow ”). These exam ples are but sm all instances in a larger repertoire o f cu l­ tural im ages that interrelate geography, land, space, and tim e in very affec­ tive ways. It is a current that continues in m ore academ ic considerations of the nation. As Eli M andel argues, there is a persistent intellectual tension “between those who believe the lines o f pow er ru n N orth and Sou th and those who believe they run East and W est.. .betw een those who say th at C an ada exists because o f its geography and those w ho say it exists despite its geograph y” (cited in H utcheon, 1988: 4). The classic conceptualization o f this relation is to be fou n d in the rich w ork o f the econ o m ic historian H arold Innis.5 Innis’s central and organizing m etap h ors were, o f course, spatial, although their logic was deeply tem poral. To be rath er reductive about the lengthy and detailed historical descriptions that are at the heart o f Innis’s oeuvre, one can say that centers and peripheries are dialectically produced through the bias o f every and any com m u nication technology. A rguin g th at successive technologies regulate the spatial proxim ities o f center and m argin , and hence the pow er o f Em pire, Innis no n eth eless feared their consequences, writing that the “application o f pow er to co m ­ m unication industries hastened the consolidation o f vernaculars, the rise o f nationalism , revolution, and new outbreaks o f savagery in the tw enti­ eth century” (1951: 29). At the risk o f annoying Innis scholars with such a sim plification o f his com p lex th o u gh t, I w ou ld argue th at it is precisely possible to p resen t Innis in a n u tsh ell w ith o u t feeling too ridicu lou s because his argum ents seem so very evident. Evident, that is, if you think

about or teach Innis’s work from a C anadian standpoint (not to m ention from a p articular generational viewpoint). I rem em ber well w hen I first read In n is’s w ork. It was, than kfully, before I read his vulgarizer, M arsh all M cLuhan. At the tim e I had gone from trying to pass as a real Quebecois waitress to being a graduate student in an A n glo-C an adian nationalist com m un ication studies departm ent. I decided that I should be w orking on m y English C anadian belongings, not a difficult feat as m y m aternal grandfather had done all m an n er o f quin­ tessentially Canadian things. These included leaving his father’s bank in the East and taking the Harvest Express, a train ride that for five dollars w ould take you from the East to the West, letting you off along the way to be sea­ sonally em ployed by farm ers. Reaching the West, he then hom esteaded in n o rth ern British C olum b ia and also helped build som e o f the first roads and bridges. A long the way, he served in the trenches o f World War I and sustained a deep hatred of the “m otherland,” especially incarnated for him in the accents and dem eanor o f upper-class Englishm en. A m on g his less salu briou s form s o f em p lo y m en t was a stint in the w ork cam ps for the unem ployed during the Great Depression. D uring his long life, he traveled along the actual lines that were creating Canada as such. I rethough t my gran dfather’s history and his stories in the light o f Innis: the production of a national entity through the colonial technologies o f transport and trade, the m ap p in g o u t o f C an ad a alon g the route o f the C an adian N ational Railway, a line o f national identity literally built on the bodies o f Native Canadians and those Chinese and Japanese w orkers brought over for hard labor and often left to die as the last stake was struck. The project of forging highways, again across Native land, laid claim to a will to control tim e and space. The creation o f Em pire and colony in a land that didn’t w ant them , the intertw ining o f the conquest, technology, and m arginal sensibility; all these historical and geographical facts and fictions are central to Innis’s theories and to certain fam ily albu m s. W here else bu t in C an ad a cou ld G ordon Lightfoot sing w hat am oun ts to an innisian them e tune: “There was a tim e in this old land when the railroad did not ru n .” And G ordon Lightfoot’s R ailroad Trilogy aptly sum s up that m ixture of space, longing, em ptiness, and pride that allows C anada to think o f itself as a m iraculous, m arginal line stretching across “the true N orth strong and free” (a line that, outside o f Canada, only hockey and baseball fans will rec-

.7,6

Elspeth Probyn ognize as part o f our national anthem ). The entrenchm ent o f this im age of C anada as a perilous thread running across the continent against the tena­ cious dow nw ard p u ll o f the US can be glim psed in a 1958 p ro m o tio n for the national link-up of the Canadian Broadcasting C orporation. It shows a rough m ap o f Canada, and at the top in the far N orth is a graphic o f a fam ­ ily h u d dled in front o f the television set. Below th em ru n s the line o f receivers that stakes out the 49th parallel. The text reads: “Canadians are now linked together as a fam ily o f viewers by the C BC -TV netw ork from sea to sea. ONE FAMILY, ONE NATION” ( M a c le a n ’s M ag az in e , July 5, 1958). O f course, we know that the line is a m aterial effect o f a p articu lar set o f technologies, already shifted elsewhere. And indeed, both the railway and the broadcasting lines that epitom ized the illusion o f C anadian unity have been deeply cut into, m ore or less left in tatters as a legacy o f two consecu­ tive Conservative governm en t m andates. C on fu sin g as these exam ples are, and tem p tin g as it is to im m e d i­ ately m ake them into som e coherent shape, I need to leave them in their ju m b led state. While they are u sually u ttered in the rom an tic ton es o f identity, they are m ere exam ples within Quebecois and Canadian regim es o f identity that can be pried from hum anist m oorings. Posed as coterm i­ nous with certain conceptions of nation, they can, in fact, be turned so that “each line is broken, subjected to variations o f direction , subjected to deriva­ tio n s” (D eleuze, 1989: 185). These lines w ould th en attain sin gu larity as they intersect in different ways but never th rou gh a preexisting d eterm i­ nation. In the m om en ts o f their intersection, these lines draw out an actu ­ ality. This actuality “is not w hat we are, but rather w hat we are becom ing, th at which we are in the m idst o f becom in g, w hich is to say, Other, ou r b e c o m in g -o th e r” (D eleuze, 1989: 190—191). In this vein, the lines o f Quebecois and Canadian singularity that I cite m ay give rise to other m odes o f belonging: alternative national m anners. A recent episode o f N orthern Exposure (C BS, M arch 1, 1994) precisely plays upon the ways in which national m anners o f being are neither essen­ tial nor particularly nice. In it Shelley rem em bers that she is C anadian and decides that her new born baby should be officially registered as Canadian. As she h u m s the n ation al an th em and croon s abou t the su p erio rity o f C anada— from the health system to the m aple syrup— she is shocked to find out that the father of her child, Holling, has given up his Canadian cit­

“ Love in a Cold Climate izenship and, m ore specifically, his Quebecois identity. “You’ve forgotten the m o tto o f Q uebec” she cries at him. “I rem em ber, ‘je m e souviens’”— “What do you rem em ber, Holling?” With national pride, she leaves to visit a friend in Canada, and filled with rem orse, thinking that he will never see Shelley or his child once they taste the delights o f C anada, H olling takes off on his snow m obile to bring them back. Both of their journeys back to the hom eland are a bit rough. Shelley finally gives up trying to buy cute little M ountie dolls ( “perfect C h ristm as p resen ts”), as she can n ot find a shop assistant and w hen she does, the w om an is indifferent, if not rude. H olling w oos Shelly back to A laska by singing a stirring rendition o f “This land is your land, this land is m y land.” They then return to Alaska with a presum ably A m erican-Canadian child, a happy outcom e that recalls, even as it twists, the 1970s “Entre A m is/Betw een F rien ds” id eology o f IJSCanadian relations. In this episode su p po sed ly essential n ation al ch aracteristics— weather, geography, history— are turned into a tale about tem peram en t and m anners of being. An apt and tim ely ode to the C anadian m edical sys­ tem (the episode aired d u rin g the heigh t o f the fuss ab ou t the C lin ton health care plan) is tem pered by representations of C anadian indifference. The scenes o f far-flung parts o f C an ada and the U nited States are linked with a scene at the border crossing, where H olling on snow m obile com es close to having to strip in order to p rod u ce the required w ads o f d o c u ­ m en tation . All the while, at the top o f both nation s the land is equally bleak on both sides, the m argin of one country identical to the other. If N orthern Exposure m an ages to give us tw o n ation s as m erely tw o m an n ers o f being a nation and neatly places the nations o f C an ada and the U nited States w ithin the in digen ous First N ations, m u ch o f critical w ritin g re tu rn s us to the m argin as gen dered and sexu alized scene. In som e cases the m argin becom es the site o f an obscene playing ou t o f eth ­ nic, gen d ered , and sexu al difference, all con flated in the n am e o f an au th en tic being. For instance, in an early essay, Fredric Jam eson w rites that “the only authentic cultural p roduction today has seem ed to be that which can draw on the collective experience o f m argin al pockets o f the social life o f the world system ” (1979: 140). In and am on g Jam eson ’s p ock ­ ets one finds “black litera tu re and blues, British w ork in g-class rock, w o m en ’s literature, gay literature and the ‘rom an quebecois’” (1979: 140).

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lls p ttE E o E m

A n o th er th eo rist o f p o stm o d e rn ism , Linda H u tch eo n , states th at “in C an adian w riting the two m ajo r (bu t by no m ean s on ly) new form s to appear have been those that em body ethnicity and the fem ale” (1988: 18). C oin cid en tly, Ja m e so n ’s d escrip tio n o f an “e th n ic ” (th e p re e m in e n t Q ueb ecois n o velist H u bert A qu in ) beco m es stran g e ly g en d ered as he describes his “w riting fas] shooting (in both hom icidal and sexual senses)” (1983: 223): What I have fou n d.. .is that when this garish surface is approached ever more closely, as with the smears of an open wound, suddenly microscopic hues appear, a whole oil-slick rainbow of the most delicate and unusual subcutaneous perception, swarming, m arbled

Even the exclamations

now seem to me to have an inner tension, to speak their pent-up ‘emotion’ with all the tautness of a drawn bow. (1983: 216) In this passage, Jam eson presents how he cam e to term s with w hat he calls A qu in ’s “first-person self-in d u lgen t” voice. H ow ever, instead o f being an exam ple o f the singularity o f Quebecois w riting, Aquin is used to em body m arginality. And a stran ge body it is: weird quasi-pornographic codes— the garish surface, the sm ears o f an open w ound, the sw arm in g and m arbled subcutaneous etc. The seem ingly endless slide from lips to lips is abruptly stopped once and for all by “the tautness o f a drawn bow.” While this exam ple is perhaps overly blatant, I use it to illustrate the problem s o f speaking of national or ethnic identity in the singular, outside a gendered and sexualized regim e o f established know ledges. Too often, identity slides into difference, com pulsively figured as sexual and m arginal. T h at this is a tau to lo gical system does n o t im pede its profu sion both in p o p u la r and in tellectu al discourses. B anally coded in sexu al term s, it becom es extrem ely difficult to talk o f gender, nation, m inority, m ajority, sexuality, hom osocial relations, and hom osexuality “at once separately and to geth er” (de Lauretis, 1988: 17).

OnravellngtheRomance Singularizing this web o f lines is easier said than done. Key to this knot is the historical confusion which places w om en as the general term o f sexual difference. W ithout entering into a long discussion about the sex-gender

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system , I do want to rem ark on the way in which gender is generally taken as the m ark o f difference. Here I take from French m aterialist fem inism ,6 w hich until very recently hardly m en tion ed the term genre (gender). Instead, theorists such as Christine Delphy, N icole-C laude M athieu, and C olette G uillaum in start from the concept o f “les rapports de sex e ” (the social relation s o f sex). In her early article, “Pratique du p ou vo ir et idee de n atu re” (1978), G uillaum in clearly lays out how “les rapports de s e x e ’ work: The ideological-discursive face of the relation renders the m aterial and appropriated entities as things in thought itself; the object is dismissed “ou t” of the social relations and inscribed within a pure materiality. By inference, the physical

characteristics of those who are physically appropriated are taken as

the causes of the domination which they suffer (1978: 6).

In G u illau m in ’s theory, “ le sexage' designates the m aterial and sym ­ bolic appropriation o f one class (w om en) by another (m en). T h rou gh ou t her work in fem inism and on ethnicity, G uillaum in has always refused dif­ ference even as others reproduced difference as a celebratory catch-all in fem inism . For her, difference is always difference from , an epistem ology that allows for a subjugated position created in opposition to, and producing, the general. As G uillaum in characterizes the situation, It is not certain that men are sexed beings; they have a sex, which is different. We are sex, in its entirety. Indeed, there isn’t really a masculine (there isn’t a gram m atical gender male). One says ‘m asculine’ because men have kept the general for themselves. In fact, there is a general and a feminine, a hum an and a female. (1978: 16)

G u illa u m in ’s argu m en t about the co n stru ctio n o f sex classes th ro u gh the co n stitu tio n o f the gen eral effectively p roblem atizes an im portant obstacle in thinking about the singular relations designated by the concepts o f gender, sexuality, and hom osociality. Her term sexage iden­ tifies the way in which m aterial entities (w om en) are appropriated in order to allow for the construction o f a general class: m en. M oreover, through appropriation, w om en as historical individuals are throw n out o f the sys­ tem o f social relations and are deem ed to on tologically co n stitu te the

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Elspjeth Probyn “pure m ateriality” o f nature. If G u illau m in ’s analysis focuses on the m ate­ rial constitution o f a founding class, her term sexacqe describes the constitu ­ tion of difference necessary to the creation o f the general. Incarnated as dif­ ference, w om en (and m ore precisely, w o m en ’s bodies) can be understood as the discursive operator that allows for the creation and m aintenance of the sam e: the h om oso cial general. R endered as such, as actual m aterial entities they are dism issed from the system . Her analysis thus com pels a problem atization of gender in general and especially of the ways in which it is used to construct general m odels o f society and of nation. Turning to som e com m o n im ages, we can see exam ples o f this con ­ struction o f the general in action. On the one hand, Canadian im ages take on an on tology o f gendered and heterosexual positioning: C an ada as the defenceless m aiden to the Am erican hulk. In turn, in Quebec these im ages articulate the Francophone m inority as the m arginal fem ale: at different tim es and som etim es sim ultan eously she is w ooed, rejected, scorned, or continually in the m idst of initiating divorce. In a w onderful version o f this scenario, V ign eault sings, “Tu p eu x ravaler ta ro m an c e ” (w hich can be tran slated as “You can have your rom an ce,” or “Take your rom ance and shove it”). Here a w om an tells her husband that sh e ’s had enough , th at “ his kisses lack p u n c h ” (or m ore literally, they “ lack follow th r o u g h ” : “manque de su ite').

It is, of course, the “m arriage” o f C anada and Quebec that

is finally at an end.7 This trope of w om en telling their husbands to shove it continues in a sh ort film by M ichel Brault. In La D erm ere Partie ( The Last M atch), Brault tells the story o f a w om an in her m id-fifties who has had it with her husband. Louise has particularly had it with their Saturday night ritual o f going to the Forum to watch the M ontreal hockey team , Le Canadien. Sitting in the bleachers am ong the roaring fans, there and then she decides to leave him. When the husband eventually realizes that Louise is gone, he goes looking for her. A gain, in an explicit fashion, the qu estion, “W hat does Q uebec want?” is m ade to rhym e with the infam ous question, “Was will das Weib?” The answer here is told in Quebecois tones as it is show n that C anada can’t even adequately describe its lon g-stan d in g partner. “Uh, she has brow n eyes,” says the husband to the waitress. “So do a lot o f wives,” she replies. When he does find her, Louise calm ly tells him that she is going, that she has had enough o f hockey night (in Canada), that she no longer can stand

“ Love in a Cold Climate the way he m akes love to her, that she gets through it by staring at a line in the ceiling. With that, she walks out through a turnstile and the screen fades to white. The genderin g o f Quebec and C an ad a as a cou p le in the throes o f divorce is by now so com m o n that it needs little explanation. It com es as no surprise that once again Q uebec is posed as m arginal to and different from C anada and that this difference is then em bodied in the wife. What is interesting, however, is the way in which these im ages p rod u ced by two m iddle-aged m en so stro n gly identify with the w o m a n ’s p oin t o f view. In both V ig n eau lt’s son g and B ra u lt’s film , we see from the eyes o f the w om en, w om en trapped in unsatisfactory relationships, w om en who are not getting enough good sex for it to be w orth it. And in neither o f these cases is the wife represented as thinkin g o f an o th er m an; starin g at the cracked line in the ceiling, she just desperately wants out o f an unfulfilling arran gem en t. To fu rth er com plicate things, the French “m in o rity ” m akes up, in actual fact, 82 percent o f the p o p u latio n w ithin Quebec, which then allows som e Anglophone-rights groups to position them selves as m argin al and in need o f protection. This then produces a discourse of A nglophones as “em ascu lated ” in relation to the Quebecois stron gm an . Given the historical relations, this produces a discursive stru ctu re o f m ale to m ale, hom osocial bickering. And how better to depict this relation than th rough im ages of Le C an adien ’s players (a team m ore fam iliarly know n in English as the “H abs,” a shortened form of the pejorative term les habi­ tants , im ages

of graceful and violent m ale bodies on the rink, cheered on by

those less so in the stands? Fam iliar as these im ages are, they also begin to suggest that the gen­ eral troping o f national identity as gendered and heterosexualized is in the m idst o f cracking up into lines that have no necessary direction. It seem s that the unraveling o f identity brings on an orgy of rem em bering and for­ getting. In the heat of this m om en t, I turn to even m ore banal im ages that rem em ber to forget and forget to rem em ber. I turn on the television and feel the im pact o f the com m un al am nesia and rem em brance generated in the gendering o f the Quebecois nation. The m ost striking of these im ages em an ate from Q uebecois telerom an s , a genre w hich in Quebec resolu tely turns to the past. “Here, m atter (which is im age-m ovem ent) changes into m em ory (thus, into im age-tim e), and the present, never identical to itself,

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(rkppfh Pfnhyn

is d oubled w ith the virtu al im age o f the p ast it w ill b e c o m e ” (R op arsW uilleumier, 1988: 121). For the sheer num bers who loyally w atched it, the dram atic televi­ sion series L es fille s de C aleb is an obvious place to start.8 It is a fairly straight­ forw ard tale centered around two o f m y favorite figures: the sch oolm arm , and horses. Set at the turn o f the century, the protagonist, Emilie, is the eldest d au gh ter o f a large fam ily w ho has to fight her fath er to continue her studies. She becom es the sole teacher in a one-room school until she u n fo rtu n ately falls in love with one o f her students. There then follow s a rath er stereo typ ical tale o f m arriage, hardsh ip, and h eartbreak as her increasingly sodden husband takes off for the w oods, leaving Emilie to bear and raise som eth in g like ten children. The tentatively happy ending has Emilie finally leaving the dru nken and debt-ridden husband.9 Sum m arized in this way, L e s fille s de C aleb sounds like any num ber of m awkish historical dram as. Indeed, on a general level, the story o f a young, attractive, and independent w om an teacher who tam es her m ale charges has been played out in any num ber o f locales. Notably, though perhaps not surprisingly, if one thinks of exam ples as heterogenous as The King and I; The P rim e o f M iss f e a n B rod ie; Sarah, P lain and T all; M y B rillian t C areer; A n n e o f Green G ables; Times

or the recent television program Dr. Quinn, M edicin e Woman (which T V

heralded as the “flow ering o f the frontier”), these tales are often set

in outposts o f nations. The w om an battles both geographic and m asculine odds in order to bring about civilization, and closu re is assured by over­ coding one individual m an as the quintessential su m m ation o f roughness, wildness, and nation-ness who falls in love with her. An interesting twist to this h etero sexu alizatio n o f the h o m o so cial fron tier can be seen in N orthern E x p osu res

n arrative about the fo u n d in g and civilizing o f Cicely,

Alaska, by a lesbian couple. And in M uriel Spark’s The Prime o f M iss fe a n Brodie (1961), it is, o f course, “m y g els” th at are the focu s o f Miss fean B ro d ie’s attentions in a Scotland very m uch on the border o f Englishness. If in m an y ways L e s f i l le s de C a le b seem s to resem ble any n ation al tellin g o f the historical fron tier tale, it is n o n eth eless told in local and excessive tones. One o f the m o re m em o rab le scenes takes place before Em ilie’s m arriage to Ovila. The two m en, father and fu tu re husband, bond as Ovila brings his stallion to the farm o f Em ilie’s parents in order to m ate it with the father’s new m are. (Horses run through this story from the begin-

'love in a ning: the first episode has Emilie rebelling against the double standard of w ork th at the girl children have to carry. Caleb is p articu larly harsh on Emilie in return, and we are given to understand that his treatm ent o f her is due to his distress from having to p u t dow n his favorite horse.) B ut back to the m atin g scene. As the stallion begins to m o u n t the m are, Caleb in stru cts his wife to cover the eyes o f the y ou n ger children and to send them away. Emilie and Ovila, however, are placed to look on (and to be looked at) as the im possibly proud father orchestrates the m at­ ing. In a long series o f parallel close-up shots, we see the horse penis pene­ tratin g the m are as Ovila nuzzles Em ilie from behind. Sh ot for shot, the penis o f the horse segues into shots o f Emilie in ecstasy. The lengthy backan d -forth m ov em en t is accom pan ied by so u n d track m usic bu t no dia­ logue. Finally the sexual tension is broken when Em ilie’s sister (who is des­ tined to becom e a nun) enters the scene and they all nervously giggle. N eedless to say, this scene (w hich aired at eigh t in the evening on Radio C an ada— the state Francophone television netw ork) caused snig­ gers and giggles elsewhere. The best sp o o f was on Bye, Bye 91 — an end-ofthe-year satiric p ro g ra m — w hen the w ell-know n actress D om in iq u e M ichel played Emilie. In a re-creation o f the sch oolroom , M ichel rips off her stays and begs Ovila to “do like the horses.” At which Ovila, played as the village fool, stands up and whinnies and prances. This really very silly parody is in m any ways m ore interesting than the original. For a start, the original alm o st too blatantly insists on the lines o f equivalence betw een h u m an s and horses. W hen Les f i l l e s de C a le b was dubbed in English and played on the CBC (for adult audiences at ten o ’clock at night), the actress who plays Em ilie (M arina Orsini) said in a radio interview th at the point was th at “we w anted to show th at sex betw een anim als and betw een hum an s is beautiful and n atu ral.” While Orsini p resum ably was n o t advocatin g interspecies sex, her w ords echo the seem in gly inevitable corresp on den ce o f the m are and Em ilie. In the guise o f a n atu ral flow, the independent sch oolm istress is brought into line with the m are. Following G u illau m in ’s argum ent, this is a very telling instance o f w om an dism issed from the ideological-discursive realm o f the social in order to becom e inscribed within the “pure m ateri­ ality” o f nature. As her body is appropriated for the construction o f a dis­ course on the nation, she becom es reproduction, pure and sim ple. And as

Ilspeth Probyn such, she perform s a “m isrecognized relation” between anim al husbandry and the m anagem ent o f the nation. In turn, the exigency o f m atin g is felt and is caught up with the incessant rem inders white Q uebecoise w om en m u st reproduce in order for the nation to survive.

The Bedroom of the Nation> » If L esfilles de C aleb presents us with these lines of equivalence, these relations of the sam e, it does so perilously. This is precisely why I like the sp oof m ore than the actual scene it sends up. While it is but one incidental m om en t, it nonetheless speaks of alternative relations o f belonging as it scram bles and frees up lines o f identity. Beyond the pious w ords o f Orsini, this version plays identity at the edge. Yes, it says, Quebec has historically been fucked by Canada. However that oft-repeated line is now eroticized, and the tired m etaphors of dom ination, nature, m arginal, fem inine, and m asculine are placed so th at they th reaten to fall into literalized desire. And as Em ilie com m an d s sex, the husband is show n up as in com p eten t and im potent. While Quebec m ay still be represented in the guise o f w om anh ood, she is now a fully and wildly desiring being who m ay just take her pleasures else­ where, anywhere. In other words, if L e s jille s de C aleb is interesting as an event (with its spinoffs and spoofs, its connections and reconn ection s), it is because the nation as the m anifestation of heterosexuality is posited as teetering am ong various orders o f specificities: from the fictional genre that is translated into the Quebecois form o f the teleroman to its portrayal of rom ance and w ilder­ ness and its use of the figure of the schoolm arm . From sets o f specificities (historical, geographical, televisual) it articulates a certain singularity o f sexuality and belonging in Quebec: a line that prom ises other m anners of becom in g Q uebecois, a m an n er o f being that takes pleasure in queering the traditional m odes o f figuring identity. But as I say this, I know that the singularity o f that line of belonging only exists as one possible articulation created out o f and within the m ate­ riality of the countless strata of historical narratives of identity. In short, it is a singularity that for the m om en t exists am biguously within and alongside a generalized history. For a start, Quebecois m arginality has been expressly p ronounced as analogous to other sites o f oppression. For instance, m ar­ ginality is spoken o f in term s o f “les negres blancs d ’ A m erique,” a phrase

love in a Cold Climate from the early ’70s (Vallieres, 1968) now m aking a com eback in the latest round of nationalism , a phrase that does considerable violence to the speci­ ficities o f Quebec nationalism and to those o f the A frican-A m erican civil rights m ovem ent. In addition, it is com m onplace in Quebec to talk o f the role of the m atriarch as the guardian of traditional values. In a place where strict and practiced C ath olicism is ju st two decades dow n the road, in a space where steeples orient and church bells ring out (and are cau gh t on p e o p le ’s answ ering m achines), there is still a raw m em ory o f w hen “les Quebecoises” were to build the nation through reproduction. However, if this is com m on to m any articulations of Catholicism and national projects, in Quebec it was, and continues to be, connected to, and rerouted, by the virtual absence o f m en. As televisual im ages com pu lsively retu rn to the past, we are given an accou n t o f the spatial con figu ration s o f early Quebecois nationhood that places m en in a space-off; a telling o f the past wherein m en just were not very im portant— to w om en or to the national project. A strangely em pty space, peopled by w om en and priests, it is a tem ­ porality predicated on a gendered geography of w om en securing the nation just as som e o f the First Nations were used by the governm ent, physically uprooted in order to safeguard the North. It is indeed m y country as w in­ ter, not as actual land, an arrangem en t ordered by priests in structing the w om en to perform the “revenge of the cradle,” the clergical dictate to pop ­ ulate a religiously Francophone nation. In L esjilles de C a leb , Emilie gives birth in every second episode, and she has a penchant for doing it outside in the snow. As she bears the nation in the elements, the husband is elsewhere. In two other recent television dram as, the m atriarch m oves to the city. In M ontreal ville ouverte and in M ontreal, P .Q ., the history o f M ontreal in the ’40s is told through and around the figure o f the m atriarch as bordello owner. Here she is the figure o f m ediation between A nglophone vice (in V ille ouverte

all the “baddies” speak English or heavily accented French) and

the clergy .11 For the m o st part, the m ad am s are sym path etic and, in an interesting twist on an old tale, they are m aternal to their charges at the sam e time as they hold dear the pleasures o f hot sex. As an Italian m adam rem inisces, “All those you n g bodies, 1 feel them and I have the ‘chair de p ou le’” ( “goosebum p s”). Once again “tru e” Quebecois m en are elsewhere. The only ones w ho rem ain are the priests, those “m en in d resses,” and h om osexu als.12

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If the general articulation o f gender and nation holds, the singular conditions o f its possibility shift its sense. Rather than posing the nation as fem ale, as m inority is to m ajority, the Quebecois nation is both produced and displaced as fem ale th rough im ages o f the m atriarch. The discursive operator here is indeed “w o m an ,” but she instigates m ovem en t between the m atriarch and w om en, with Q uebecois m en being displaced from the system . If the n ation is gendered, it is th ro u gh the relation s o f sex, the social and discursive w ork in volved in c o n stru c tin g relation s betw een w om en and the m atriarch as guardian o f the nation. Alongside the general understan ding o f the nation as position ed within and p rod u ced ou t o f a heterosexualized play o f m inority-m ajority relations, the local and sin gu ­ lar im ages here are o f the m atriarch w inking at the absence o f m en. Again, this is banal, c o m m o n know ledge, and as the n oted playw righ t M ichel Trem blay replied w hen he was asked why there were no m ale characters in his plays: “Because there are no m en in Q uebec” (cited in Schw artzw ald, 1991: 180). This spatial arrangem en t then upsets any general argu m en t about the nation as gendered as fem inine within a heterosexual contract. Just as the discursive m ovem ent that allows for the nation as gendered is between w om en with m en as the outside term , the sexualization o f the Quebecois nation has traditionally been expressed through the exam ple o f the h om o­ sexual m an. As R obert Schw artzw ald arg u e s13, this is a co m m o n thread within Quebecois discursive relations o f nation-ness: “In p op u lar culture, hom osexuality has served as an accepted m etaphor for national oppression and continues to do so ” (1991: 180). In G uy M enard’s term s, the im ages o f Quebec national identity and contem porary gay affirm ation are so closely in tertw ined th at the failure o f the 1981 referen d u m on sovereignty becom es “a failed co m in g-ou t” (1983: 331). The figure o f the hom osexual m an then further displaces any general relation o f nation and heterosex­ uality. The relations o f difference here are n ot th ose o f fem ale to m ale, m inority to m ajority, but rather o f m ale hom osexuality to national h om o­ sociality, which is to say o f m inoritized m en to the m ajority. A striking exam ple o f this relation is clearly illustrated in one o f the h igh est-grossin g Q uebecois film s, Le D eclin de Vempire a m en ca in . While the director, Denys Arcand, has built his entire filmic oeuvre on im ages o f the nation (from his early d ocu m en taries N ous sommes au coton and Le confort et

“JLQMeJui-a Cold Climated

/ ’indifference

to his recent feature-length film Jes u s de M on treal ), Le D eclin is a

p articu larly strikin g co n stru ctio n o f the Q uebecois n ation th ro u gh h om oso cial and h om osexu al relations. The n ation is here literally p ro ­ d u ced ou t o f the talk o f university professors. B u t rath er th an talkin g heads, we have the fem ale professo rs w orking o u t in the gym as they graphically discuss sex: s/m sex, m otorbikes and sex, sex with w om en, sex with m en, the general lack o f in terestin g m e n .14 M eanw hile, the m en (their friends, lovers, husbands) are preparing dinner and enviously talk­ ing about the gay ch aracter’s freedom o f sexual m ovem ent. Here, as the em pire supposedly falls apart around them , the nation em erges through the discursive o p erator o f the gay m an (th e only one to have goo d sex) am idst the separate m ovem ents o f m ale and fem ale hom osociality. It is a nicely am biguous situation that Arcand then seem s obliged to stabilize by show ing the gay character pissing blood. This scenario com es to us from the d irector w ho as early as 1964 com p lain ed abou t the prevalence o f im ages o f h o m o sex u al m en in Quebecois cinem a.15 Equating heterosexual sexual liberation with national liberty, Arcand argued that only when film m akers will have forgotten their m am as so they can confidently undress the girl next door whose nam e is Yvette Trem blay or Yolande Beauchem in, in the full light of d a y .. .can [we] think, like Jean Renoir, about having a cinema that is free and at the same time fiercely national. A cinema of joy and conquest, (cited in Schwartzwald, 183)16

While co n tem p o rary Q uebec cin em a seem s to be full o f u n dressed Y olandes and Y vettes, recently on television they seem to seriou sly be th in kin g about u n d ressin g each other. If, as Sch w artzw ald argues, the hom osexual m ale is figured as the point o f tension between two regim es o f identity, one federal, the oth er provincial, a recent episode o f a rath er bizarre Q uebecois talksh ow p u ts lesbians back in th at bastion o f Q uebecitude— the family. The talkshow in question, P arler pour parler, is in itself an extraordinary m anifestation o f Quebec identity gone wild. Every S atu rd ay the host, Janette B ertrand, focuses on a topic and invites her guests (a m ixture o f the usual experts and experiential bodies) to dinner. They then talk about various “tab oo” subjects as they eat and drink. “La

8?

S&

Elspeth Probyn b o n n e,” the faithful retainer, serves real food and wine and in terru p ts if things get too hot— or to signal to us at hom e that the conversation is get­ ting h o t.17 So it was that one Saturday night, Janette had five lesbians to dinner. Before they all sat down, we were w arm ed up by a lengthy dram atization entitled V A m our avec un grand A ( “Love with a capital L”). The dram a focused on a young w om an com ing out to both her parents. However, the m ise-enscene

firm ly pu ts the focus o f attention on the m other. It opens with her

unable to sleep due to her intuition that one o f her offspring is in trouble. And sure enough, the dyke d aughter is show n in tears in her lonely apart­ m ent. M am an drags Papa out o f bed and they go off to M ontreal in search o f the daughter. After the shock, horror, o f “I am — You are?” the dram a focuses on finding the d a u g h te r’s m issing lover. Suffice it to say th at all ends well, with M am an having found the lover for her daughter. A long the way we have a very vaselined love scene between the two (it’s on the cam era lens), and the final im ages are o f M am an and Papa happily back in their bed (film ed sans vaseline). If this all sou n ds a hit corny, it’s because it was. D espite, or rath er because of, its ham -handedness, it is im possible to ignore the im port of this dram a: structurally, lesbians are being placed hack inside the m ainstay o f Quebec identity. Bookended by M am an et Papa in bed, a lesbian couple are enfolded, are show n as quite rightfully belonging in the otherw ise tradi­ tional family. While elsewhere this m ight sound like m ere assimilation, the fam ily in Francophone Quebec is understood and lived as a public in stitu ­ tion as well as a private possession. The Q uebecois fam ily is used to being understood as weird (being p ut dow n for its nu m erou s offspring by Anglo non-Catholics) and cognizant o f its role as a line o f defense against cultural assim ilation. Again, its form em erges from the history o f its prod u ctio n through the Church as a m eans o f creating a Francophone identity. As opposed to the Protestant A m erican ideal, the fam ily is not lived or im agined here as the bastion o f private individualism , and hence it can­ not be as easily m obilized as the first and last line in right-w ing m orality. This is not to say that Quebec is im m u n e from the resurgence o f so-called fam ily values; rather, it is to say that P arler pour p a r ley s presentation o f les­ bians within the fam ily works to queer the line between public belongings and private belonging. These im ages establish as quite legitim ate the lon g­

Love in a Cold Climate” ing o f the m o th er to have her d au gh ter happy w ith the w om an o f her choice, the lon gin g o f d au gh ter for acceptance w ith ou t assim ilation. It showcases the fam ily as a queer site o f national identity policies and history and as the space where, if we so desire, queers can and do belong. Thus, alongside the apparent universality o f the nation as im agined th ro ugh the figure o f the fem ale, o f the fam ilial heterosexual fictions of nation, w hat we find, in fact, are lines o f becom in g betw een w om en and w om en, w om en and the m atriarch, w om en and the nation, m oth ers and their lesbian daughters, hom osexual m en and priests. Lest this sound like an Edenic situation, let m e be very clear that what I have described here are but fragm ents that have no inherent m eaning. Som e are historical lines that have the potential to veer into virtual relations o f belonging; som e serve as actual barriers to im agination. At present they are underpinned by a regim e o f knowledges and of know ing that turns on certain articulations o f authentic being, of a nostalgic attachm ent to m arginality, o f persistent and som etim es m isogynist and heterosexist inscriptions of gender and sex­ uality— in short, a legitim ized im aginary that revolves around “la souche ” (the source) as possessed by right, by nature, by w hite m ales. And while other im ages do indeed proliferate, this obsession with the source continu­ ally threatens to asphyxiate their m ovem ent.

So What? The m ere th o u gh t o f this “souche” atten u ates m y desire to belong. B u t I retu rn to the doubled challenge I p u t to m yself at the beginning o f this chapter. At one level, I attem p t to exp lo re som e o f the ways in w hich identity is lived out as sin gular m anners; on another, I want to p u t these lines o f becom ing into flight by upsetting their epistem ology and their ref­ erence, indeed, their groun din g, in a past that is continually m ade over and m ade up. The tales with w hich I opened retu rn . While you have no way o f knowing w hether I actually did dream up the KKK as Michael Jackson, you could verify the news stories, you could com e and live M ontreal (as in the French, “j ’habite M on treal ” ), pass under the banner o f the red lips, consult your Women Going P laces to find the address o f that dyke dive. And ju st up along St-D enis, you could go into a video shop and pick up copies of Les j i l l e s de C a le b

and watch all tw enty episodes interspersed w ith the B rau lt

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9Q

g^IEEmByn film s. In oth er w ords, you too cou ld pick up on a quebecois m an n er o f being, even if becom ing-Q uebecois w ould be a longer and m ore difficult achievem ent. The body here, m y body, is m erely an o th er being-such w hich trains lines o f belon gin g as m an n ers o f being. T his very so-w h at body can n o t be privileged; its situated location is, I think, an ethical requirem ent in figuring the politics o f a “so-w h at” singularity. In turn, this brings m e back to m y own questions about belonging in Quebec, to questions about a failure o f desire. B u t desire is not a personal possession, so th at even w hen p erso n ally m isplaced, it con tin u es its required work. And in fact, in w orking through and along the lines, I find m y self p u sh ed at by desire— as w hen one thinks desire spent, a certain scent can renew the sensation. And just as this is far from a general rule, so too does the desire to belong reconnect only in contact w ith certain sin­ gularities. W hat I have tried to sketch here is an ethical practice o f belonging and a politics o f singularity that m u st start from where one is— brutally and im m ediately from on e’s belonging, m odes o f being, and longing. If I have insisted on the necessity o f disengaging the couplings o f gender, sex­ uality, and nation in Quebecois regim es o f national identity, it is because condensing these m ovem ents undoes the possibility o f other m anners o f being and becom ing, denies their present virtuality that persists in co m ­ m on places. The tem ptatio n to slide these term s together, to rest at the level o f the general, is un d erstan dable. It is also n o t en o u gh if I am to understand the full force o f the im ages I cite. A gain st un d erstan d in g everyday im ages as som eh ow linked to an underlying unity, we m ust let them stand in their absolute “so-w hatness.” These exam ples: a dream , a civic slogan, a p h otograph , a film , a telerom an , etc., m u st stand alone. N ot one o f th em is representative o f “Quebecoisness.” However, as im ages which intertw ine alongside each other, they hit m e, they m ove m e. And let us be clear th at to speak o f these im ages in term s o f their “so-w hat” singularity is not to condone their violence; it is not to be blase in the face o f the terro r th at they m ay bring. R ather, in refusing the equivalence o f the general, it is to be m oved, to be touched by the im pact of this image, and this one, and this one. It is to be bodily caught up in ways o f being a being-such, a being shorn o f the tram m els o f identity as individual possession. And if I have insisted on the w ork o f certain dis­

m

cursive operators, notably those o f “m inority,” “m ajority,” “m arginality,” it is to argue that too often they are p u t in the service o f m aintaining a gen­ eral ord er— the ord erin g o f the sam e. As they graft certain relations o f gender and sexuality, they participate in the reproduction o f hom osocial relations, o f the nation as n o rm al.18 A gain st generalized n ation alist identity, it seem s to m e th at we already see som e of the singular strands of a m ore ethical being-such in the present im ages and relations all around us. It is from w ithin these lines, away from any general picture, that we m ay be able to catch the con struc­ tion o f alternative m anners, em erging singularities o f belonging. Looking out o f windows, w alking dow n the street, fla m n g in the precarious sun of early spring, cruising in dives, we m ay glim pse alternative national m an ­ ners o f being, catch our bodies striving for oth er relations o f belonging; “They rise up for a m om en t, and it is that m om en t that is im portant, that is the opportun ity that one m ust grab” (Deleuze, 1990: 107). Last night it snow ed again. White up on white, u p on w inter-white, u p on gray, u p on half-w hite, M ontreal is rendered seem in gly still. B u t beyond the n o stalgia o f p ast p ictu re cards, p e o p le ’s p ath s criss-cross in u n exp ected ways. When we are b ro u g h t to geth er m o m en tarily by the im passe o f a wall o f snow, she sm iles uncertainly: “Enough snow for you?” While it’s hardly poetic, while the sight is not really m ajestic, it m ay be the start o f som ething or nothing at all; it is a very sm all gesture o f being, if not loving, in a cold clim ate.19

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A

Suspended Beemnmes Of Cmfdhood ancHQostalgia

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Childhood as Event I am som etim es baffled when people w hom I have only ju st m et rem ark on the fact that I grew up in Wales. I am m om en tarily em barrassed by the th ough t that in published work I’ve m ade a big deal over som ething sm all: grow ing up. If within cultural studies, fem inism , and gay and lesbian w rit­ ing returning to childhood is not uncom m on, it can, as I have found out, return to haunt. It is also a paradoxical turn; in m y case I use the phrase “I grew up in Wales” as both a short form to explain the quirks o f m y accent and, m ore im portantly, to try to indicate som e o f the backw ard-and-forw ardness and the straying o f any identity. But, of course, once said, it sta­ tions one, places one in relation to som ething that can take on the w eight of origin: th at’s where y ou ’re from , th at’s why I’m like that, that explains it, etc. In this chapter, I want to exam ine som e of the ways that childhood is produced as a sustained m ode, indeed as a structure of feeling, within som e gay and lesbian fiction. As the Belgian writer A m elie N o th om b p u ts it in her novel about childhood and the desire of one girl for another: “Quand je serai grand, je penserai a quand j’etais p etit” ( “When I’ll be big, I’ll think about when I was sm all”). Her w ords can be used to su m up a pronounced trend within gay and lesbian fiction, a line that winds around a retu rn to childhood. While in N o th om b’s tale, Le sabotage amoureux (1993), childhood is presented as sufficient unto itself— the n arrator and the narrative m ode are cap tu red w ithin being-child; indeed, childhood is being itself ( “etre enfant, c ’est-a-dire etre” [83])— in A nglo-A m erican circles a generation o f grow nups are thinking out loud about when they were sm all. This is not an especially gay and lesbian p h en om en on ; nonetheless, there are good reasons to consider the specificities o f the queer turn to childhood. In this vein, I want to consider gay and lesbian childhood as event: a tangled dis­ cursive skein, a m ultilevel p roduction in which strata o f truth, represen­ tation, history, science, and experience com pete. For F ou cau lt, as for D eleuze, events op p ose essence, or rath er attem pts to produce essence are already contained within “the event.” In

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ElspetEEoEyn his 1977 review o f D eleu ze’s L oqique du sens , F o u cau lt con n ects event and ph an tasm in ways that seem especially relevant to thinking about child­ hood: The event (assim ilated in a concept, from which we vainly attem pted to extract it in the form of a fact, verifying a proposition, of actual experience, a modality of the subject, of concreteness, the empirical content of history); and the phantasm (reduced in the nam e of reality and situated at the extremity, the pathological pole, of a norm atizing sequence: perceptionimage-memory-illusion). (1977: 180)

C on sid erin g ch ild h ood in these term s, as event, th u s tu rn s ou r attention to the groun d upon which several orders o f things are ranged: on the one hand, historical facts, scientific propositions, em pirical obser­ vations, actual experiences, and attem pts to render them concrete; on the other hand, phantasm atic features o f childhood, im ages that carry child­ hood into the realm o f the pathologizable, im ages th at float as m em ory (which are, o f course, in corporated as fact, proposition, observation, and experience). Any critical interest in current constructions o f queer child­ hood as event m u st therefore take into account a heterogeneous en sem ­ ble o f statem ents: m oral panics about gays and lesbians having children; the A m erican Psychiatric A ssociation’s pathologizing o f childhood gender identity; childhood as the structurin g modus operandi in gay and lesbian w rit­ ing. M oreover, childhood as event requires th at attention be paid to the m odes in which it is articulated: as originary, as nostalgic, as quintessential, as anecdotal, as fiction, as fact. A gainst a trend to posit childhood as a point o f departure in the con­ stru c tio n o f queer being, a m an eu v er w hich indicates a barely hidden yearn ing within som e form ation s o f identity politics for som eth in g th at w ould ground difference ineluctably, I want to consider childhood as the p oin t from w hich we “ lau gh at the solem n ities o f o rig in .” With the Nietzschean glee Foucault evokes in his discussion o f genealogy, I want to place childhood on the surface, to refuse it the anterior status of g u aran ­ tee. Rather than seeing in childhood a com m o n point o f queerness, a gar­ den o f Eden from which we all fled or were expelled only to retu rn ever after in nostalgic w onderm ent and wandering, I w ould have queer theory

S u s a e n ie lle g in n ln g s

use ch ild h ood “ to record the sin gu larity o f events ou tside o f any m o n ­ strou s fin ality ” (F ou cau lt, 1977: 139). The lofty origin th en becom es no m ore th an “ a m etaph ysical extension w hich arises from the belief th at things are m ost precious and essential at the m om en t o f birth ” (Foucault, 1977: 143). To laugh at childhood as the origin o f w hatever is, I think, a neces­ sary m ove in realizing the seriousness o f the political possibilities o f queer childhood. But politicizing childhood m u st proceed by m akin g birth and childhood into a question o f “so-w hat” or “w hatever” ; they m u st be pried from their position as individualized and p reciou s possessions. In oth er words, far from treating childhood as an originary m om en t from which we m igh t em erge as p rou d grow n u p queers, we need to rem ake ch ild ­ h ood in to evidence o f the necessary absence o f any p rim ary g ro u n d in queer politics. It is in this sense that I read a recent novel by Dale Peck. In M artin and Joh n

(1993), a tale is structured through stories of love and loss in the time of

AIDS: two characters, two childhood friends, two lovers, caught up within several different but coexisting tim e periods. While the scenarios change the nam es rem ain the sam e, creating a m ovem ent o f repetition and differ­ ence held together by a line of m em ory that recoils from the end. Far from m em orializing childhood as m onum ent, Peck clearly positions it as a basis that does not exist. S u m m ed up in the line, “ this is not the w orst thing I rem em ber” (5), childhood is and is not. As a structu ring device, the phrase “this is not the w orst thing I rem em ber” is seldom spoken but nonetheless serves to hold childhood and gay love together. If the boy’s m em ories of being asham ed o f his m o th er’s sham e o f her queer child are recounted as “this is not the w orst thing I rem em ber,” the second and last tim e we read the phrase is at the end of the novel, after his lover Martin has died o f AIDS: “1 wrote: this is not the w orst thing 1 rem em ber, and then, I d o n ’t know why, but I w rote som ething that h ad n ’t happened” (225). With this sim ple line and elegant strategy, Peck m anages to rewind the story he has told, a tale o f m em ory and forgetting, o f rem em berin g but holding back against the one thing that w ould be the w orst, the one thing that w ould forever anchor the m eaning o f life itself. R ather, as he writes:

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Memory is my only possession, but it resists ownership. I remember the first thing I wrote: this is the worst thing I remember, I wrote, and then I stopped writing. Nothing came after that sentence; nothing ever did. Nothing announced itself as the worst of it all, although many, many things— images, sounds, sensations, sentences even, though I don’t remember who first wrote or spoke them— all vied for the honor. (225) This is not the w orst thing I rem em ber, this is not the w orst thing I rem em ber— the phrase easily slips into m antra. As such, as an in strum en t for thought, it both conjures and controls the past, or tries to. But if this is not the w orst thing, if the w orst thing can ’t be said or know n, touched or held in place, then the worst thing can’t ever really be past. C hildhood past is thus refused any status as an ordering point o f departure in a teleology o f origins. A line w ro u g h t o u t o f ch ild h ood experience, the p h rase su m s up how I feel about m y own childhood: it is not the w orst thing I rem em ber; I d o n ’t rem em ber it; it hovers there as a horizon constantly receding before me, rubbed out in m y inability to rem em ber, caught in the know ledge that I m u st have had one. Luckily, m y sister had one close to m ine and rem em ­ bers. Indeed, p erh ap s I d o n ’t have to rem em ber, as I can rely on her uncanny ability to recollect our joined childhoods. As she charts the d u ra­ tion and arran gem en t o f our various childhood displacem ents, I see the past th rough her eyes, literally th rough an im age I have o f a ph otograph o f her taken by our older brother when she was six or seven. The photo, w hich is slightly A rbus-esque, show s her lookin g straigh t at the cam era w ith the candor o f som eone who has already seen too m u ch but contin­ ues to regard and record. So vivid was her recall at tim es that I could have sw orn that she was m aking it up. O f course, this is now theoretically fam il­ iar— that the past is m ade up, fictions o f the past, the past as fiction. I raise this not as evidence but as a sh o rtcu t, a p ath hastily cleared leading from childhood to m em ory, and thence to the spaces and ways in which m em ory m ay proceed. For against the idea th at childhood is a pri­ vate entity, w hat is striking is the way in which ch ild h ood is at once the m o st p erson al o f possessions and the m o st public o f concerns. It is also, increasingly, som ething that you m ay have foisted upon you, either your ow n or those o f others. Both personal and public, childhood is a staple of

SuspendedBeginnings

the com in g-ou t story, a point at which m any recollect the realization of their queerness. Individual and com m o n , story after story recou nts the feeling o f som ehow not belonging, o f not fitting in, until the m ove is m ade to belong to another com m u n ity and another kind o f family. But we also need to ask, to w hom does childhood belong? In discipli­ nary term s, childhood— childhood and sexuality, or the childhood o f gays and lesbians— is the possession o f several fields, notably psychology, psy­ chiatry, and psychoanalysis. Politically, the right in several countries has tried to ensure that childhood belongs to it as a “m o th erh o o d ” issue, and, indeed, in m any key areas children’s rights have supplanted those of their m others. The problem atic arising from these contestations is a m ore general one concerning the use of childhood. I return again to the necessity of con­ ceiving childhood as event— event placed on the ou tside . For if we are to rem ake childhood as a political tactic to be used to turn identity inside out, we need to deploy the historicity o f childhood as event: childhood m e m o ­ ries; childhood as a set o f possessions we carry with us; childhood as a des­ ignated point o f departure; childhood as the source o f public pathologization (the beginning o f the “p roblem ” o f hom osexuality); childhood as an epistem ology o f origins. This then begs the questions o f how and w hether gay and lesbian childhoods are different. Nowadays, it seem s hard to find anyone w ho actually had a n o rm al, happy childhood. (O f cou rse, the term s normal and happy are already under erasure and are in any case not coterm inous.) U nhappy childhood m em ories, m oreover, seem to be infec­ tious, with one person ’s story spurrin g an o th er’s. And while this m ay set up lines o f connection, it m ay also tu rn into a dreary gam e o f m atch in g p ain and u n h app in ess, a grim contest w hich quickly dissolves any au to n om ou s status that these stories, experiences, and their conditions of possibility— their status as event— m ay possess. Such m atching then gets in the way of rendering these experiences singular. For instance, a passage from E dm und W hite’s brilliant novel A B oy ’s Own Story

(1982) im m ediately brought to m ind a sim ilar story from m y

ow n childhood. In W hite’s story, the father presents the n arrato r’s sister with “ a ‘life bill’, the item ized expenses he’d incurred in raising her over tw enty-one years, a huge su m that was intended to discourage her from th ough tlessly spaw ning children o f her ow n ” (38). Reading White, I was

TOO

EEpSCBcoByn “driven” to write the following: “In the dearth o f m em ories, I com e across a phrase, the one con stan t that I rem em ber from m y childh ood was the oft-repeated statem en t th at we were spoiled. The cost o f childh ood was registered. Instead o f sex education, we repeatedly had lessons on the eco­ nom ic facts o f life.” Now, while there is a certain resem blance, there are several im p o r­ tant distinctions. W hite’s story is in a novel th at m ay be in p art au to b io ­ graphical but nonetheless is a story told by a gifted novelist. It is also a tale o f a youn g boy realizing his gayness; the anecdote about his sister serves to fu rth e r the p resen tation o f this ch ild h ood recogn ition . On reflection, there is nothing but difference here. In addition to the im portant fact that one is fiction and the other som eth in g I “m ade u p ,” the econom ic, class, gender, and geographical distances should m ark the specificities involved in each narrative. The only thing that could be said to be the sam e is that White’s character grows up gay and that I tu rn ou t lesbian, which is to say that there is really very little in com m o n . That I m ay enjoy W hite’s w rit­ ing and be inspired by it is one thing; quite another, and where for m e the problem arises, is th at the rush for com m o n ality ( “our q u eern ess”) co l­ lapses com pletely different orders. For m y central concern is not childhood p er se but rather the deploy­ m ent o f childhood: how to write childhood, and, if that w riting is fictional, how to place it with other sets o f writing childhood (be it scientific, histor­ ical, em pirical, or theoretical texts), how to m aintain the singularities o f childhood experience. While childhood m ay form a com m on pool o f traits (and this is debatable), w hat I want to avoid is a sw apping o f m em ories, a textual gam e o f “Oh, that happened to m e too .” In short, I want a strategy for m ining the richness o f childhood, a tone of w riting that encourages a diverse exploitation o f childhood with an eye to present exigencies. I want a tactic that enables certain form ulations o f belonging but disables general statem ents about identity that w ould ultim ately stall the singular force of queer interventions. Because of all this and m ore, I begin with Sedgw ick’s insight that “the very word ‘queer’ em braces, instead o f repudiating, w hat have for m any of us been form ative childhood experiences o f difference and stigm atization” (1993: 157). B ut while I fundam entally agree with Sedgwick, I also want to linger over the ways in which we do indeed em brace those experiences, to

Suspended Beginnings

ask w hat we m ay do with them . For while queer children are undoubtedly inform ed by difference, I am loath to posit this abstracted difference as the foun dation from which queer theory m ight unproblem atically proceed. And perhaps due to m y “ high C h u rch ” background, the verb to stigm atize carries for m e the sense of stigm ata. (In m y childhood phase o f w anting to becom e a nun, I rem em ber preparing for the m om en t they w ould appear by burning the m iddle o f my palm s with the car cigarette lighter, which m ade beautifully circular w ounds.) O f course, we can suspend the notion o f stigm ata as evidence o f origins in favor o f the idea that “the body m ani­ fests the stigm ata o f past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings and erro rs” (Foucault, 1977: 148). However, if we are to use childhood as stigm ata to be studied on the present body, we m u st treat th at body not as individual, possessed o f and as tru th , but as “ the inscribed surface of e v e n ts.. .the locus of a dissociated S e lf.. .and a volum e in perpetual disin­ tegration” (Foucault, 1977: 148). As Agam ben argues in Enfance et histoire , childhood “cannot sim ply be som ething that proceeds chronologically” (1989: 62); “we m u st renounce nothing less than this concept o f origins founded on a m odel that the nat­ u ral sciences have them selves abandoned and which defines origin as a point in a chronology, as an initial cause which separates in tim e a before self from an after self” (1989: 64). Rather than positing childhood as som e self-evident ground from which we m ay unhesitatingly speak, I take from A gam ben the challenge o f “effectuating an experimentum linguae , thus to risk on eself in a p erfectly em pty d im e n sio n .. .w here one finds on eself faced with the pure exteriority o f lan guage” (1989: 11). Here m y experim ent involves thinking about childhood m em ories within an “em pty dim ension.” In other words, they are beginnings that are constantly wiped out, forcing m e to begin again and again. This is the eth ­ ical project that A gam ben designates as “la tache enfantine,” “the childish task o f the next generation s” (1989: 15). For me, this also entails a radically interdisciplinary m ode. The task, in other words, is to place childhood on the outside o f several disciplinary endeavors. For if I am struck by the con­ spicuous them atization o f childhood within gay and lesbian fiction, I can­ not ignore the ways in which childhood is m obilized by other disciplines that are as diverse as political theory and cognitive psychology. This then requires careful thinking about the articulations of fiction and empiricism,

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ElspethProbyn autobiography and cultural theory, history and stories. In this rethinking, I turn to F o u cau lt’s w riting on fiction. As Jacques Revel states, “At the very least since Freud, we know that fiction, ju st like history, is a system o f intelligibility” (cited in Bellour, 1989: 172). As such, as a system that organizes statem ents, prod u cin g the conditions o f possi­ bility for oth ers, fiction is, for F o u cau lt, already on the outside. As he writes, “The fictive is precisely that which is neither above nor [held within as] the in tim ate secret o f the q u otid ian , bu t this traje cto ry o f an arrow which strikes us and offers us all th at which appears [all th at is th ere]” (1994: 280). At least two things are clear here: that, for Fou cau lt, it is the doubled m ovem ent o f the line o f the social that fiction traces and allows us to grasp. Fiction “raises up not that which is past so that its effect m igh t return to the present, but rather it [raises] that which is in the m idst o f hap­ p en in g” (cited in Bellour, 1989: 176). In keeping with his insistence on the w ork o f the double, fiction is to be situated am on g other social operations as a technology o f the self: the “singular w rinkles” o f a sentence, a m o d al­ ity o f bending and pleating the line o f the social in the service o f constitut­ ing the social. Or, as Raym ond Bellour p uts it, “This affectivity.. .this is fic­ tion itself as the op eration o f reality, affirm ing itse lf as the only reality possible

It is both the law of com position and organization, and an ethic

for the invention o f the self” (in Bellour, 1989: 177). Fiction for F ou cau lt is cau gh t up in m ech anism s o f distance, p ro x ­ im ity, and space. It is that space betw een les mots et les choses , th at distance between words and m em ories, that gap betw een things and our nam es. It is, o f course, a distance in h eren t in lan gu age, indeed, “ the fictive is the d istancing prop er to la n g u a g e ” (F o u cau lt, 1994: 280). It is one o f the principles in the dispersion of things on the surface o f the social that breaks w ith any linear and causal m od el o f the association o f the w ords and things, statem en ts, and their positivity. “It is a vertical or arb orescen t relation th a t ... holds figures [‘as if su sp e n d e d ’] which, in stead o f being ordered by tim e, distribute them selves along different ru le s” (1994: 282). For the p u rp o ses o f m y argu m en t, F o u c a u lt’s use o f fiction reorders thinking about the relation o f writing to m em ory, o f w riting experience to self. Sim ply put, it disorders any search for origin, any research that seeks to im p u te subjectivity to a closed interior. It insists on the way in which “subjectivity disappears in the recoiling o f the origin ,” leaving us before

JM

“the visible void o f the o rig in ” (1994: 284). It is in the very suspension o f origins that we find words, or that w ords com e to us. This is then to think ch ildh ood and belonging in the term s o f the space and tim e su ggested by the ph rase “ this is n o t the w orst th in g I rem em ber.” What or where is the w orst thing? Does it exist? Is it to come? Im ages o f childhood, from childhood, pull us back to a space that cannot be revisited; they throw us into a present becom ing, profoundly disturbing any chronological ordering o f life and being. And as I will argue, one o f the lines that can be used to scram ble this order is that o f nostalgia. N ostalgia not as a guarantee o f m em ory but precisely as an errant logic that always goes astray. N ostalgia p erform ed in that em pty dim ension o f childhood freed o f its m oorings in time. N ostalgia as the im possibility o f placing true origins; nostalgia for an irretrievable childhood. A perfidious use that th e­ oretically and affectively constructs a space o f experim entation and upsets the space and tim e o f childhood, the naturalness o f heterosexual and gen­ eration al ordering. In this way, ch ild h ood m ay take on its full, visible em ptiness— av o id that com pels other uses o f childhood than ones which stake its m eaning as originary.

Strange Statistics B ut cut to the present, return to the surface in order to reconnoiter the displacem ents o f childhood. As I write, here in Quebec, queer child­ hood is very m uch in the air. Far from being free-floating, it is already artic­ ulated in tragic and m oral tones, evoked in relation to gay and lesbian civil rights, yoked to the suicide toll o f young lesbians and gays. This clim ate is, in part, generated by the increasing visibility o f issues concerning lesbian and gay rights. An im m ediate exam ple can be found in the reaction to a rep ort o f the Q uebec Flum an R ights C o m m issio n on d iscrim in ation against gays and lesbians (D e V illegalite a I ’equalite, May 13, 1994). Hailed as a first in N orth America, the C om m ission ’s report did a fairly com m endable job o f advocating that the laws o f the land m easure up to our C harter of H u m an Rights. (The Q uebec C h arter was the first in C an ada to include sexual o rie n ta tio n .)1 H ow ever, the presen tation o f the p u blication was prefaced by the statistic that 40 percent o f Canadian adolescent suicides are th ough t to be com m itted by gay and lesbian teenagers— a grim figure left hanging during the press conference as neither the Com m issioners nor the

IDA

Elspeth Probyn journ alists addressed the issue. Rather, the jou rnalists asked about m ar­ riage and adoption, their agenda having been set by a bill the Ontario New D em o crats (NDP) were trying to get passed in the O ntario Provincial Assem bly. This bill w ould have given gay and lesbian cou p les the sam e rights as heterosexuals, radically altering approxim ately 50 laws. In turn, it has been the object of som e controversy on all sides— including am ong gay and lesbian group s in O ntario who are fed up with gov ern m en tal backpedaling. (What was in the NDP election platform becam e the object of a free vote.) M em bers o f all parties seized upon the issues o f adoption and m arital status in order to escalate the hom ophobic policing o f “the fam ­ ily.” In a counterattack prom oting the bill, A ttorney General M arian Boyd used a nation al literary treasure, A n n e o f Green G a b les ,2 as an exam ple o f a happy n on trad ition al fam ily. When th at d id n ’t w ork, she p rom ised to rem ove the two offending clauses concerning adoption and m arital rights “if legislators opposed to it hold their noses and let it pass anoth er v o te ” (.M on treal G azette,

June 9, 1994: B l). On Jun e 9, 1994, the bill was finally

defeated by a vote o f 68—59. While the upshot o f the vote in Ontario and the report in Quebec is far from decided, what em erges clearly here are battles fought on the su p ­ posedly straightforw ard ground of childhood: a public panic articulated in term s o f two genders on the one hand and sam e-sex relations on the other. The relevan t term in o lo g v is, in fact, coup les o f “ op posite g e n d e rs” as opposed to those o f the “sam e sex.” This tu rn o f phrase is far from in n o­ cent and neatly lines up with the questions concerning children and adop­ tion— questions frequently con flated (as if we all w ou ld rush to rep ro ­ duce) and collapsed. (A doption m ay m ean m any things, from adopting your girlfriend’s child in order to have legal cu stod y in the event o f her death to couples or single m en and w om en wishing to adopt a child.) This con d en sation o f different issues plays ou t in oth er ways as w ell. For instance, Quebec polls regularly show that, on the one hand, the m ajority are in favor of gay and lesbian partners receiving the social benefits h etero­ sexuals are entitled to and that, on the other, the m ajority are opposed to gay and lesbian couples being able either to m arry or to adopt. Thus, when it com es to the supposed n atural form ation o f childhood, it seem s that a hard-core in transigence lurks beneath co n tem p o rary toleran ce— th at children need h om esp un exam ples o f the distinct nature o f two genders

Suspended Beginnings

placed in opposition to each other. This very real gender trouble goes beyond the questionable science o f public opinion polls. Lodged within the hard science o f sexuality, it is exem plified in quantitative studies th at link ch ild h ood experience and h om osexuality. In these studies, the focus is on gender p erform an ce in childhood gauged in term s of gay m en ’s m em ories of how “gendered” they felt grow ing up. As Sedgwick has pointed out, “The Am erican Psychiatric A ssociatio n ’s m u ch -pub licized 1973 decision to drop the p ath o lo g izin g diagnosis o f hom osexuality from its next Diagnostic and Statistical M anual (DSM -III) [was follow ed in 1980 with a] new diagnosis, n u m bered (for insurance reasons) 302.60: ‘G ender Identity Disorder o f C h ild h ood ’” (1993: 155—156). From that point on, there has been an im p ortan t m ove within quantitative psychology to study w hat is called “gender con fo rm in g” and to figure childhood experience as an indicator o f fu tu re hom osexuality. As Jay Paul has recently argued, “The focus and interpretation o f research findings on cross-gender behavior in ch ild h ood as a sign o f broader ‘p re h o m o se x u a l’ c o n fig u ra tio n .. .have uncritically in co rp orated our c u ltu r e ’s lo n gstan d in g folk belief in h om osexu ality as a form o f flaw ed m aleness or fem aleness” (1993: 42). I w ant to turn briefly to the findings o f som e o f the studies that fol­ low ed the su p p o sed d ep ath ologization o f h om osexu ality. While this change o f focus dem ands a th orough analysis o f the conceptualization of the relations am ong gender, sex, and sexuality and a critique of the ways in which psychology has colluded in the configuration o f such folk beliefs, w hat draws m e here is quite discrete. I am interested in the general them es that em erge from studies using the “Boyhood Gender C onform ity Scale” (B G C S ) d eveloped by S. L. H ockenberry and R. E. B illin gh am — a scale devised as “ a m easu re on which m en rate how often they en gaged as a child in 10 gender con fo rm in g behaviors and 10 gender n o n con form in g behaviors” (Phillips et al., 1992: 544). Given that I find the task o f describing quantitative research tedious and that the conclusions are depressingly familiar, I beg forbearance. Briefly then, som e o f the key factors o f “norm al conform ity” are form ulated and placed on the BG C scale of im portance as follows: “preferred boys’ gam es,” “im agined self as sports figure,” “im agined self as dancer or m od el,” “pre­ ferred g irls’ g am e s,” and (m y favorite) “preferred being arou nd older

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Espjeffi ProEyfi w om en .” Subsequent studies added other supposedly key factors: “consid­ ered sissy,” “interest in d olls,” “engaged in rou gh -an d-tum ble play,” and “desire to grow up like fath e r” (1992: 544). Perhaps n o t surprisingly, researchers found that “classification o f sexual orientation as an adult on the basis o f m em ory o f childhood experiences was m ore accurate for the heterosexual m en than for the hom osexual m e n ” (1992: 552). I w ould take this to m ean that straight m en can m ore easily privilege their “norm ality” in socially sanctioned term s. In other words, the study fram ed certain gen­ der behaviors as “n o rm al” and proceeded to correlate this “n o rm al” behav­ ior with an o th er “ n o rm a l” state: heterosexuality. For their p art, the au th o rs conclude with a call for m ore research, argu in g th at “d evelop ­ m ental sequences and paths are o f interest, since engaging in som e behav­ iors m ay sy stem atically increase or decrease the likelih ood th at oth er experiences will o c c u r” (1992: 557). In oth er w ords, we need m ore studies o f how n ot to grow up gay, “sissy or effem inate.” N ow while I am not a quantitative social scientist, I am enough o f a sociologist to question the ease with which such recom ­ m endations are m ade. The reseachers’ confidence is especially rem arkable given that the key and, as the researchers p u t it, “pow erful discrim inators o f heterosexual and hom osexual m e n ” were “participation in rough-andtum ble play and the desire to grow up like on e’s fath e r” (1992: 555). As I read this, som e very unscientific questions com e to m ind— such as w hat p lan et do these people live on? In a m ore credible vein, I w onder w here variables such as class and ethnicity m ight fit in, be they expressed in a vari­ ety o f class-accented hom osocial activities or in the wish to differentiate oneself from on e’s father in a bid for upw ard (or dow nw ard) mobility. In an o th er study, we tu rn from fath ers to m oth ers. The article “M aternally Rated Childhood Gender N onconform ity in H om osexuals and H eterosexu als” (Bailey et al., 1993) d ocu m en ts the findings o f a stu d y in which m oth ers were asked to rate their grow n u p ch ild ren ’s “ childhood gender n o n con form ity” (C G N ) and the m atern al m em ories were corre­ lated with those o f the children. Basically, w hat the auth ors want to know is: “D o m aternal ratings m ake a unique contribution in explaining sexual orientation? Or alternatively, do m atern al ratings predict sexual orienta­ tion th ro ugh their relationship with self-ratings?” (1993: 467). While this sounds like another riff on the old line “m y m oth er m ade m e a h om osex­

__ mi

u al” (if I give her enough wool, will she m ake m e one too?), at least som e w om en are included. Lesbians are notoriously absent from m ost o f these studies, and in this one the num bers were uneven: 51 heterosexual fem ales and 19 bisexual and h om osexual fem ales (with the two lu m ped togeth er “for brevity”), as op p osed to 58 h eterosexu al m en and 83 bisexual and hom osexu al m en. The researchers found that according to the m o th e rs’ m em ories, m ale hom osexuals were “less Masculine and m ore Nonathletic,” while fem ale h om osexu als (to continue the research ers’ capitalization ) w ere “m ore N on con fo rm in g, M asculine, S u b m issiv e .. .m o re Poorly adjusted, less Healthy, and m ore Passive” (1993: 464). They conclude that “com pared to m ales, results for (hom osexual) fem ales were suggestive of a m ore general nonconform ity than m ere gender nonconform ity” (1993: 468). This then leads the researchers to call for m ore studies “ to d em o n ­ strate convincingly w hether h om osexual fem ales are disproportionately m ore gender n o n con form in g d u rin g c h ild h o o d ” (1993: 469). A long the way, the researchers m ight think about explaining a num ber o f striking contradictions, such as how you can be m ore submissive, m ore m asculine, and m ore nonconform ing all at the sam e time.

Childhood Tropes W hat em erges from these studies is an im age o f gays as sh u n n in g stereo­ types o f m ascu lin ity (n o t playing football with D ad) and o f lesbians as ornery in the face o f a binary gender system . M oreover, it proceeds from a naturalized and hom ogeneous conception o f gender: at the m ost obvious level, one wonders how it is that m asculinity in girls results in “bad h ealth” (and indeed w hat that term m ay cover), while in boys it results in hearty, rough play. While the m ethodological labyrinth that supports such studies m u st be critiqued (it som etim es seem s to be their raison d ’etre), such is not m y intent here. For as I stress the urgency o f analyzing the studies— from their system s o f intelligibility to their conditions o f possibility, including their funding and dispersal— I do not hold that interdisciplinarity neces­ sarily plays out in an assortm ent o f specialized knowledges, a fluid and flu­ ent m ovem ent from one increasingly rarefied dom ain to another. Rather, I look to the surface and to how such studies coexist with other discourses. Thus, I w ant to consider relations o f proxim ity am on g apparently disparate discursive projects. What concerns m e here is the way in which

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Elspeth Probyn som e o f the central them es foun d in these quantitative studies m eet up w ith sim ilar ones in gay and lesbian w riting. On one level, this sim ply p oints to the fact that path o logizin g discourses have m aterially affected ch ildh ood. On anoth er, there is the m ore c o m p lex issue o f the ways in which these them es are taken up in gay and lesbian recollections and sto ­ ries o f childhood. In other words, the “folk beliefs” about gender and sex­ uality that are quantified in psychological research reappear as key n arra­ tive elem ents through w hich gay and lesbian identity is recited. In m any ways this phenom enon is quite understandable. After all, as postw ar A m erica discovered psychiatry and psychoanalysis, several gener­ ations o f children were sent off to be cured o f their h om osexuality. And w om en, stru gglin g with their ow n “problem th at had no n am e,” found them selves portrayed in popular m agazines as potential m others of h om o­ sexual boys, as the source or cause o f their hom osexuality. While this was m ainly a m iddle-class phenom enon , given its popularization in the m edia it is not surprising that the pathologizing o f childhood should reappear as a m ajor m om en t in recollections of growing up. A necdotal evidence of the reach o f pop-psycho-m edical discourses can be heard across any num ber o f stories. For instance, N ancy Kates begins her au to b io grap h ical sh ort story by recalling how it had never occurred to her that she had had a “gay ch ild h ood ” : “It took m e close to three decades to com e ou t to myself, but m y m oth er had m e pegged as a dyke by the age o f five” (1993: 126). From five on, K ates’s m oth er did her best to tu rn her tom boy d au gh ter into a paragon o f femininity. When Kates finally cam e out, her m oth er adm itted th at her efforts w ere “ always on the basis o f p rofession al advice.” In response to her d au g h ter’s question about the cruelty o f such m eth ods, her m oth er replied: “I guess it d idn’t work, did it?” (132). If K ates’s story tells o f the affectivity o f such psych osexu al babble, the difference betw een gender n on con form ity and unqualified n o n con ­ form ity is crucial in the quantitative accounts. It is a bizarre distinction: try asking y o u rse lf at any m o m en t, am I now n ot c o n fo rm in g (and to what?), or am I now not conform ing to the standards o f m y gender? Even if we slavishly try to con fo rm , it seem s that, like the su p p o sed tru th o f gender, the proto-dyke wall out. For instance, I seem to rem em ber, even as a shy kid too chickenshit (or gender conform ing) to be a m em ber of the bad-girls gan g, being m ortified w hen a h e ad m aste r rep rim an d ed m e,

Suspended Beginnings

along with m y best friend, for w earing “tight patched jeans.” I rem em ber his exact w ords: “You’re n oth in g but exhibitionists,” a severe reprim and for a gentle tendency to flaunt the rules in order to indulge in our in n o­ cent tom boy activities. N ot surprisingly, clothes, gender, sex, and desire are often bundled togeth er in m an y a lesbian’s rem iniscence o f her childh ood. G iven the ways that schoolgirls are incessantly under surveillance about their dress, a panic fanned by a fear o f adolescent fem ale sexuality, clothes can spark off any num ber o f connections.3 For instance, in the short story “It Flappened on M ain S treet,” Linda Heal rem em bers “sneak[ing] on pairs o f sh orts under the dresses I resented s o . . .in this adolescent part o f m y life, when c on fo rm ity was queen, I stoo d o u t quite a b it” (1993: 10). H ow ever, in “Jon n ieruth ,” Becky Birtha’s story o f grow ing up black and queer, clothes are less a point o f contestation than a m eans o f recognition. The protago­ nist, Jonnieruth, is eight when she first “spied this lady” : She ain’t nobody’s m am a— I’m sure. And she ain’t wearing Sunday clothes. She got on blue jeans and a m an ’s shirt, with the tail hanging out. She got patches on her blue jeans, and she still got her chin stuck out like she some kinda african royalty. (1993: 18)

From this m om en t on, Jonnieruth has a m ission to seek out other places, w om en, and ways o f dressing. She soon finds a la d y bracelets

She had on this shiny purple shirt and about a m illion silver Then I spotted this dude com ing ov er

Looking real fine.

G ot on a three-piece suit. One of them little caps sitting on a angle. Look like leather. He coming straight over to this lady I’m watching and then she seen him too and she start to smile, but she don’t move till he get right up next to her. And then I’m going to look away, cause I can’t stand to watch nobody hugging and kissing on each other, but all of a sudden I see it ain’t no dude at all. It’s another lady. (21)

These exam ples tell o f som eth in g m ore com plex than the clinical term nonconformity can grasp about lesbians, dress, and desire rem em bered in later life. What is striking in Birtha’s story is the way in which, in m em ory,

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several orders o f experience com e together. In her account, the recogni­ tion o f “b u tch ” is sim ultaneously articulated with the equally im portant recognition o f “african royalty” dressed in jeans. These “shocks o f recogni­ tion ” (to borrow Raym ond W illiam s’s term ) o f gender, sexual desire, and identification then play out in a reconnaissance o f others. This is reconnaissance in its double sense: the local process o f know ing, a replaying o f knowledge; and being recognizant, grateful for the affirm ation o f w hat one m ay have vagu ely felt before (desire for a b u tch , for a fem m e, for the sigh t o f butch/fem m e couples). And in this instance, the sighting leads to a reconnoitering: su rveying o n e ’s ch ild h ood locale for oth er in stances o f this desire. Fueled by stance, dress, and m ovem ent, allow ed by the singularity o f m aterial conditions, these m om en ts o f recognition result in m em ories that cannot be stratified. No one m om en t can be privileged as the original cause o f desire. If, as Rosi Braidotti argues, “the affirm ation o f m y subjectivity need n o t give a p rop ositio n al content to m y sense o f id en tity” (1989: 100), we need to heed the exigencies o f why, where, and how one rem em bers the m o m en ts o f affirm ation th at play o u t as ch ild h ood . If desire is re m e m ­ bered, it is also deeply im bricated in the structuring principles o f race, class, gender, and place. Given that “learning” or enforcing gender conform ity form s an often painful stru ctu ration o f girlhood, the com plexity o f gen ­ der as event in girls’ lives renders the tu rn o f m em ory m ore perplexing— and apparently less available to the typing o f quantitative research. In contrast, the scientific categorization o f gay boys as “N onathletic and as less M asculine” turns up repeatedly in gay m e n ’s own accounts o f their ch ildh oods. In Joh n P reston ’s an th o lo g y H om etow ns: G ay M en W rite A bou t W here They Belong

(1992), story after story tells o f being too intelligent,

o f no t being a b o y ’s boy, o f n ot liking athletics: “T h ere m u st have been m any ways I was different from the other kids early on. I’m vaguely aware o f being too sm art, o f n o t being physical en o u gh , o f h atin g sp o rts” (Preston, 1992: 6); “My parents w orried that I lacked the m asculine quali­ tie s

My peers saw in m e a nerdy b o ok w orm w ho was u n d ou b ted ly

queer” (M onteagudo, 1992: 14); “I was certain that m y family, already p u z­ zled by m y silent devotion to books, w ould reject m e entirely if it becam e know n exactly w hat thoughts occupied m y silence” (Nava, 1992: 28). N o doubt the traits o f being bad at sports, o f being bookish, etc., are

im p ortan t in understan ding the trials o f grow ing up gay. B ut as a way o f stru ctu rin g gay m em orial w riting, their very com m o n ality m akes them problem atic. How are we to theorize the singularity of queer uses o f child­ hood w hen the m em ories are cut o f the sam e cloth as the typologies of quantitative social science? At another level, the ease with which one can read queer childhood stories along very general axes is problem atic as well. As M argaret Reynolds states in regard to this genre, it “creates its own nar­ rative, but it is a narrative that always covers the sam e ground, and it is a narrative which becom es an exchange o f calling cards w ithin a gay c o m ­ m u n ity” (1993: xxvi). “There are m asses o f th em ,” she adds, and “they are m ainly not very goo d.” This, in turn, raises several questions. For one, does the “m assiveness” o f such tales (a point in their sociological favor) detract from their literary and aesthetic quality? H owever, I w ant to ask not so m uch why it is th at childhood retu rn s again and again in gay and lesbian writing but how that return can be effected differently.

G oing back to childhood is always accom panied by the sheer im possibility o f the act. As the adage has it, you can’t go hom e again— or is it that you sh o u ld n ’t try? O f course, in a com pu lsiv e m ove rem in iscen t o f F re u d ’s “fort-d a” scenario, individuals do try to control the uncontrollable object, to retrieve the irretrievable su bject o f their m em ories. For exam ple, in Steven S ay lo r’s accoun t o f his hom etow n , place and ch ildhood beckon: “The nostalgia I feel for the place is not just the nostalgia any m an feels for the place he cam e o f age; m y life there really was rich and sweet and in my daydream s it could be so again” (1993: 122). In contrast, in Oranges A re N ot the Only Fruit , Jeann ette

W interson’s autobiograph ical novel, the retu rn is

pain fu lly deployed. The n arrato r goes back and, sittin g in the local tea room , thinks, “T h ere’s still a chance that I’m not here at all” (1991: 263). For W interson, going back entails m oving across, a m ovem en t fueled by “all the choices I did and didn’t m ake, [which] for a m om en t brush against each o th e r” (263). If in Saylor’s account the past is rosy enough to want to go back, in W interson’s novel the p ast is am bivalent, m arked by uneasy coexistence. “ ‘D on ’t you ever think of going back?’ Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to p u ll you back”(247). Even as one wants to return, it is clearly unwise if

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Elspeth Probyn not fatal: “When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pil­ lar o f s a lt .... People do go back, but they d o n ’t su rv iv e .... T here is m uch pain here” (247). G oing back different, going back to people indifferent to your differ­ ence, the past indifferent to vour present, your presence superfluous to the past, being haunted by places p a s t.. .there is m uch pain here. But however painful the actual return m ay be, the tone in which it is retold introduces epistem ological considerations. If Saylor’s account brings present and past together in a happy reunion, it also evokes w hat Foucault calls the “form of history that reintroduces... a suprahistorical perspective... a history that always encourages subjective recognitions and attributes a form o f recon­ ciliation to all the displacem ents o f the p ast” (1977: 152). In this m anner, Saylor’s nostalgia plays out in the desire for com plete reconciliation o f past and present; indeed, it is “a history whose perspective on all that precedes it im plies the end o f time, a com pleted d evelopm en t” (Foucault, 1977: 152). Being able to control the past m eans being in control o f the present self: the past self m astered through m em ory grounds the p ro o f o f truth in the present. W interson’s account, however, provides a m od el th at privileges the m essiness o f past, present, and m em ory. The line o f m em ory here is constantly upset and dislocated by “all the choices I did and didn’t m ake.” B ru sh in g against each other, the lines o f rem em b erin g in W interson’s account jostle “the iron hand o f necessity shaking the dice-box o f chance” (to recall N ietzsche’s evocative phrase). Indeed, Oranges A re N ot the Only Fruit plays ou t som e very N ietzschean tactics as W interson rem em bers her childhood as a profusion o f entangled events. Here m em ory or nostalgia becom es genealogy: a descent which “perm its the dissociation o f the self, its recognition and displacem ent as em pty synthesis, in liberating a p rofu ­ sion o f lost ev en ts” (F ou cau lt, 1977: 147). And as F o u c au lt rem inds us, “descent attaches itself to the body” (1977: 147). Inscribed in diet, tem pera­ m ent, and soil, it is visible on the bodies o f children. Or, in W interson’s tale of m em ory, descent is w ritten into the construction o f relations between her body, her m o th e r’s body, and that o f her object o f desire— all m edi­ ated by the orange, an orange genealogically placed next to the apple. The body here is not discovered as the tru th o f the present; it is in no w ay a guarantor of things to com e. Rather, as Jeannette, the protagonist, puts it, “Som e people create them selves afresh outside of their own b o d y

I have

Suspended Beginnings

not gone forw ard or back in time, but across time, to som eth in g I m igh t have been, playing itself o u t” (262—263). As a genealogist o f her childhood, W interson sees there not origin but num berless beginnings, carried, held, and suspended by lesbian desire. In his reading o f N ietzsche, F o u cau lt argues th at H erku n ft , even th ou gh it is usually tran slated as “origin,” com es close to being the true objective of genealogy: “H erkunft is the equivalent of stock or descent ; it is the ancient affiliation to a group, sustain ed by bonds o f blood, tradition or social class” (1977: 145). Rather than providing a basis for the identification o f generic features, H erkunft services genealogy by tu rn in g us to the very unraveling o f origin. Again, the notion o f beginnings is p u t to the test of genealogical analysis and appears not as “the inviolable identity” of origin but the dissension, the dispersal, the disparity o f any and all beginnings. Rather than re-placing us in direct connection with a com forting, fam il­ iar past, gen ealogy or “ the true historical sense con firm s ou r existence am on g countless lost events, w ithout a landm ark or a point of reference” (1977: 159). Instead o f pristine referents, w hat we have is the visible and chaotic void beneath us. In different registers, F o u c au lt’s argu m en t for gen ealogy and W interson’s evocation o f childhood both retu rn us to the m ovem en t of m em ory and history as that line which profoundly rearranges any attem pt at ordering origins, at creating order from the point of beginning. We are faced once again with the project of scram bling m odes o f puttin g into play any reference, any returning, any repealing of the past that com forts the security o f an individualized present. And as Foucault argues, it is in the fic­ tive m ode that we m ost clearly see the necessary distancing, the upheaval in relations of proximity, that any account of the past produces (and this in spite of, or to spite the au th o r’s intentions). With regard to m em ory and writing, Foucault uses the im age of “the ju ttin g out o f the past, being no longer the ground upon which we find ourselves— it takes on the stature o f a vertical superposition w here the m ost bygone is paradoxically the clos­ est to the apex, a line of sum m it, a line of flight, the grounds o f reversal” (1994: 276). Here the past is rendered as a piece of high ground, the under­ pinnings o f which have been washed away. Or again, it is the im age of a spa­ tial rearran gem en t by which the past is bent into stran ge shapes so th at w hat should be furthest aw ay is in fact the closest. Put in another way, these

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Elspeth Probtjn im ages rem ind m e of the experience o f looking through binoculars, a prac­ tice I have never m astered: the distant brough t disconcertingly forw ard, I lose all sense of perspective, a faraway landm ark (or point de repere) suddenly is beside me, a deeply disturbing experience in rearranged proximities. The point o f these im ages is to indicate that far from being reassur­ ing, the retrieval o f the past into the present is profoundly dislocating, dis­ orienting. Bringing forth beginnings results in the loss o f bearings. As in W interson’s recollections o f childhood, the line o f fiction which retrieves her girlh oo d h om e p ro d u ces the pain o f the retu rn . In this sense W interson’s tale is precisely nostalgic. Etym ologically, the pain o f retu rn is, o f course, both the condition and the p rop er definition o f nostalgia. Joh an n es H ofer, a Swiss m ilitary d o cto r w ho discovered the m alad y in 1688, com bined the Greek term s nostos and alg ia to signify “a painful yearn­ ing to return h om e” (cited in Davis, 1979: 1). His list o f sym ptom s included despondency, anorexia, m elan ch olia, lability o f em otio n , and b ou ts o f weeping (the very sym ptom s I exhibited the few tim es I tried to return to a childhood hom e). In the case o f the Swiss soldiers upon w hom Hofer based his diagnosis o f nostalgia, it was their wish to return hom e to the Alps and valleys o f their youth that precipitated this distressing condition and not the actual return. B ut again, you can never go hom e. Or rather, once retu rn ed, you realize the cliche that hom e is never w hat it was. I think o f those Swiss sol­ diers returned from the war, cured o f their nostalgic pain only to w ander their little villages w ondering, “Is this all there is?” (Show m e the way to the next whisky bar.) As Vladim ir Jankelevitch pu ts it, “N ostalgia oscillates between two regrets: the regret, from afar, o f a lost fatherland; the regret, u p on retu rn , o f m issed a d v en tu res” (1974: 366). While co m m o n se n se un d erstan d in gs o f n o stalgia tend to em ph asize the backw ard, and even reactionary, n atu re o f n ostalgia, Jankelevitch refuses to give n ostalgia a fixed political signification. In fact, w hat is com pelling about nostalgia as a form is that it is at once a stru ctu re o f feeling, a rhetorical strategy, and a historical exam p le o f the p ath o lo gizatio n o f the affections. As Jean Starobinski argues, the m edicalization o f nostalgia coincides with the gen ­ eral m ove tow ard the system atic classification of h u m an affections on the m o d el o f botany. T hus, before 1688, am o ro u s m elan ch olia had already been inventoried: “The sym ptom s and som atic lesions provoked by the pri­

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vation o f the loved object had been described in detail. But this sam e tra­ dition had never envisioned the troubles resulting from the distancing of a fam iliar m ilie u ” (1966: 95). H ow ever, the condition o f desiderium p a tria e cam e to be considered along with amorous desiderium as prim e causes o f “ the m ortal effects o f chagrin.” And it should be rem em bered that the m o rtal­ ity rate o f su ch affective disturbances was n ot to be taken lightly. As Starobinski pu ts it, “C urious XVIIIth century, when the English, in order to cure their spleen, fled their native clime and departed on their grand tour in search o f the serene air o f the Sou th — while others th ou gh t that they exposed them selves to the risk o f death by the sim ple distancing o f fam iliar landscapes” (1966: 97). By the end o f the eigh teen th cen tury this sense o f n o stalgia as a som atic condition caused directly by the loss o f on e’s place o f birth fades into the understan ding Kant articulated in his A nthropologie in pragm atischer H insichtabgefasst

(1798), that “w hat the nostalgic desires is not th t p la ce o f his

youth , but youth itself, his childhood. His desire is not directed at a thing that could be recovered but tow ards a tim e that is irretrievable” (cited in Starobinski, 1966: 106). As Starobin sk i argues, w ith the em ergence o f m od ern m edicine and the study o f p athology in the nineteenth century, n o stalgia ceases to be u n d ersto o d as a physical condition th at cou ld be treated with a local rem edy: for H ofer, the rem edy had entailed either sending the soldier hom e or, failing that possibility, the adm inistration of youth ful libations— young wine or beer. By the nineteenth century, “the desire to return loses its literal sense” and becom es interiorized: “It is in his p erson al p ast th at the nostalgic seeks to accom plish a m o v em en t o f re tu rn ” (1966: 114). F rom d esign atin g a physical condition, th en a psych ological one, Starobinski argues th at “ today, as the im perative to social adaptation grows, nostalgia no longer designates a lost fatherland, but rath er goes back to the stages w hen d esire...w asn ’t con d em n ed to postpone its realization” (1966: 115). These ideas lead m e to argue that in nostalgia we m ay find a m ood th at is ap p rop riate to ch ild h ood m em o rial w riting. If the reference to childhood is one o f nostalgia’s im m ediate m eanings, m ore im portantly, it seem s to already contain within its history a tension that renders it apt for the expression of queer childhood m em ories. For nostalgia begins its con­ ceptual career as a discrete objective state, is pathologized, and then falls

Il6

ElapetLRcQfiyo

under the scrutiny of psychology and psychoanalysis to be interiorized as a form o f neurosis. B ut as it passes ou t o f favor w ithin psychology, having done its tim e within the prism o f origins, nostalgia is now free to wander. And accordin g to Jankelevitch, am on g oth ers, this is precisely w hat the nostalgic m ode does today. As it m oves between present and past, nostalgia is no longer tied to an origin or a cause. Rather, like desire, it produces its object. It scram bles any sense o f a fixed beginning: “The cause is contradic­ torily the effect o f its own effect, and the effect the cause o f its own cause; the because refers thus to the why and responds to the question with a ques­ tion ” (1974: 356). While I am not suggesting that nostalgia is the only m ode o f writing queer childhood, in linking nostalgia, genealogy, and the w riting o f m e m ­ ory I do propose that we seek to queer the past in the present. O f course this is the p ro ject o f gay and lesbian h istorian s w ho have adm irably reworked our past histories and conditions o f possibility. But it seem s that, w hen the personal past becom es the subject o f w riting, the past tends to becom e individualized, grounds for the present truth of selves. If, however, we turn our attention to childhood as event, as a heterogeneous ensem ble o f discourses and relations, tracing a straight line between a present self as lesbian or gay and any childhood experience becom es som ew hat tricky. As a line o f descent, the project o f recollecting also becom es m ore pressing as it dissolves, in its own way, the pretense o f tru th in sexuality.

This Is Not the Worst Thing I.Rem0ni'her From this teleological scram b lin g we can start th in k in g ab ou t ways o f using and recounting childhood that do not place it as a beginning. This is to m ove childhood outside a regim e o f origins, to displace both the ques­ tion o f psychology ( “Why is she a lesbian?”) and the question that recurs in gay and lesbian narratives o f childhood: “Why am I a lesbian?” The point is n o t to negate the im p o rtan ce o f ch ild h ood ; it is to deny ch ild h ood its founding status. It is to rewind our stories but not to recount them as links in a ch ron o lo gical chain th at ties the p resen t to a fixed past. It is to tell them with the fervor o f the possible, not the im placability o f truth-telling. However, it should be clear that in advocating nostalgia as a possible voice for such narrating, I am not proposing that we jettison the reality o f child­ hood, a real that com es to us in im ages. Rather, I w ant to seize on those

Suspended Bcgi nnings

im ages, im ages som etim es drenched in the im m ediacy of past and present pain. It is from this real that we seek to construct the possible, a real that can n o t be know n solely th ro u gh statistics and quantitative studies. The reality we m u st deal with is that o f the surface of the social, and we m ust continue to confront such studies with other representations o f gay and lesbian life: im ages of bodies and desires, history and histories that are cen­ tral to reform ulating the social. For “ the possible is only the real with the addition o f an act o f m ind that throws its im age back into the past once it has been enacted” (Deleuze, 1989: 17). Jan k elev itch ’s articulation o f nostaligia is based u p on a bifurcated m ovem ent, upon a sense o f a gaze throw n backward and forward, “a ger­ m ination in the present and a flow ering in the p ast” (1974: 375). While not explicit in L ’irreversible et la n ostalpie , this doubled m ovem en t is inspired by Bergson’s argum ent on m em ory and duration. Indeed, Jankelevitch argues elsewhere that duration inform s Bergson’s m ethod: “This ‘m eth o d ’ w ould be the line itself of m ovem ent that conducts th ough t into the thickness of th in gs” (1989: 5). In other words, nostalgia becom es a variant o f a m ethod that has as its purpose the turning around of things, o f rendering the real as the in sid e-ou t o f p ast and present. N o stalgia th en m u st be tu rn ed around, turned away from its tendency “ to practice a posteriori a sm all ju s­ tifying reconstruction” (1989: 22). For it should be clear that if nostalgia has no inherent m ean in g or direction, it does have a historical tendency “to represent, in the future anterior, the way in which things should have hap­ pened so that they conform to its own schem a o f im m obility” (1989: 21). Against this veering tow ard an ontology o f origins, we need to queer the nostalgic line. For exam ple, in som e childhood m em orial writing, n ostal­ gia serves m erely to replay things as we would want them to be, to rehearse them so that they fall in line with the present. This is the case w hen, for instance, the question “Why am I gay?” is answered by the response “I was too sm art; I was bad at sports.” This line o f justification is also the narrative th at m otivates those quantitative studies that calibrate and p ath ologize m em ories o f “gender nonconform ity” in childhood. In this type of logic there is only one line o f m ovem ent, one that goes from the present to the past in order to justify the present. To say the least, this is not a very productive line; it does not yield anything new in the pres­ ent. It m erely reproduces the present as an effect of the past, of past causes.

in

Probijn While this line undoubtedly exists, it m ust be joined with anoth er line o f m o v em en t if it is to be p rod uctiv e. It is here th at Bergson talks o f “two m em ories— or two indissolubly linked aspects o f m em ory— recollectionm em ory and contraction-m em ory” (Deleuze, 1989: 52). For Bergson, “the ‘present’ that endures divides at each ‘in stant’ into two directions, one ori­ ented and dilated toward the past, the other contracted, contracting toward the fu tu re ” (Deleuze, 1989: 52). Thus, o f the two lines at w ork in m em ory, one veers tow ard the past (recollection-m em ory) and the other (contrac­ tion-m em ory) is the contracting o f “m illions o f vibrations or elem entary shocks into a felt quality; it is the ‘ten sin g’ o f things into a line o f becom ­ in g ” (1989: 87). While this m ay sound esoteric, it is, in fact, a m undane activity. Take for instance this exam ple by Bergson: “Sitting on the bank o f a river, the flow ing o f the water, the gliding o f a boat or the flight o f a bird, the u n in ­ terru p ted m u rm u r o f our deep life, are for us three different things or a sin gle one, at w ill” (in D eleuze, 1989: 80). H ere the line o f recollection which bends tow ard the past (the m em ory and the actuality o f sitting on a bank, the very pastness o f a present flowing river and the m u rm u r o f life) is redirected and m eets up with the contraction o f “the m illions o f vibra­ tions” o f these things. M atter is tensed into a felt quality, contracted into a line o f m em ory that m ay or m ay not produce these separate fluxes as one. At each point, then, these separate elem ents (for they m u st be recognized as such) can veer into the past and organize a present becom ing, justifying its order. But, as Deleuze argues, this w ould be to partake in the past, a past that has “ceased to act or be u se fu l

It is identical to being itself” (1989:

55). In other words, the past in this sense is that which lifelessly m irrors the present, explains it to itself, or is served up in narratives th at encourage a com m o n tale of suffering. The trick is to turn this line, to redirect it alon g­ side the line o f contraction so that contraction and recollection exist sim ul­ taneously, producing “pure becom ing, always outside o f itself” (D eleuze, 1989: 55). The point is that we all grow up and in one way or another seek to becom e other than w hat we were, w hat we are.

This explanation o f an everyday activity m igh t not be obvious. It is, in any case, already an am algam o f Bergson, D eleu ze’s explanation o f Bergson,

and m y own attem pt to use them in order to think about the m ovem ent o f nostalgia. T hat said, I turn to an exam ple that m ay be clearer than that o f Bergson’s afternoon on a riverbank. B ut before I do so, I retain the exi­ gency o f conceptualizing the bifurcated m ovem ent o f rem em bering child­ hood; fictions arranged and displayed, they are already conducted in both the p ast and the present. They m ove, or can be m ade to m ove, us into other m odalities o f becom ing. If Peck’s novel is organized by the phrase “this is not the w orst thing I rem em b er,” th us p lacin g the reader in suspense, aw aiting bu t never receiving know ledge o f w hat the w orst thing is, Michel Trem blay’s play La maison suspendue ( The Suspended H ouse )

(1990) literalizes the m etaphor. One of

Quebec’s best-known authors, Tremblay has always been an out queer, and his w ork con sisten tly centers on gay characters. H ailed as a so rt o f Quebecois w orking-class hero for writing the first play in “jo u a l ” (the street French o f Quebec), his oeuvre brings together realist accounts o f workingclass Quebecois, drag queens as tragic heros, and a m ysticism that always threatens to becom e m audlin yet never quite does. In his novels and plays he has created and reproduced Q uebec’s queerest extended family, a family that rivals the Addam ses. The Chromques du plateau , the cycle o f novels that takes place in the East End o f the Plateau in M ontreal, includes characters like Edouard, a transsexual shoe salesm an; Marcel, a m ystic kid who plays with his invisible cat, D uplessis (n am ed after the au th o ritarian prem ier w ho ruled over Q ueb ec’s dark ages before the Q uiet R evolu tion o f the 1960s); and incestuous siblings and their offspring. In La maison suspendue Trem blay brings together three generations and three tim e periods: the characters o f Josaphat and Victoire, who are lovers and siblings, and Gabriel, their child, are stituated in 1910; those o f laprosse fem m e,

Albertine, Edouard, and M arcel are in 1950; and finally, Jean-M arc,

M athieu, and Sebastien are in the present (1990). Jean-Marc, the end o f the lineage, has bough t his fam ily’s old su m m er house and brough t his fam ily to it: his lover, M athieu, and the lover’s son. The play opens with a descrip­ tion o f the house, a round w ooden house with a porch ( “la g a le n e ”) that cir­ cles its exterior. The house gives off “a strange and pow erful e n e rg y .. .as if the w hole history o f the w orld had u n fold ed th e re ” (1990: 11). It is the whole o f time, the tim e o f his family, that o f his new fam ily and the time o f his childhood, which causes his lover to ask, “T h at’s why you bough t it?

120

Elspeth Probyn To fall back into childhood?” (11). As he details the com ings and goings of generations o f his family, Jean-M arc replies, “All this is m ine, M athieu, it’s p art o f m y heritage, it’s m y only h eritage

I bough t all those m em ories

so they w ou ld n ’t fall into general indifference” (14—15). The action o f the play takes place ou tside on the gallery one July evening. The m ajor narrative thread is that o f Josaphat and V ictoire’s deci­ sion to m ove to M ontreal ( “M o rial,” w ritten ju st as it is p ron ou n ced) so that Victoire can m arry Telesphore and thus legitimate Gabriel. Edouard, la grosse fem m e ,

and A lbertine have com e for a w eek, im plicitly to help the

brother and sister (Edouard and A lbertine) get over their differences that are m ainly caused by A lbertine’s sham e regarding her broth er’s queerness. M athieu has com e to help settle in Jean-M arc, who has finally decided to risk giving up his job as a university professor in order to write. The play is p u lled along on an o th er level with Jo sa p h a t’s version o f the story o f “ /a chasse g a l e n e ”

This Quebecois fable4 tells the tale o f a bunch o f w oodsm en

who take off for M ontreal in search of fun on a Saturday night, their m ode o f tran spo rt being a canoe which is hitched to the m oon and th at carries them across the night sky. In Josaphat’s telling, he m akes the m oon rise by dint o f his fiddle playing and then suspends the house with a cord tied to the m oon. While exceedingly sim ple, the stru ctu re o f La maison suspendue is stunning for the way in which the three generations and three time periods play alongside each other. C haracters start a sentence or a th ough t only to have it finished by another voice from another generation and then to have it extended by yet anoth er. For in stance, at one point M ath ieu talks o f building a new well, catching him self as he does: “My God, I said that as if w e’re going to spend the rest of our days here.” This is follow ed by la grosse fem m e s

question about w hat to do with the m ilk, then by Edouard saying

h e’ll take it down to the creek, which awakens Albertine to the voice o f her m other heard from another time. From a m om en t of connection with her m oth er, A lbertine then tu rn s on E d o u ard ’s ow n recollection o f their m other, bitchily rem arking, “O u a n

Just as long as you d o n ’t wear her

dresses as w ell.” Edouard softly says, “Tiens, th at’s the first time you allude to th at.” The stage directions m ake explicit this interm ingling o f tim e and generation: “In turn, he passes between Gabriel and Josaphat, goes around Jean-M arc and M athieu, and disappears in the creek ” (35). In this way, threads weave in and ou t and alongside each other, the m ovem en t being

Suspended Beginnings

precisely that which Winterson also emphasizes: a com m ingling of choices m ade, unm ade, and not made, choices virtual and actual that brush against each other. “History is a ham m ock for swinging and a gam e for playing. A cat’s cradle” (Winterson, 1991: 267). And sure enough, Trem blay’s play takes up the m etaphor o f the suspended house, rendered as the history o f three generation s o f fam ily; a sw inging h am m o ck; a c at’s cradle o f m em ories, desires, childhood, and grow nup queer children. Trem blay’s play exem plifies and p u ts into m otion a use of nostalgia that twists and turns inside-out and outside-in generations o f m em ories. It renders history as a narrative line that, like a M obius strip, refuses depth. It draws everything to the surface, it spreads the past across the present, it m akes the present as flexible as a w ell-sprung dance floor. The im age of the house suspended from the sky, attached by a line of the fiddle, is m ore than m etaphor. It enters into the very structure of feeling that the play enables: a queer desire to render tangible the passage o f time, childhood, history, and passion as they brush against each other, creating t h e frisson of surface rubbing surface, the tension of tectonic plates m oving. It is descent tied to the body, bodies that desire each other with no th ough t of trying to fix the origin o f desire or body. In Trem blay’s world there is no room for the ques­ tion “Why am I gay?” no possible place from which it could be asked, no thread from the past that w ould lead to its enunciation. Akin to Bergson’s argum ent, Trem blay tenses m atter into m em ory in such a way that vibra­ tions contract, forcing out any chronological or teleological explanation. The past is not there to explain the present; it is there to encourage form s o f becom in g. At the end o f the play, the only ch aracter left is M arcel. C aressin g D uplessis, he says to his very real if invisible cat, “We’re fine, h e re

We’re fine, h e re

We’re fine. We are g o in g .. .to b e .. .h a p p y ”

(119). And in the pauses o f the ellipses we hear Josaph at’s fiddle as it closes to black.

Recommence To begin again. For som e, at times, a dreadful thought, a Sisyphean enter­ prise. For others, at other times, a project of hope. For if the prim ary sense o f beginning is the tim e or place at which anything begins, noth in g says that those tim es and places are fixed, no one orders us to start again from where we began the tim e before, and no one can say w here or w hen the

next beginning will occur, or w here it m ay lead. And it is in this sim ple th ough t that we find one o f the m ore com pelling reasons to m obilize the queer w riting o f childhood as a political tactic. C om pared to the m ore evi­ dent exigencies o f repelling the scientific quantification o f queer childhood as p ath o logy and o f resisting the sustain ed attem p ts by gov ern m en ts to cap ture childhood as their m oral high groun d, rethinkin g childhood as the possibility o f beginning m ay sound very abstract. However, it is in ren­ derin g evident the very non-necessity, the u n n a tu raln e ss o f the idea o f beginning that we m ay unravel the sacred place that childhood occupies in fixed notions o f m orality. For while it sh ould be com m o n place within theoretical and/or progressive circles to regard childhood as a construct, an entity brought into being by, am ong other things, the child labor laws of the nineteenth century, when it com es to the w riting o f childhood, or to Bill C lin ton ’s proposals to help the m iddle class “because o f the children,” m ore often than not childhood passes sm ooth ly into the sacrosanct. There are, o f course, im p ortan t differences between the D em o crats’ use o f chil­ dren and gay and lesbian w riters’ use o f their ow n childhood. However, it m u st be equally clear th at w hen we w rite o f queer ch ild h ood , we w rite w ithin a com plex, established, and stratified discursive field o f m o ral m eanings o f childhood. T hus, m y su ggestio n to coup le the w riting o f ch ild h ood w ith a reconceptualization o f beginnings seeks to unhinge any m oralizing neces­ sity and to raise the exigency of extending childhood as a repeatable point o f beginning w ithin queer w ritings. While beginnings form p art o f o u r belon gin gs, like m em ory, they resist ow n ersh ip. T he p oin t th en is to deploy these m em ories o f beginnings, o f childhood and to tu rn th em in other directions, to place them on the surface o f the real and the possible. N ostalgia for beginnings only m akes sense within a project th at refuses a chronological ground, that refuses the privilege o f a personal past as a guar­ antee o f things to com e, th at explains the present in relation to the past. For the past is and w hat I w ant is not yet. What I w ant is a present wherein childhood is freed from its m oral strictures, where children and adults are not stifled by the confines o f a policed family, w here grow nups can write childhood, live childhood, in w hatever order we wish, where we can h ap­ pily bring up children if we so desire, where im ages o f ch ildh ood slow ly brush up against other im ages, where the past quickens a lust for the pres-

m

ent and for the possible. As a m od est p rop osal, I w ou ld su ggest th at we suspend childhood, that we form ulate a point of departure for theorizing queer beginnings in the very suspension o f childhood. Then m ay we con­ ceive of our beginnings as suspended from the m oon, held swaying in place by the thread o f a violin, a childhood m elody.

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5

Disciplinary Desires The Outside of Queer Feminist Cultural Studies

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DogDays... S u m m e r in M on treal, h ot and very hum id. And as w ith every year, it seem s that the heated pavem ent brings forth a new M ontreal subject, a dif­ ferent social and civic subject w rought o f the peculiarities o f clim ate and sensibility. Indeed, it is a local cliche th at for a brief m o m e n t o f tim e M ontrealers and M ontrealais alike p u t off their penchant for politics large and sm all, cast off with the salt-stained boots and tired coats o f winter. The exact tim ing o f the em ergence o f this fleeting stru ctu re of feeling that we call su m m er can be roughly calculated as som ew here after the Quebecois nation al holiday o f St. Jean B aptiste (Jun e 24). C ertainly, by July 1, the Canadian national holiday, but m ore im m ediately the day that m ost apart­ m ent leases expire, people have started to kick back; sitting on balconies drinking beer, M ontreal for the m ost part celebrates C anada Day by either helping friends m ove, being helped by friends to m ove, or w atching o th ­ ers m ove. O f course, politics continues, but it is diverted from its usual route. So yes, la St. J e a n brings ou t parades o f blue and white “Quebec aux Quebecois,” and in a m uch less spectacular and num erous way C anada Day has its red “Made in C an ada” tee-shirts on display, but these national m an ­ ifestations are sm oothed by m any a Labatt Bleue and carried out in the rel­ ative ign oran ce o f the one and the other. Even the politician s are savvy enough to know that one doesn ’t disturb lep eu p le during the sum m er. So instead of political platform s we have bandstands; festivals co m ­ pete and overlap into a weave of carnival, a m oving warp o f bodies against bodies: the International Festival of Fireworks, the Festival International de Jazz de M ontreal, Divers/Cite, the Festival Juste Pour Rire/Just for Laughs, le festiv a l du homard, le festiv a l de la biere en fu t,

le Tour de File, Portuguese and

Italian saints’ days, the C onstruction Workers’ holiday, les fe te s du trottoir— all p rod u ce the streets as chaotic b urstin g capillaries o f p eople celebrating som ething or other, or m erely living fully in the forgetfulness that winter ever existed. As an editorial in the local paper puts it, M ontreal is a “highstrung city,” and a festival “helps a city to p ut aside its tensions and troubles. Suddenly language doesn’t m atter. Politics are forgotten. Ethnicity is cele­

128

Elspeth Pmbyn brated, not scorned” (T h e G azette , July 11, 1994: B-2). So it is that under ban­ ners that in stru ct “M ontreal sourit aux to u ristes,” fair-w eather subjects proliferate. Both the inhabitants o f M ontreal and the outside tourists are touched by these m unicipal dictates to sm ile and are brought together in a w ell-plan ned netw ork o f free o u td o o r show s and inside com m ercial venues. If su m m er exuberance is com m o n in places where winter is long and hard, M ontreal m ay be u n com m o n for the ways in which its citizens are placed w ithin a g ov ern m en t-fu n d ed web o f fun, the exh ortation s resem blin g sch oolteach erly co m m an d s to get ou t there and play in the rearranged city streets. And speaking o f play, as w ith every su m m er, I am literally stuck to m y chair, sw earing that next su m m er I w on ’t be tied to m y com p u ter— su m m ers o f pages, pages o f sum m er. This time, I tell m yself, it will be dif­ ferent; I will govern m yself differently, produce another social skin. I take M arx to heart, the one who prom ised that we could do the revolution in the m orn in g and go fishing in the afternoon. My version entails w riting in the m orn in g and afternoon, then in the evening participating in the vari­ ous com m ittees and subcom m ittees o f our local gay and lesbian organiza­ tion, La Table de C on certatio n des Lesbiennes et des Gais du G ran d Montreal. After which, in the logic that you sweat standing still so you m ay as well really sweat on the dance floor, it’s off to the bars, propelled on my bike in a rush of air and expectation dow n the hill to the Gay Village.

____ This goes on for a while, and then, just as we all seem to have concocted a new m an n er o f being, the w eather changes, turns really heavy, and elec­ trical storm s short-circuit. C atatonia m elds people together in an unruly way, altern atin g betw een frenzy and lethargy. T ranced-out, su p po sed ly in n er th o u g h ts break o u t on the skin in prickly in tellectu al rashes. Inevitably the com partm en ts o f writing, political organizing, and socializ­ ing break down, and com portm en ts get increasingly cataleptic. At a party, I rub shoulders with presum ed com rades-in-arm s, and talk turns around issues o f a renewed gay and lesbian civic presence, Divers/Cite (ou r queer pride festival), the fact that we have a South A m erican butch as the new president o f the m ain gay and lesbian organization, projects and political challen ges. Sligh tly bored and certainly dam p, I seem to recall saying

129

som eth in g m undane about the necessity o f having m ore diversity in our ranks, o f w orking in concert with the other com m unities, other universi­ ties, etc. Abruptly, it seems, one o f my com panions is in full parti prts grand­ standing. The tenor o f his rage is language, the vehicle queer theory and political correctness, which he takes to be typically an gloph on e, p ro p a­ gated by w hat he term s hypocritical “white R hodesians” (the rallying sep­ aratist cry o f the 1970s against les anglais) who talk o f difference yet refuse to speak French. In response, I rally to the defense o f queer theory, attacking his conception o f “les etudes gates et lesbtennes ” as im possibly parochial. Even on a sum m er night politics hasn’t disappeared, it has m erely taken another route by which to em erge. All in all, not a pretty perform ance, but in the local and linguistic term s of gay, lesbian, and queer politics, not an unu su al one. In turn, our little exchange fits all too easily within a larger theoretical climate. For in the w orld o f sexual politics, it seem s that “q u eer” has becom e the latest ligh tning rod, attractin g straights, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals alike in a co m m o n clucking over the loss o f politics that the very term is taken as inaugurating. This argum ent runs in drearily familiar ways and recalls sim ­ ilar types o f argu m en ts m ou n ted against fem inism and cu ltu ral studies, m ost clearly carried through the divisions for and against p ostm odernism and poststructuralism . In fact, the term s o f the attack d o n ’t seem to have changed as queer theory is dissed for its lack of politics, its occulting of the social, its insistence on the local, and its privileging of discourse. D eja-vu , the m ode o f argum entation seem s ready to roll along the sam e type o f defen­ sive, negative positioning as the battle lines are set up between gay and les­ bian and queer, defenders and attackers ranged in preset form ations. Lest m y tone suggest ennui, I do think that the stakes underlying this current scenario are incredibly im portant, and in particular, I want to w ork against the potential and further dissipation of m uch-needed critical, intellectual energies within our academ ic institutions. Epochal grandiloquence aside, the present con jectu re dem ands th at we revitalize and refo rm u late the point and direction o f academ ic political interventions w ithin the actual social terrain of sexuality. In en terin g into the fray, I w ant to be clear abou t the p oin t o f my own engagem ent. For I am less interested in carrying on frontal attacks on either the proponen ts o f queer theory or those in opposition to it than I

^

ElspethProbyn am in articulating a slightly different project. Quite simply, queer theory in gen eral

no longer overly interests me. And even if I take cu ltural studies

as m y point of departure, it is a slippery one in that cultural studies in general is notoriously difficult to pin down. What I want to do here is to conjugate a num ber o f theoretical lines that interweave fem inism ; cu ltu ral studies; gay, lesbian, and queer studies in order to conceive o f sexuality, sexual prac­ tices, and sexual belongings as con stitutin g a certain thresh old today: to place sexuality as the p oin t at w hich variou s system s th at regu late the social (from academ ic disciplines to govern m en tal policy initiatives) are openly displayed. In tentatively thinkin g o u t lou d about a possible p ro ­ gram , I do not seek to p rop ose a n orm ative p ath for the fu tu re o f queer studies but rather, to p u t forth that hazardous, if m ore lim ited, question: What program can queer cultural fem inist studies articulate faced with the plethora o f questions, statem ents, and objections about sexuality? I am here hijacking the concept o f program , bu t only very slightly. For if w ithin a problem atic o f governm entality, p rogram s “are not sim ply form ulations o f wishes or intentions,” they do “lay claim to a certain know ledge o f the sphere or problem to be addressed” (R ose and Miller, 1992: 182). A gainst a vertical m od el o f ascending depths, it strikes m e th at we are cu rren tly im bricated in a surface m odel: knowledges, objects, ideas no longer drip or trickle dow n (if they ever did); rath er, they tran slate, m ove and creep across, are creased and folded into other shapes. As a program m atic argum ent that seeks to figure actual and virtual directions, this is to bring together social tendencies, to trace the ways in which they m ay play out in shifting the grounds o f belonging. Rather than sed im en tin g one p oin t o f d ep artu re from w hich one w ou ld th en look upon w hat is happening, I w ant to m ove laterally— to be cau gh t up in the lateral m o v em en t o f disciplines, to co n stru c t an ob ject o f stu d y both included within the larger fram ew ork o f cu ltural studies yet having a cer­ tain auton om y in the construction o f its objects and its m ode o f interven­ tion. This program is then not a blueprint but one possible way o f negoti­ ating the theoretical present. As a strategic w riting practice it attem pts to em body certain notions and directions and to tu g at others to see if they m ay be led astray. It is com m itted to the positivity o f th ought, to the ways that words have in sparking off others. As I have argued th ro u gh o u t this book, the problem atic o f outside

DistiplwaqiJDesices belonging necessitates rendering singular both the object and the m ode of inquiry. A m idst the range o f the theoretical specificities o f fem inist, queer, cu ltural studies, I endeavor to forge one sin gular exam ple o f thinking in the face o f certain contingencies. If I have tried to p u t various theoretical in sights to w ork in the service o f figurin g the in tercon n ection s o f sex, desire, and belon gin g with oth er objects on the surface, here I tu rn to thinking about a theoretical netw ork or topology: queer fem inist cultural studies, at once a totally idiosyncratic program m atic proposal and a m ode o f theorizing dependent on larger disciplinary form ation s as it attem p ts another way o f positioning the stakes involved in its own theorizing. While it m ay seem a bit backward to conclude with a program , it is also concom i­ tant with m y argu m en t that larger epistem ological questions rise to the surface in the process o f singularizing local exam ples. I am far from proposing that this program w ould be unique; on the contrary, I w ant to em phasize the necessary interdisciplinarity and even intersociality o f any co n tem p o rary p ro ject o f cu ltu ral critique. A nd I w ould be the first to ad m it th at the n o m en clatu re o f queer-fem inistcu ltural studies is unw ieldy both aesthetically and epistem ologically. For a start, queer and fem inist and cu ltu ral studies are already em broiled in each other, and in a few years’ tim e it m ay be sim ply redundant to have to nam e each elem ent. However, for the time being, it seem s that it is neces­ sary to denote the specificities, hoping that the singularity o f the project m ay em erge in its actual en gagem en t. F ollow in g W illiam s’s sense o f engagem ent, I refer to the challenge o f thinking and w orking in the inter­ tw ined term s o f “p ro je c t” and “fo rm a tio n .” As he argues, “You can n o t u n d erstan d an in tellectu al or artistic p roject w ith ou t u n d erstan din g its fo rm atio n

Project and form ation are different ways o f m aterializing—

different ways, then, o f describing— w hat is in fact a common disposition of energy and direction ” (1989: 152). In his article “The F u tu re o f C u ltu ral Studies,” Williams delineates the point o f cultural studies’ intervention as m erely another form , a different direction, o f the line of the social that it studies. Thus, “ ‘p ro jec t’ and ‘fo rm atio n ’ are addressing not the relations betw een two separate en titie s.. .but processes which take these different m aterial form s in social form ation s” (1989: 52). In part based on his experi­ ence o f the W orkers E d ucation A ssociation (WEA), a p ro ject obviously em bedded in its form ation , W illiams w rites th at “in tellectu al questions

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ElsoSEPmEyjoi arose w hen you drew up intellectual disciplines that form bodies of know l­ edge in con tact with p e o p le ’s life-situations and life-experiences” (1989: 156). In his in im itable way, W illiam s retu rn s us to the very difficulty of such a project, stating th at the project o f WEA “was based precisely on a principle which it could not realize” (1989: 156). It is in this m anner, as a wager, that I propose a top o logy o f c o n ju ­ gated lines o f analysis that w ould find its singularity in the particular artic­ u lation o f sexu ality w ithin the p ro d u ctio n and rep ro d u ctio n o f the relations involved in governin g the social. W hat interests m e here is the point, or the produced space of articulation, between self-governance and governm entality that I pose as the outside o f our studies. This is to position queer fem inist cu ltu ral studies within and th rou gh the optic o f g ov ern ­ m entality in order to figure the constitution o f the terrain in which, as an in tellectu al p roject, it w ould intervene. T h at terrain can be defined in broad term s as concerning the relation between self and self, private interpersonal relations involving som e form of control or guidance, relations within social institutions and com m unities and, finally, relations concerned with the exercise of political sovereignty... the interconnections between these different form s and meanings of government. (Gordon, 1991: 2—3)

This leads m e to place sexual belongings as a privileged instance o f “ ‘the conduct o f con d u ct’: that is to say, a form o f activity aim ing to shape, guide or affect the con d u ct o f som e p erson or p e rso n s

‘The g o v e rn ­

m en t o f o n e’s self and o f o th e rs’” (F o u cau lt, cited in G o rd o n , 1991: 2). Follow ing from these statem ents, I w ould then set the sexual governm en t o f oneself and others within the broader fram e of the interrelations of insti­ tu tion s, fo rm s o f govern in g, the role o f academ ic disciplines, m od es o f analysis, and the interface o f local political actions with those o f gov ern ­ m ent policies. As is abundantly clear, I want the concept of the outside to do several orders o f things. One o f m y im m ediate preoccupations is to w ork against a cu rren t rarefication o f academ ic endeavors w hereby certain objects o f study are m ade to belong exclusively to certain fields, and even to individ­ ual researchers. A lon g w ith this possessiveness, there seem s to be an

Disciplinary Desires in creasin g n arrow m in d ed n ess w hich can be observed in the routine den un ciation s o f oth er w ork and a certain ign oran ce o f how objects o f stud y get p rod u ced . This negates prop er in terdisciplinary endeavor, a m ode of inquiry that would seek the singularity of the objects under study, a program that w ould encourage the com m ingling of singularities. If the outside o f theoretical w ork can be seen to be p rod u ced in the historical interm ingling of objects o f study, we need to recognize the ways in w hich objects of study carry the determ inations of their historical conditions of em ergence, to see them as artifacts which can be m ade to reveal how, at various points o f time, scientific, popular, and governm ental interests are encapsulated and conceptualized. As an initial proposition, this is to figure disciplines and m odes o f theorizing so that their fundam ental exteriority m eets up with the objects that they have historically produced. Beyond individual possessiveness, this is to place ourselves as parts or cogs within m achinic system s o f critical reflection: as Grosz puts it, “The point is, that p art o f w hat we do is invested in the very system we w ant to critiq u e” (1994c: 9). This is a first step in realizing that “the problem is posed to con­ cepts, to thinking, from /as the outside that can only appear to th ou gh t as the u n th o u g h t

The outside in sinuates itself into th o u g h t, draw ing

know ledge outside o f itself, outside o f w hat is expected” (Grosz, 1995: 133). This challenging problem atic entails a close attention to the relations of proxim ity between concepts, institutions, and social practices: “For each historical form ation, one has to ask w hat belongs to each institution exist­ ing on a particular stratum , which is to say, w hat relations of pow er does it integrate, what relations does it have with other institutions and how do these repartitions change from one stratu m to another?” (D eleuze, 1986: 82). To clarify, consider D eleuze’s explication o f F ou cau lt’s analysis o f the elaboration o f scientific disciplines: The hum an sciences are not separable from the relations of pow er w hich render them possible, and w hich instigate knowdedges m ore or less capable of overcom ing an epistemological threshold or of form ing ways of know ­ ing: for example, for a “sciencia sexualis,” the relation of penitent-confessor, faithful, director; or for psychology, disciplinary relations. This is not to say that the hum an sciences come from the prison, but that they suppose the diagram of forces upon w7hich the prison itself depends. (1986: 81)

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By now this description o f the im brication o f ways o f know ing, o f objects o f know ledge, in stitutions, and relations o f pow er sh ould be evi­ dent, yet it bears repeating that the hum an sciences m ust be held account­ able for their conduct and productions. While not a causality whereby a p articu lar disciple directly prod u ces a social effect (alth ou gh it has been know n to happen), disciplines are always im bricated within and suppose a diagram o f forces: a web o f “relations o f pow er [which] are the differential relation s th at d eterm in e sin gu larities (affe c ts)” (D eleu ze, 1986: 82). It seem s to m e th at m ovin g w ithin such webs, one hears not only the his­ tory o f a discipline, w hat is considered to be its c o n stitu en t in terior, its ontology, but also the way in which it m obilizes its interior anteriority as its public raison d ’etre . This point o f tension then opens up research to o u t­ side questioning. For instance, the discipline o f sociology which has his­ torically produced certain form s o f sociality is now held accountable for the ways it increasingly inadequately intervenes in the social. As Jacques D on zelot has argued, societal “crisis” is in fact im bricated in the very ori­ gins o f sociology as discipline and succor. As one line in the gradual inte­ gration o f different concerns and concepts that becam e som eth in g called sociology, D on zelot notes that at the end of the 1880s, “organized around the idea o f solidarity, [it] claim s to provide both a theory o f society and a tech n ique for solvin g social p rob lem s w hich h arm on ize p erfectly w ith each o th e r” (1993: 109). This harm onizing o f theory and technique, discipline and concern, th en form s p art o f the outside o f sociology, an outside th at is evidently fu lly social. Like G iann i V attim o ’s n o tion o f a “w eak h o rizo n ,” “we discretely displace ourselves” (Vattim o, 1987: 19) on the outside, finding a surface upon which is arranged any num ber o f objects produced as public dom ain s o f concern. The public n atu re o f the outside raises the exigency o f w ork ing with a certain “ju stes se ” (exactn ess, ap p rop riaten ess), o f con stan tly evaluatin g the degrees o f proxim ity betw een concepts, and objects, in order to m ore adequately hone theoretical interventions. It is w ork conducted along with the dem ands for accountability (and ju stesse) from both within the discipline and from without: dem ands that m ay take any num ber o f form s— those o f stu den ts and colleagues, the m edia, the dem ands o f local political organizations, governm en t directives, funding req u irem en ts, and so forth . The ou tside is th en th at m eetin g place o f

DiscipIinarL) Desires su p p o sed ly in tern al disciplinary q u estion s and the so-called extern al articulations o f social exigencies. O f course, the p roduction o f the discipline as outside is not a stable undertaking but rather proceeds at different tim es and under the pressure o f different contexts. Furtherm ore, it is far from inevitable that disciplines turn inside out, the outside being precisely a production, the result o f th e­ oretical and political work. As an instance o f the type o f theoretical activity that interests m e, the w ork o f M eaghan M orris is exem plary for the way that she consistently draws attention to, and contributes to, the p ro d u c­ tion o f a certain outside. Beyond her own biography, which has placed her as an in depen den t scholar, a fo rm er new spaper film critic, etc., M orris draws out the necessary interconnections am ong econom ic relations, the specific developm en t o f A ustralian nation-ness, the roles o f w om en and sexual politics, cultural production and representation, the deploym ent of space and place, etc. It is a m ode that refuses disciplinary insiderness while im bricatin g to u g h ep istem ological question s w ith everyday concerns. Consider, for instance, the follow ing exchange in which M orris responds to charges from within cultural studies that cu ltural studies as a discipline m u st be directed to the supposedly im m ediate and real questions o f cu l­ tural policy in Australia. A lthough m uch of her w ork is precisely aim ed at intervening in policy debates, she nonetheless refuses a vision o f cu ltural studies as ‘“ analysis o f and for policy.’” To this type o f exhortation whereby som e individual concerns are said to be public while fem inist concerns are m erely internal, private intellectual affairs, M orris succinctly replies, “For fem inists there is always a critical ‘outsid e’ to any professional activity— nam ely, the com plex reality o f fem in ism ” (1992: 546). In tu rn , the “o u t­ side” is in p art constituted th rough the “unpredictable and even unw el­ com e ‘third term ’ o f outsider fem inist criticism

C onsequently, fem inist

th eo rizin g .. .rarely falls for the kind o f binary logic now driving the policy polem ic into m anichean battle with an im aginary ‘critical’ O ther.” In her deft way, M orris turns the tables on insider articulations th at place fem i­ nist concerns as som ehow less social, as m ore outside real concerns, than policy stu d ie s.1 R ather, it is this type o f k n ow in g rh etoric th at is m ore properly internal to disciplines. Against the inflation o f the real and the social as abstract ideals, it is clear that we desperately need som e new or renewed chronotopes, optics

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Elspeth Probyn for reading “as x -r a y s.. .th e forces at w ork in the c u ltu re system from which they sp rin g” (Bakhtin, cited in Gilroy, 1993: 225 fn). Take the exam ­ ple of Paul G ilroy’s recent book, which is explicitly posed against w hat he calls “rhetorical strategies o f ‘cu ltu ral in sid erism ’” which seek to fix the outside o f identities through and in “an absolute sense of ethnic difference” (1993: 4). Gilroy’s chronotope is that of the “black A tlantic” and o f the ships that traversed and produced her as such: “the im age o f the ship— a living, m icro-cu ltu ral, m icro-political system in m o tio n ” (1993: 4). Instead o f a “relationship o f identity to roots and rootedness,” Gilroy argues that “the history of the black A tlan tic.. .continually criss-crossed by the m ovem ents o f black people not only as com m odities but engaged in various struggles tow ards em ancipation, au to n om y and citizenship— provides a m eans to exam in e the p roblem s o f nation ality, location, identity and historical m em o ry ” (1993: 16). Gilroy effects a profound rethinking of the spatial and tem poral ordering of black belonging and of the epistem ological belong­ ings o f black n ation alism and A frican -A m erican studies. He splays the inner w orkings o f historical oppression and renders th em visible as exte­ rior form s o f sociality created in the m o v e m e n t back and forth on the Atlantic, im m ediately and sym bolically prod u cin g external and m aterial form s o f black subjectification. While acknow ledging the im p ortan ce o f how historical technologies of oppression seek to instill internalized m odes o f being, Gilroy departs from a d om in an t p sychological depth m od el o f racialized subjectivity, just as he parts from that o f radical constructionists. The extrao rd in ary “ ju stesse ” o f G ilro y ’s w ork is to be seen in the way in which it brings together the specificity of the historical fact and experience of oppression while refusing to allow that experience to be figured as the stable interior possession o f either individuals or fields o f study. With the im age of the ship on and within the w orkings o f the black Atlantic, Gilroy critically extends the concept o f diaspora, ridding it o f its conn otation o f an original point of departure. G ilroy’s argum ent theorizes the singularity o f black Atlantic identity and fo rm s o f black su bjectification as fo rm ed w ithin the historical and m aterial folds o f the A tlantic— the m ovin g and unstable terrain o f the com m erce in bodies, subjectivities, nations, and em pires. As I take from its sin gularity, I am inspired not to generalize to oth er h istorical form s o f op p ression but rath er to think in its term s o f m o v em en t across. To

Disciplinary Desires reconsider how the lateral m ovem ents of the black Atlantic lap upon the construction o f sexuality; to rem em ber that in the ports o f Liverpool and elsewhere the sexuality of black m en and white working-class w om en were constructed as coterm inous, as the extrem e poles within which all other sexualities were to be conceived (Bland and M ort, 1984). As with a fresh fig, G ilroy peels back and lays bare the folds o f “m ovem en t and m ed iatio n ” (1993: 19) exteriorized on the surface o f history; it is an analytic optic that p ro fo u n d ly skews argu m en ts about identity th at proceed th ro u gh the d ich oto m ization o f the local and the global, the discursive and the m aterial. If Gilroy gives us the black Atlantic as the outside, the surface upon which historical and contem porary productions o f black subjectification interconnect with technologies o f oppression, within gay and lesbian cu l­ tures the outside has been seen as both the site o f oppression and as a liberatory space. Indeed, a com m on trope, its polyvalency is both a help and a hindrance. As D iana Fuss argues, “Interrogating the position o f ‘outsiderness’ is where m uch recent lesbian and gay theory begins, im plicitly if not always directly raising the questions of the com plicated processes by which sexual borders are constructed, sexual identities assigned, and sexual poli­ tics fo rm u lated ” (1991: 2). While im portant, to m y m ind Fuss’s argum ent has a norm ative weight that is confusing: “To be out is to finally be outside o f exteriority and all the exclusions and deprivations such ou tsiderness im p oses” (1991: 4). N otw ithstanding the evident necessity o f recognizing the risks im posed by being out or being closeted, Fuss’s argum ent is predi­ cated on a Lacanian-inspired form u latio n o f the lack. The lack becom es that which guarantees the barriers separating the inside and outside: “Any outside is form ulated as a consequence of a lack internal to the system it su p ­ p lem en ts” (1991: 3). This spatial m odeling then replays the outside as the m irror o f the internal w orking o f the system and, I think, despite Fu ss’s efforts, does not quite disable the type o f rhetoric she wants to avoid: “Does inhabiting the inside always im ply coo p tatio n ?... And does inhabiting the outside always and everywhere guarantee radicality?” (1991: 5). These types o f questions will continue to flow from a m odel whereby the inside becom es the inter­ nal, the locus which defines the outside. There is a schism in her argum ent which acts as the condition o f possibility for the distinction between inte-

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rior states and exterior actions, even as she tries to redefine such opposi­ tions. C ogn izan t o f F u ss’s in tervention , I non eth eless seek to p rop ose an oth er fram ew ork and to argue that this spatial arran gem en t o f inside/ out be flattened, that we regard the outside as the w elding o f the interior and exterior.

......... Being out, becom ing out, being in: from the perspective o f an outsider, the rapidity o f the ascendency o f queer studies m u st seem quite astonishing. A ccounts o f its em ergence vary: Eric Savoy dates it, as he says som ew h at arbitrarily, from the 1991 Lesbian and Gay Studies C onference at R utgers U niversity, while in her in tro d u ctio n to The Lesbian P ostm odern , R obyn W iegm an portrays queer theory as “a term coined, it seem s by Teresa de Lauretis” (1994: 17). And as Savoy notes, queer quickly took on a “p erform a­ tive role as a defiant adjective” (1994: 129). Indeed, one could say that p er­ ceptions o f overnight success and p op u larity form p art o f the outside o f queer studies. It m atters little if they are indeed exact— a bewildered col­ league o f m ine recently com m ented that a sociology conference had fea­ tured queer issues in every second session, an assertion which turned out to be total fantasy. H ow ever, it is germ an e to rem em ber th at at the m arath o n C u ltu ral Stud ies N ow and in the F u tu re C on ference held in 1990, Jan Zita G rover could quite correctly ask about the total absence o f papers dealing w ith issues o f gay and lesbian sexuality. While there were two im portant papers (one by Grover herself, the other by D ouglas C rim p) on AIDS, C rim p argued in the discussion follow ing his paper, “The inclu­ sion o f discussions o f AIDS within a cultural studies conference m u st not be taken as an inclusion o f queer sexuality” (1992: 132). A few years later, if the question of what constitutes cultural studies rem ains open, the visibil­ ity o f queers in cultural studies is for the m om en t assured. A long with con­ ferences like Console-ing Passions, where, follow ing the cue o f Alexander D oty (1993), there are queer Lucys, Lavernes, and Shirleys, there are now queer sessions at relatively staid conferences. By 1993 not only had a sm all avalanche o f queer books been published but they had also been reviewed. And, as Sherri Paris p ut it, reviewing Judith R o o f’s A Lure fo r Knowledge (1991) and F uss’s edited Lnside/out (1991), “What is bold, and m ight have been radi­ cal, about these books is the claim they have in com m on: that they are les-

DlscioOnaruDesires bian and gay perspectives on theory rather than theoretical w orks about lesbians and gay m e n ” (Paris, 1993: 984).

While Paris’s thoughtful com m ents recall the history of fem inist questions ab out the difference betw een books on w om en as op p osed to fem inist books, I w ould like to shift the focus o f her rem arks. For the m ode o f w rit­ ing th at I p ro p o se refuses the possibility o f w riting “ o n ” and argues for writing within objects, placing oneself on the sam e surface. As I argued ear­ lier, this entails a com m itm en t to becom ing-other in writing: a dissolution between entities that scram bles the distinction between w riting “o n ” and writing “about”— a challenge to becom e-other than the auth or in front of the object. A nother problem posed by the distinction that Paris raises is that it returns us to a situation where writers are policed for p roof o f their right to belong, or what Savoy calls “the obsession with difference” (1994: 143), an obsession th at quickly becom es a fixation on the term s o f entry and one that is conducted at the expense of figuring the point o f intervention. If it isn ’t clear en o u gh that we hardly need yet m ore policing, I tu rn to two recent reviews o f queer th eory th at seek to set o u t w hat sh ou ld be the proper object o f study o f queer cultural studies. If I am loath to discuss the respective articles by Rosem ary H ennessy and D onald M orton because of their relentless negativity, their ch aracterization o f certain key term s th reaten s to fu rth er fuel an already d ich oto m o u s and divisive situation w ithin cultural theory. H en n essy’s review essay plays M onique W ittig’s T he Straight M in d against the special issue o f differen ces on “Q ueer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities,” edited by de Lauretis. However, if Wittig is apparently m ore favored than de Lauretis, she in fact gets short shrift. H ennessey’s review w ould have been an ideal o p p o rtu n ity to take up previous questions in order to display them together on a surface, in their full cross-fertilization. For instance, one w ould thus consider how Wittig’s “straight m ind” is m ost fully com prehended in reference to G u illau m in ’s argum ent against differ­ ence, which is in tu rn m obilized not to the question o f lesbian sex but to the construction o f racism (1995). On the sam e surface, we w ould find de Lauretis’s argum ents about the very m ateriality o f experience w ithin the

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Elspeth Probyn w orking o f the ideology o f gender, an argum ent that tu rn s A lthusser on his head while keeping a grou n din g in the quotidian experience o f g e n ­ der— an argum ent that predates her work on lesbian representation but is essential to understanding it. However, H ennessv foregoes a surface genealogy o f queer thinking and poses an interconnected body of th ough t less as a project and m ore as a pastim e: “The term s in which social relations and sexuality in particular, are im agined by queer th e o rists.. .[is through] an em phasis on queer iden­ tities, on the discursive or sym bolic dim ensions o f the social, and on sexu ­ ality as erotic pleasure or plav” (1993: 965). In contrast, m aterialist feminists are said to “m aintain that the fragm en tation o f the su bject in the age o f in form ation and the function o f sexuality in the form ation o f com plex, unstable, and m ultiple subjectivities cannot be theorized very effectively w ithout com ing to term s with the system atic operations o f capitalism and patriarchy” (1993: 965). If this characterization o f the two does not m ake it clear enough that for H ennessy m aterialist fem inists are concerned w ith real and pressin g issues while queer theorists are just playing around, the rest o f the article is taken up with the argu m en t th at queer theory evacuates the social and collapses it into the cultural: “At stake here is queer th eory’s im plicit con­ ception o f the so c ia l.. .the social is consistently conceptualized as only a m atter o f representation, o f discursive and sym bolic relations” (1993: 968). In a nutshell, and rem iniscent o f com m o n critiques o f cu ltural studies in general, H ennessy sum s up queer theory as “the ‘bad su bject’ who refuses or negates the d o m in an t c u ltu re but in so doin g does n o t necessarily address the larger social arran gem en ts in w hich cu ltu re p a r tic ip a te s... queer theory presum es that cultural change is com m en su rate with social ch an ge” (1993: 971). Now it is certainly not m y aim to defend all o f queer theory against such criticism s, nor even de L au retis’s issue o f d iffer en ces ; rath er, it is the term s of H ennessy’s argum ent that I take issue with, and this on a num ber o f levels. For a start, her u n p rod uctive opposin g o f the social versus the cultural, the local versus the global, the econom ic versus the symbolic, the real versus the discursive does not constitute a viable alternative to the dis­ ciplinary m atters she takes to task. If indeed, as she argues, we need to focus on the system atic operations that produce norm ative sexuality, rendering

Disciplinary Desires abject a series o f operators will not get us any closer to her goal. In turn, the separation o f different spheres and their consequent hierarchization in term s o f a su p po sed political significance does not even com e close to a com m onsense understanding o f how the world works. I am not su ggest­ ing that all is cultural or symbolic; what I am arguing is that in order to fig­ ure the work o f the cultural in the social we need to discretely trace their sin gu lar lines o f force at any given m om en t. This is to take up the ch al­ lenge of rethinking the very term s of the social and cultural: to place sex­ uality within their interalignm ents, the diagram o f forces that produce at given tim es the spaces in which change and the nature o f the social can be considered and reconceived. If the term s that Hennessy privileges are unequal to the task of grasp­ ing the current interarticulation o f social and cultural forces that produce sexuality as a very public and outside dom ain, M o rton ’s article on the p o l­ itics o f queer theory uses a sim ilar vocabulary as he mobilizes it against the category o f experience. From within his own neom arxist perspective, he characterizes any project that seeks to work with experience as “ludic,” thus w riting off the sustain ed th eo retical and con ceptu al reth in k in g o f the reach o f experience within cu ltu ral studies, fem inism , gay, lesbian, and queer theories. This quite considerable task is done w ith bravado: “T h ro u gh o u t this essay I have refused to follow the ludic (p o st)m od ern m ode o f acquiring authority for m y critique by locating it in the contin­ gencies o f (personal) ‘experience.’ . .. I have not, in other words, deployed m y identity as a gay person as a theoretical axis” (1993: 142). While M orton is of course free to do with his sexuality w hat he may, this willful rendering of “experience” and “identity” as equivalent occludes the epistem ological and political history of how these term s have been var­ iously p u t to work. This erasure of the anteriority o f theoretical concepts continues elsewhere in his article. For instance, he is quite vicious about the attem pt to p u t sensuality to work in figuring the im m ediacy of the m ater­ ial and nam es it as a quality o f queer theory to be deplored. Flowever, the sensual has been p u t in the service of m ore closely describing the m ateri­ ality o f certain stru ctu res o f feeling as a strategy within cu ltu ral studies, initiated by such unqueer theorists as Williams (notably, in his use o f the “shock o f recognition” but also in his protracted discussions about the p os­ itivity of em otions [1979]) and Richard H oggart (in his tactile tracing out of

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the autobiographical and the social [1963]). For M orton this is m ere class privilege: “The distinguishing feature o f ‘q u eer’ Q ueer T heory is its ludic groun ding in the se n so ry .. .the latest version o f bourgeois ideology in the dom ain o f sexuality” (1993: 139). Perhaps the m ost telling specter that M orton deploys against queer theory is the norm atively w eighted notion o f “coop tion ” : Queer Theory is rapidly following the path taken by m ost other marginal groups (feminists, African-Americanists, and so on) and is joining with the dom inant form of (post)m odern theory and its m ode of cultural investiga­ tion, which privilege politically unreproductive understandings of such cat­ egories as ‘desire,’ ‘discourse,’ and the ‘m aterial.’ (1993: 123)

Clearly, the key term s here com e to us via M o rto n ’s articulation o f p o stm o d ern ism . And while M o rton is n ot alone in his division o f p o st­ m od ern ism into on the one hand resistant and on the other ludic, to m y kn ow led ge he is the first to divide c u ltu ral stu dies in to two op p osin g dom ains: “experiential” versus “classic”/“critical” : “Unlike experiential cu l­ tu ral studies, w hose m ode is ‘descriptive’ and w hose effect is to give the (native) bourgeois student o f culture the pleasu re o f encounter with the exotic ‘oth e r,’ the m od e o f critical cu ltu ral studies is ‘e x p la n ato ry ’ . . .to produce socially transform ative cultural understan dings” (1993: 125). T he thread th at ru n s th ro u gh M o rto n ’s arg u m en t is th at m o st o f c u ltu ral studies and all o f queer studies are taken up w ith “ the lo c al” as opposed to “the social.” The local is then taken as blocking “a dialectical historical know ledge o f the social to t a lity .. .[queer th eo ry produces] m erely a reform ist politics” (1993: 122). B ut not only is queer cu ltural th e­ ory reform ist, it actually “dissolves sociality” (1993: 137). In contrast to the bourgeois ideology that passes in the nam e o f queer ludic, experiential cu l­ tural studies, “what is required, instead, as resistance (post)m odernism and critical cu ltural studies insists is subject-citizens ‘m obilized’ as partisans in the task o f radical, system -wide (n ot m erely local) social tran sform ation ” (1993: 138). As is the case w ith p olem ics, M o rto n never actu ally goes beyond m obilizing his op p osition s in order to give us a su stain ed argu m en t, an exposition, or even an exam ple o f his version o f cu ltu ral analysis. And as

Disciplmary Desires F o u cau lt notes in regard to the genre o f the p olem ic (on e w hich he abhorred for its derouting o f the search for tru th and its hostility to o th ­ ers), “Polemics defines alliances, recruits p artisan s.. .it establishes the other as an enem y, an u p h old er o f o p p osed interests against w hich one m u st fight until the m om en t this enem y is defeated and either surrenders or dis­ a p p e ars” (1984b: 382—383). If it is quite clear th at in M o rto n ’s arg u m en t queer, ludic, experiential cultural studies are posed as the enem y, herald­ ing the return o f the bourgeois subject and thus positing M orton him self as the defender o f radical, n o n refo rm ist th o u gh t, the hero o f tru ly oppressed peoples and o f the social; it is less than obvious with w hom he wishes to form alliances, or where he seeks partisans to his cause.2 Strangely enough, in that M orton wishes to place him self as the ou t­ sider, his argum ent in actual fact is very insiderist. Moreover, for an avowed m aterialist, he m obilizes a conceptual vocabulary ( “ the stru ctu re o f the social to tality ,” “class in terests,” “su b ject-citizen s”) as if these concepts im m anently pointed to an always-already constituted ground. At the sam e tim e th at th at grou n d is rendered as self-evident, accu sation s fly. As Rosalind Brunt characterizes this type of argum entation, “Any attem pt to use a politics of identity to render a m ore rigorous and dynam ic concept of class” is autom atically m et with cries of “ ‘You’re abandoning class; y ou ’ve lost faith in the w ork ing p e o p le ’” (1989: 150). The p roblem w ith such recrim inations, and H ennessy’s and M o rton ’s m ore sophisticated versions, is that they tend to be presented as evident, as really real. B ut these state­ m ents that invoke the social are m ost often bereft o f bodies; critiques are personalized against individual theorists, but the supposed m otivation for such critiques is carried out in the nam e of very nebulous groups. One of the central problem s with such a discourse is that it ignores the th ru st of the question that Brunt takes from G ram sci— o f “ how to m ake a politics that was subjectively relevant” (Brunt, 1989: 153). In turn she argues that we need to “reflect on why and how people becom e political in the first place or indeed, drop out o f politics or shift to different position s” (1989: 152). These very p ragm atic q uestion s are often p u t aside by th ose who accuse others o f forgetting the political, to the extent that one w onders if su ch critics actu ally spend m u ch tim e in the fran kly quite h u m d ru m , often incredibly tim e- and energy-consum ing process o f “d oin g” politics (the question of what constitutes “doing politics” is obviously a large one).

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Elspeth Probyn But instead of taking for granted why people m igh t w ant to spend, say, a beautiful su m m er evening inside around a kitchen table organizing som e political m anifestation or another, it is tim e we got real about “politics as a process o f social form ation and not som e given fact o f n atu re ” (Brunt, 1989: 152). It’s tim e we got going about “recognising the degree to which political activity and effort involves a continuous process of m aking and re­ m aking ourselves— and our selves in relation to oth ers” (Brunt, 1989: 151). i S f e If we need to think in term s o f m aking politics subjectively relevant, it is equally crucial that we also think about m akin g the sexual socially rele­ vant. This entails asking after and lo catin g “ the gap now betw een the actual and poten tial political su b je c t” (B ru n t, 1989: 159). This is im p o r­ tantly different from the gist o f the critiques leveled at queer studies and cultural studies, i.e., that these form s o f theorizing are exclusively invested in form u latin g a disem bodied subject created in resistance to, or in plea­ sure with, form s of cultural consum ption. In the stead o f such claims, ren­ dering politics, the social, and the sexual subject relevant requires that we encourage interconnections, not fu rth er com partm en talization. Instead o f an “add-on” m odel whereby sexuality, gender, or race are appended to an em pty category called “ the political su b ject,” we need to analyze and encourage the p rod u ctio n s o f social subjects th ro u gh sexuality, politics, etc. This includes a m ore generous consideration o f how individuals m ay be “o u ted ” despite them selves— th ru st into an outside role because o f the ways in which sexuality is represented, ordered, or condoned on the social surface. In this vein, there are a lot o f gays and lesbians who are less than pleased with the cu rren t situation w hereby the com bin atio n o f m edia, legal, m edical, governm ental, private industry, and intellectual attentions are producing them as political in the nam e of their sexual practices. To say the least, a vocabulary o f cooption and individual culpability does nothing to actualize sexuality as a m ode o f becom ing a political subject, nor does it clarify the political stakes at hand. To give M orton his due, it has to be said that there are som e analyses that focus obsessively on certain form s o f m ass culture, only to m ake large claims about the production of subjectivity— sexual and otherwise— analy­ ses such as D o ty ’s M akin g Things P erfectly Q ueer (1993) th at seem to ru n on

Disciplinary Desires whim rather than through any solid thought about the relation of cultural production to possible form s o f social reproduction. D oty’s book has cer­ tainly had an im pact and is entertaining; however, it is also a blatant exam ­ ple o f “cultural insiderism ,” both theoretical and geopolitical, as D oty takes as evident the assum ption that queer readings of American television shows are intrinsically interesting to the world at large. M oreover, as Doty says of his analyses, “these queer readings seem to be expressions of queer perspec­ tives from the inside, rather than descriptions o f how ‘th ey’ (gays and/or lesbians, usually) respond to, use, or are depicted in m ass cu ltu re” (1993: 3). Texts are subjected to a “deep” reading rather than being opened up to their outside. It is, to return to the term s of H all’s encoding/decoding argum ent which is acknow ledged as inform ing D oty’s analysis, a series o f decodings on D oty’s part, but one whereby the com plex processes of encoding and the social determ inations and limits of decoding are ignored. In fact, these indi­ vidualized readings are only possible if the m om ent of decoding is truncated and extracted from the historicity of the very circuit of encoding and decod­ ing. In turn, this type of reading can be conducted only if one discards H all’s protracted discussion of the nature of the ideological work of language and codes and his painstaking route through Marx, Gram sci, and A lthusser to arrive at the encoding/decoding m odel. Thus, any contem plation oi decod­ in gs— dom in an t or queer— m u st first and forem ost contend with “the underwiring and underpinning of that structured ideological jie ld in which the positions play, and over which, so to speak, they ‘contend’” (Hall, 1977: 346). In this vein, studies like Caren K aplan’s analysis of I Love Lucy aim precisely at an outside reading of television sitcom s, placing them on a surface that also proffered, am ong other things, the “G ood Neighbor” policy along with depictions o f Latin sexuality, thus providing a grounded study of the inter­ production of dom estic and geopolitical space (Kaplan, 1994). This type of w ork th at figures sexuality as an outside concern can be seen in Lauren Berlant’s study o f “infantile citizenship” (1995), which draws out the inter­ connections am on g The Simpsons, queer sexuality, and present and past US governm ent policy and precisely elucidates the conditions of encoding of A m erican television and raises the stakes on the limits of social decoding, effects, and affect. Thus, instead of writing off culture, dism issing discourse, and reifying the real, what we need are m ore analyses like these of the cu r­ rent articulations of the social, the cultural, the real as they allow or disable

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Eispeth Probijn m odalities o f subjects and subjectivities. And this, I w ould argue, needs to be done under the sign o f F o u cau lt’s in jun ction to w ake up to the heavy m ateriality o f discourse.3 In recon cep tu alizin g the in tercon n ection s o f sexuality, cu ltu re, sociality, discourse, and m ateriality constituting outside subjects, I return to the question o f governm entality as a problem atic that brings together a conceptualization o f the w orkings o f discourse, disciplines, power, and the form ations o f subjects and processes o f subjectification. Given som e o f the exam p les th at I have cited, this seem s especially pressin g at the p resent time. As Nikolas Rose and Peter M iller p ut it in a recent article, “The p olit­ ical vocabulary stru ctu red by oppositions between state and civil society, public and private, g o v ern m en t and the m a r k e t.. .does n o t adequately characterise the diverse ways in which rule is exercised” (1992: 174). And to repeat myself, the term s trotted out to oppose queer theory attest both to a p au city o f vocabulary and to a lim ited vision o f the actu al state o f the social. To take but one instance, the use o f cooption reveals a vision o f the social predicated on the idea that there is a pure, untainted, and discrete position within life or theory. B ut surely it is clear that “political pow er is exercised today th rough a profusion o f shifting alliances between diverse authorities in projects to govern a m ultitud e o f facets o f econom ic activ­ ity, social life and individual co n d u ct” (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174). M oreover, it is increasingly evident that “power is not so m uch a m at­ ter o f im posing constraints upon citizens as o f ‘m aking u p ’ citizens capable of bearing a certain kind of regulated freed om ” (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174). And yes, pow er is local, but it is local and localized in, say, the way architec­ tural practices are local: “A rchitecture em bodies certain relations between time, space, functions and persons— the separation o f eating and sleeping, for exam ple, or the hierarchical and lateral relations o f the enterprise— not only m aterializing program m atic aspirations but stru ctu rin g the lives o f those caught up in particular architectural regim es” (Rose and Miller, 1992: 184). This vision o f pow er then certainly cannot be said to render the local som ehow pristine and abstracted from global, transnational, or a-national structures; if anything, it goes som e way in showing that the localization of pow er is where it is at its m ost dirty and messy. Be it in the collapse o f the C anadian fishing industry and the liquidation o f m aritim e fishing villages, in the Ontarian towns em ptied by free trade, or in the way that A m erican

AIDS m edical and academ ic discourses are devastatin g British activists’ attem pts to prom ote safer sex within a context of HIV-positive rather than AIDS bodies (Watney, 1993), the local is w here the global is at its m ost im m ediate. This is not to say that the analysis o f pow er in scriptions and m ovem en ts can be conducted exclusively at a local level; it is to say that postm odern m odalities of governm entality produce local exteriorized sites o f the a-national, the local transnation or the postnation (Appadurai, 1993). The local and the global sim ply can no longer be separated from one another; as Hall argues, “The strengthening o f ‘the local’ is probably less the revival o f the stable identities o f ‘locally settled com m u n ities’ o f the past, and m ore that tricky version o f ‘the local’ which operates within, and has been th orou gh ly reshaped by ‘the glo b al’ and operates largely w ithin its logic” (1993: 354). Thinking about these interrelations today then requires analytics capable o f grasping the different tensions between space and time th at p rod u ce qualitatively different m od es o f subjectification as well as quantitatively new arrangem en ts o f populations. This is to recognize the local not as som eh ow hidden away in interior nooks and crannies bu t as continually deployed as an outside term — a them e, for instance, that the right successfully em ploys when it mobilizes an ensem ble o f technologies of censure on the basis o f what an im aginary local com m unity w ould su p ­ posedly support. Ar jun Appadurai aptly characterizes Am erica as a series of local outsides, “a postnational space m arked by its w hiteness but m arked too by its uneasy engagem ent with diasporic peoples, m obile technologies, and queer nationalities” (1993: 412). The coexistence o f several registers is evident here. To respond to these diverse levels, Rose and Miller propose the concept o f “ tran slation” in order to designate the processes that translate between and am ong those entities th at we so crudely call “lo cal,” “glo b al,” “social,” or “ c u ltu ra l.” T ran slation refers to both the ways in w hich “ relations are established between the nature, character and causes of problem s facing various indi­ viduals and g r o u p s.. .so that the problem s o f the one and those o f another seem to be intrinsically linked in their basis and in their solu tion ” and the m ore literal sense o f m oving across, “o f m oving from one person, place or condition to an oth er” (1992: 184). It is in this way that “particular and local issues thus becom e tied to m uch larger ones.” Lest there be any m isappre­ hension here, this is n ot a m aster logic but a rh izom atic fash ion in g o f

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Elspeth Probyn know ledges th at are inscribed at a local level, a local th at is never self­ sufficient either th eoretically or in practice but th at is p ro d u ced o u t o f ‘“know ledge”— that “vast assem blage of persons, theories, projects, exper­ im ents and tech n iq u es.. .from philosophy to m edicine” (R ose and Miller, 1992: 177). Here I retu rn to the su bject o f the outside o f the w ork o f c u ltu ral theory and to the ways in which we m ust w ork in order to render objects o f study as outside, placed at the threshold, the interface, the m om en t o f assem blage and translation between the social, the sexual, the econom ic, the cultural, etc. While disciplines and agencies produce entities to be gov­ erned and m an aged , the lines o f p ro d u c tio n and m an ag e m en t o f these spheres always intertw ine and overlap. As D o n zelo t p u ts it, this is to rem em ber that any division between, for exam ple, the social and the eco­ nom ic has been historically “purely expositional, for ‘econom ic’ problem s w ere to be solved by ‘so cial’ m e a n s .. .and ‘so c ial’ p roblem s w ere to be solved ‘econom ically’” (cited in Rose and Miller, 1992: 205). In considering the articu latio n s betw een the different objects o f study that are produced in the assem blages and the flanges o f governm entality, we are b ro u gh t to exam ine the ways in w hich sexual su bjects are pro d u ced in the tran slatio n of, in the m o v e m e n t across, p roblem s and problem atics from one ob ject to another. As Patton argues, we need to “view notions o f the social, political, and cu ltu ral as descriptions o f governm entality, form s of constituting or evading subject positions in relation to the apparatus o f the m odern state” (1993: 171). T h rough sexual, social, and cultural practices, we are constantly produced as outside subjects; in Toni N egri’s w ords, “The subject is the lim it o f a con tin u ou s m ovem en t between the inside and the outside” (cited in Deleuze, 1990: 238). One way o f im aginin g this m ovem en t can be seen in D eleu ze’s weird little design entitled the “diagram de F o u cau lt,” a sort o f rough sketch o f the way in which the outside is constituted. It is labeled “ 1. the line o f the ou tside,” under which is “2. strategic zones,” then “3. strata,” and “4. the fold (the zone o f subjectification)” (1986: 128). In graphic term s, it depicts the cen­ trality o f the fold which rearticulates strategies and historical strata upon the surface, upon the outside. For Deleuze, that fold is itself the m ovem ent of the line o f social force entailed in and constitutive o f new m odes o f sub­ jectification— o f individuals and collectivities.4

Disciplinary Desires

On the Outside Beyond internecine battles, I want to locate queer fem inist cu ltural stu d ­ ies as squarely part o f the outside and as directed to the outside. In prosaic term s, this is to conceive of theorizing as walking on the M obius surface of p o stm o d ern go v ern m en tality ’s assem blages as they display their goods; p ro d u ce objects; and enable or disable individuals from fo rm in g ties, becom ing events. Being on the outside, we are continually in contact with outsiders, agents, and agencies dem anding accountability, strangers who becom e friends, friends who becom e strangers. Concom itant with the need to translate am ong these figures is a cer­ tain m odesty that entails giving up “the illusion that you can cover, in the textuality o f the critical debate, the w hole o f the w orld, not recognizing the worldliness o f the object you are trying to analyze and place theoreti­ cally” (Hall, 1992: 288). And let’s be clear about it, the “w orldliness” o f the object is not a claim for total theory— that sense of the word is heard m ore clearly in statem ents about the “social totality ” as the requisite object of study. Rather, “w o rld lin ess” is p ro d u ced and rep rod u ced th ro u gh su s­ tained attem pts to m ake m odes of theorizing touch and be touched, touch off m ovem ent along the particular lines o f governm entality in which we find ourselves. It is produced out of the lateral pressure of surfaces, to m ake the object, that m akes the object, com e out differently: as Hall keenly puts it, “I think it is different when you genuinely feel the pressure on our lan ­ guage, to show its w orkings, to open itself to accessibility” (1992: 289). If in H all’s injunction to feel the pressure o f the social upon our lan­ guage we have already m oved from an individualized situation, it is perhaps unfortunate that the term translation tends to return us to the notion of an individual, the intellectual as translator. This sense is obviously incom pati­ ble with the epistem ological and political challenge o f the outside. While the vexing questions of the relationship of theory to practice, individuals to politics, m ust be continually raised and asked in local ways, one could do worse than rem em ber Foucault and D eleuze’s exchange on the question of “intellectuals and pow er” (Foucault and Deleuze, 1980). D eleuze captures the relation of thought to political activities in the im age of a relay: “Practice is an ensem ble of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory, a relay from one practice to an o th e r” (F o u cau lt and D eleuze, 1980: 3). C om m itted to the milieu, one’s analyses open onto the necessity for others

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within the m ilieu to operate a relay which then leads to another point. And it should be clear that the theorist does not set forward propositions which are in turn acted upon; instead, it is the pressure o f the relays them selves— the connections enacted— that form ulates for a tim e the contours o f the outside: “the system of relays within an ensem ble, in a m ultiplicity o f bits and pieces at once theoretical and p ractical” (Foucault and Deleuze, 1980: 4). As a bit within the mobile of governmentality, the theorist or writer “has ceased to be a subject, a representing or representative con scien ce.. .there is only action, the action o f theory, the action o f practice within the rela­ tions o f relays and netw orks” (Foucault and Deleuze, 1980: 4). In sm all ways, and even beyond the m o re obvious p ressu re o f the pedagogic surface, like m any I participate in this relay race in very quotid­ ian ways. For in stance, given the p articu lar ou tsid e th at I inhabit, I am often called upon by various form s o f m edia to “explain” som e facet o f the surface that is Quebecois life at the m om ent. They are m ostly subjects that som e m igh t find trivial, ran gin g from body piercing, the success o f talk shows, the phenom enon o f current teleromans to latchkey kids, a sociologi­ cal explanation o f blue jeans, h om ophobia and violence, the “sandw ich” generation , the question o f gay and lesbian cu ltures, and the bu rn in g o f bras in France. And the forum s are varied: traditional w om en ’s m agazines, newspapers, student associations, fashion m ags, very com m ercial tv, staterun television, local cable channels, student radio, etc. When I d on ’t know anything about the subject I pass it on to som eone else, who m ay have pre­ viously passed a subject on to me. When I respond, I do so with a program in m ind and in practice. I tread a rh izom atic if n o t tw isted line: as m y neighbor p u t it, kidding m e about one such perform ance, “How did you get from her question o f L e s fille s de C a leb to questions o f gay and lesbian rights, the role o f sexuality in Q uebec’s past, im m igration, and being out as a lesbian in the university?” Again, this is but one local exam ple, in part produced by the fact that sociology has a lingering, if waning, im portance in the Quebecois everyday that as a discipline it no longer has elsewhere, and in part due to the closer relations o f proxim ity between universities, the m edia, and other govern ­ m en tal nodes w ithin the sm alln ess o f Q uebec society. H owever, as the recent Quebec H um an Rights hearings on discrim ination against gays and lesbians dem onstrated, there is a dem and on the part o f other parts o f the

DisopBnarylDEsEes current assem blage o f governm entality for help. And this is not som e nasty form of cooption; it is m ore often than not a seem ingly sincere dem and for us to open out our language. It is for m e yet an o th er exam ple o f the rearranged relations o f proxim ity am ong agents and agencies. As one com ­ m issioner said, “Give us a sociological fram ew ork in which to rethink the connections o f gays and lesbians, the family, and Quebec society.” It was a question asked in urgency and with feeling, and as the official sociologist of the group to w hom the question was posed, I gave a surface to som e o f the argum en ts that I have p u rsu ed in the course o f this book.5 This is n ot to say that it was a superficial version o f som e deep argu m en t because they w ould n ’t be able to com prehend the im port o f our profound thinking. N or is to say that we com prom ised ourselves and gave them w hat they wanted to hear. Rather, it was another sm all attem pt to go with the pressure bear­ ing on language and com portm en t to turn inside out, to splay thoughts, a m od est ackn ow led gm en t o f the need to tran slate and con n ect various objects. And rather than seeing this as being helplessly draw n within the internal w orkings o f governm en t, I see this as necessarily being p art and parcel o f the outside, m odes o f tran slation and m ovem en t across the processes of postm odern governm entality, a recognition that “the theories o f the social sciences, o f econom ics, o f sociology and o f psychology, thus provide a kind o f intellectual machinery for governm ent, in the form o f proce­ dures for rendering the world thinkable” (Rose and Miller, 1992: 182). This description com pels a reordering o f how we go about theoriz­ ing and placing queer fem inist cultural studies. If the theories mobilized in current governm en tality have so far tended tow ard quantitative calibra­ tions, this is but a furth er challenge to those o f us who deal in the w ords and the im ages, the sounds and the sights o f the social. At the sam e time, it strikes m e as drastically insufficient to think that we can m errily go along with a notion o f queer cultural studies that takes sexuality as its object as it vaguely gestu res to “ the so cial,” “ the p o litical.” And w hile it m ay be genial, and m ay even have been at one tim e necessary to define “q u ee r” as m arkin g “ a flexible space for the expression o f all aspects non- (anti-, contra-) straight cultural production and reception” (Doty, 1993: 3), this is now both radically too m uch and way too little. A gainst versions o f “cultural insiderism ,” the outside o f queer fem i­ nist c u ltu ral studies takes as an a priori point th at “identity discourse is a

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Elspeth Probyn strategy in a field o f pow er in w hich the so-called identity m o vem en ts attem p t to alter the condition s for c o n stitu tin g the p olitical su b je c t” (Patton, 1993: 145). C on ceptu alizin g and p u ttin g this political su bject to w ork is deadly serious, even as it m ay be done th rou gh the analysis o f cu l­ tural practices, som e o f which m ay indeed be fun. Follow ing Grosz, this is a call for a p rogram that rethinkfs] the relations between the social and the subjective so they are no longer seen as polar opposites; rethinking all the production s of the ‘m ind’— theory, knowledge, art, cultural practices.. .and notions of agency and political action in terms of micro-processes, thousands of sub-struggles and proliferating the field of politics so that it encompasses the entire social field. (1993: 68-69)

A Parting Desire As a conclusion th at seeks to open rather than close, I end with a call to outside ou rselves, to render and to su rface th o u g h ts, actions, feelings, wishes as a program o f study, the program that produces us, so that we can in turn engage different m odes o f intervening in the social th rou gh vari­ ous form s o f theoretical work. As I have tried to argue across the essays in this book, if the stakes are high, there is no one way to go about this. That said, what I have tried to argue here is for another m ode o f getting about, o f being tran sported by vectors o f desire that refigure traditional lines of division between the social, the sexual, the real, the cultural, the national, the theoretical. If I have privileged the concepts o f the outside and the su r­ face, it is because they allow for a vision of the interconnections between these su p po sed ly discrete entities. I am p rofo u n dly convinced th at they reveal som eth in g o f the ways in which the social field is actually ordered and lived. This glim pse of the social arranged on the surface is, o f course, not sufficient unto itself; rather, the view from the outside challenges m e to consider how virtual relations of proxim ity betw een individuals and col­ lectivities m ay be actualized and folded in other ways, encouraged in other directions. If I have argued against the idea o f identity, it is because it can only describe the specificities o f categories of belonging; it cannot reach the desires to belong and the ways in which individuals, groups, and nations

Disciplinary Desires render and live out their specificity as singular: as that which is now, in this way, with this affect. In turn, any singularity o f belonging m u st continu­ ally be freed and encouraged in its m ovem ent to constantly becom e other. Being on the outside, we are drawn within the ever m oving interweaving o f the lines o f the social, lines th at we render as the surface o f sexuality, gender, race, econom ics, class, etc.: in short, the outside of contem porary sociality, the lim its which allow for other ways of conceiving and enacting belonging. We need to be com pelled by these desires, these limits, the m ov­ ing but so-what ways in which aspiration is played out. If I have insisted on som e o f the everyday m an n ers o f being th at are lived all arou n d , I also em phasize that our ways o f thinking and describing them m u st be up to the task o f rendering the social field vibrant, looking at it and for it in ways that m ay be m ore open to experim entation and change. A cross these essays I have tried to em body certain relation s o f belonging, the desires that m ove us at different times and in different ways to engage. This engagem ent is for m e at once personal, writerly, social, and political. Fundam entally, it is an engagem ent with where I live and how I wish to be able to live. A wish that is for alternative relations o f sociality, of th o u g h t, o f friendship, o f practice, of succor. If I w rite from a sin gu lar m ilieu, I also have a theoretical parti pris. While the theoretical perspectives I draw upon are im portant, o f m ore im p ort is the way in which they are p u t to work together. In other words, while I could enum erate the differ­ ent strands (obviously with Foucault and D eleuze in the forefront along with fem inist reversionings), it is m ore crucial to consider how theories, fiction and fictions, and discursive exam p les (be they film s, television shows, governm en t statem ents, or seized snippets of conversation) co m ­ m ingle, their surfaces rubbing each other as they produ ce a m om en tary but richly interw oven outside. I am in turn com m itted to this outside, a com m itm en t that I hope does not aggrandize the singularities which form me. For w hat I have tried to experim ent with here is the wager that in writ­ ing we becom e-other, becom ing that o f which we write and think. While there are no assurances that this will play out in im m ediate ways, that the social will be m iraculously rearranged, listening m ore carefully, looking m ore acu tely— in sh ort, being deeply in terested in life— m ay help to renew7the energy we need now and in the fu tu re if we are to encourage relations of belonging that peacefully and joyously coexist.

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EEpiffilMByn Once m ore, I go back to the su m m er streets o f M ontreal, to the ways in which individuals driven from the interior o f their hom es, o f their polit­ ical belonging, are th rust together on the surface o f the city. While it is not sufficient to m erely state that this outside produces som e very weird tran s­ lations betw een and am on g individuals carried along by lines o f culture, sexuality, social m odalities, and political intentions, it is, I think, in stru c­ tive to take this assem blage to heart; to place it at the heart o f our studies, one th at does n o t beat hidden inside the body o f th eo ry bu t th at is dis­ played, that constitutes our social skins— the outside o f our belongings.

postscript It is the very end of October, and from m y desk I look out at palm trees and m orning glories. I sit waiting for friends to phone with news o f the Quebec referendum , w ondering whether the land that I have left will becom e sov­ ereign. Finally I hear o f the uncom fortable results— defeated by less than 1 percent, Quebec is for the m om en t still with Canada. My friends tell m e that it is snowing. Here on the other side o f the gray approach o f winter, it is th at stran ge period ju st after D aylight Savings T im e has begu n w hen people w ander around slightly dazed by light where before there was dark­ ness. I clum sily navigate the m yriad o f m u n dan e difficulties entailed by im m igratin g, stru c k by the in co m m en su rab ility o f everyday life w hen things d o n ’t m ean or w ork quite the sam e. Questions o f belonging hover and are p u sh ed to the side in favor o f m ore im m ediate preoccu patio n s: learning to ride a m otorbike, looking for a place to live. O f course the inse­ curities rush in: as at low tide, doubts are littered across the surface o f a new life. Taking liberties with the organization o f things, overstepping the bounds o f proper behavior, space, and hem isphere, it seem s so p re su m p ­ tu ou s to m ove to the other side o f the world, a leap o f faith sustained on hope. I had th o u g h t th at the rigors o f d ep artu re— the fo rm s filled out, blood taken for tests, tears pushed to the furth est recesses— w ould have hardened m e for the im pact o f arrival. But I am brou gh t up sh ort by the sud den jolt o f w hat it m eans to be inbetw een two countries. “Q u ’est-ce que j ’ai fait?” I asked m yself over and over d u rin g the first few days. The rawness o f new sights, objects, and m anners o f being pervades, and I ache from the con stan t registering o f degrees o f p roxim ity and difference between countries and people. Skin is m om en tarily unequal to the task, and im p ressio n s are directly co m m u n icated to m y gu ts: no m ediation here, les tripes as research protocol. Slow ly the brutality o f intensity wanes, allow ing m e to consider the u m heim lich

decision to m ove from one c u ltu re in w hich I had em bedded

m y self to an o th er th at is both totally foreign and discon certin g in its fam iliarity— I think I rem em ber som e things, bu t they are m islead in g

I5&_

ElsaefEEmfiyn bits from an o th er tim e, an o th er place: a so rt o f cu ltu ral false-m em ory syndrom e. And so the search for singularity recom m ences even as I am astride coun tries and cu ltures. At first I w on dered w h eth er it was ironic th at having written a book on belonging, I should uproot myself. On reflection, it is quite norm al that in the process o f writing I have becom e-other, that m y thinking about belonging has coincided with a transversal m ove which radically disturbs any com placency and rudely rem inds m e o f the rigors of the outside. B ut it is an outside m atted w ith rh izom atic roots, and thoughts and desires once again begin to grow. Having m ercilessly worried about the concepts o f sin gularity, desire, and belon gin g on the outside, w hat I wish to p ro d u ce now seem s so evident: a m o m e n t w hen desire com es together with the full sensation o f w hat is possible at this tim e, in this place, with these people, things, and ideas. Sydney, Novem ber 1995

notes

1 As will be clear, I am deeply indebted to G rosz’s work. In fact, I vaguely recall our first meeting many years ago when, walking and talking through the snowy streets of Toronto, it dawned on me that the book I had just fin­ ished was m ore about desire than its overt subject, the self.

Chapterl 1 I am playing a bit fast and loose here, as H annah’s argum ent proposes that “the specificity of a discursive formation implies not only its uniqueness and its ‘exclusive actuality,’ but also its ‘could not have been otherw ise’” (Hannah, 1993: 356). In Foucault (1986), Deleuze refers precisely to this as sin­ gularity. For an exhaustive explication of singularity within the vocabulary of Deleuze and Guattari, see Brain M assumi (1992), who places Agamben as apost-D eleuzian. 2 These m ay sound like trivial activities, but being displaced to southern California reminded me of their importance as I faced that emptiness when, at the end o f the day, everyone disappears into their cars and far-flung houses, leaving the streets barren. On a m ore im portant note, for those outside of Quebec, it may seem strange that I designate Quebec as postcolonial. Granted, it is a less clear-cut situation than, say, that of Cam eroon, yet it is firmly how French Quebec thinks of itself. And when one considers that, for instance, twenty years ago it was impossible to enter postsecondary studies without going through “le college classique ,”

the Catholic program administered directly from France, or

that the federal governm ent in Ottawa had tanks rolling down the main streets of Montreal through the imposition of the War Measures Act, post­ colonialism is a part of the Quebecois social imaginary that is fairly easy to understand.

Chapter 2 1 My thanks to Shulam it Lechtman for this image. 2 In any case, there are many m uch better placed than I to do this. For

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ZEmByn instance, see Grosz (1994a; 1994b), Fuss (1991), Braidotti (1992), de Lauretis (1994), and Butler (1993). 3 See also Paul Patton’s (1995) use of Deleuze and Guattari within the realm o f political philosophy. Taking up the way that “D eleuze’s social theory always recognised the primacy of those transform ative m om ents in which societies pass from one form of organisation or capture to another,” Patton opens the way for an alternative and m ore informative analysis of the press­ ing question of indigenous land claims in colonial and postcolonial societies. 4 Given my previous interest in anorexia nervosa, I obviously am not su g­ gesting that we ignore the ways in which this experimentation with bodies and images is channelled in som etim es fatal directions. Indeed, we m ust continue to focus on the ways in which young girls’ bodies as potentially open lines of flight are closed down in quite often tragic ways. 5 The performance artist Suzanne Westenhoefer captures this perfectly in her m onologue about her desire for Martina Navratalova, a desire not for the whole o f M artina but expressed as an overw helm ing longing to lick the coursing vein that pops out on the inside of M artina’s forearm. This image, in turn, may connect and relate with others: her butchness, her accent, her skill, her physicality, her success. All these im ages are displayed and arranged in the relation of bodies and parts that we call so fam iliarly “M artina,” a machinic entity that spectacularly engages squads o f lesbian fans.

Chapters 1 The two French terms used to signify supposedly “original” Quebecois are “de souche” ( “old stock,” “of the source”) and “pure lame ’ ( “pure w ool”). In

term s of geography, M ontreal is regarded by hard nationalists as the least pure lame place in the province because of its lingering A nglophone facade

and its greater concentration of immigrants. 2 As one can imagine, the reactions to Parizeau’s statem ent were varied. My favorite line from the debates that ensued was Parizeau’s rather exasperated response as to what “de souche ’ Quebecois were to call themselves: “After all, they don’t want us to call ourselves ‘ les tabernacos.’” Los tabernacos is the deroga­ tory term for Quebecois vacationing in Mexico. It stems from the Quebec swear word “ tabemac .” Like m uch Quebecois profanity, “tabernacle” comes from the Church. Michel Trem blay’s recent novel includes a wonderful, if

itotes rather cruel, short story about two com plaining couples in Mexico, aptly entitled “Los Tabernacos” (Tremblay, 1993). 3 Within the Australian context, vigorous critiques have focused on the ways in which m ulticulturalism as a concept is wedded to that of tolerance. As Ghassan Hage argues in his article “Locating M ulticulturalism ’s Other: A Critique of Practical Tolerance” (1994), tolerance plays out as a gam e of power between the majority com m unity and its others. For an acerbic account of the debates on m ulticulturalism in Canada, see Neil Bissoondath’s book Selling Illusions: The Cult o f Multiculturalism in Canada (1994). 4 In a slightly different theoretical project to which I am nonetheless indebted, Martin Allor (1993) argues that Lefebvre, along with other nation­ alist cultural producers, articulates a “vision of pastoral left-nationalism ” through the key trope of “le metissage.” 5 For one o f the best evocations of Innis’s work with regard to a nostalgic C anadian im aginary, see A rthur Kroker, Technology and the C anadian M ind: InmsIM cLuhanjG rant

(1984). See also Jody Berland’s work on Innis, com m uni­

cation technologies, and space (1992). James Carey’s work (1989; 1975) has been of great im portance in introducing Innis to American com m unica­ tions scholars, thus posthum ously reducing som e of Innis’s isolation and perhaps m aking Canadian inissian theorists feel less marginal. In speaking of Innis, I have in mind Empire and Communication (1972) and The Bias o f Communication,

in particular the essay “M inerva’s Owl” (1951).

6 On “sexe et g en re,” see H urtig, Kail, and Rouch (1991), Delphy (1991); and Mathieu (1989). In North America, Francophone Quebec feminists are quite unique in their appropriation of French m aterialist fem inism . Danielle Juteau and Nicole Laurin (1989) provide a clear positioning of the concepts of French materialist feminism. See also a collection of G uillaum in’s trans­ lated essays with an introduction by Juteau (1995). 7 My thanks to Line Grenier for suggesting V igneault’s song in this context. 8 Over its twenty-week season, the superm arkets were em pty, the streets lonely as nearly half of the Francophone population (some 3 million) stayed home to watch, to which one can add the scores of readers who bought the best-selling novel by Arlette C ousture from which it was adapted. For a com pelling analysis of the specifically Quebecois nature of the genre of teleroman,

see Saint-Jacques and de la Garde (1992).

JSB

l6o

ElsperhProbyn 9 The sequel Blanche was in many ways m ore interesting than L esfilles. It takes up the story with Blanche, the eldest of Emilie’s daughters, who becomes a nurse in Abitibi after having endured the hum iliation o f being refused entrance to M cGill’s Medical Faculty, a refusal explicitly framed as a rejec­ tion of her both as a wom an and as a French-Canadian. The scabrous hus­ band returns to lurk, but very m uch in a backstage manner. 10 Vide Pierre Eliott Trudeau— as “P.E.T.,” the “playboy prim e m in ister”— argued that “the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” as he did his best to render the public image of Canada somewhat m ore sexy. 11 On the ways in which M ontreal operated discursively as the figure of sex and vice in the English-Canadian imaginary, especially in the ’40s and AOs, see Will Straw ’s fascinating article (1992). 12 My thanks to my colleague Jacques Brazeau for this apparently well-known image. In M ontreal, P.Q., the adopted son of the principal m adam is sent off to a seminary. He leaves with a garter belt, and, in a wonderfully baroque scene, this young m an “in a dress” m asturbates with it. (We are shown that he is having a very wet dream .) An older priest catches him at it and sym ­ pathetically takes him off for a dip in a cold lake. 13 While I haven’t the time to do justice to Schwartzwald’s extremely im por­ tant argum ent, which has directly inspired my own, I direct the reader to his article (1991) and to a recently translated one (1993). 14 In case one thinks that homosociality is the sole prerogative of men, in this scene Arcand endeavors to represent a female homosocial space as relations between w om en are set up through the objectified body of one m an. Obviously, it is impossible for female homosociality to attain the status and pow er o f that of m ale hom osociality, and A rcand’s attem pt can be read either as reactive whining or as liberal good intentions (or both). 15 Intriguingly enough, Arcand’s latest film, Love and Human Remains, is based on a play by Brad Fraser, a hip, queer, generation-x Canadian playwright. The diegesis, which is originally set in Edm onton but gets m oved to Montreal in Arcand’s version, revolves around a single gay guy who eventually falls in love. 16 In an early article on lesbians and gays in Quebecois cinema, Tom Waugh also cites Arcand and goes on to dem onstrate that while the figure of the hom osexual has been prevalent, m ost of the representations have also been hom ophobic. W augh’s article provides an insightful contextualization of

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the history of gay and lesbian representations within Quebecois cinema of the ’60s and 70s (Waugh, 1980). See also Nadeau’s positioning o f the films of Lea Pool in regard to the impossibility of lesbian filmic representation (1992; 1993). 17 Parler pour parler has since been replaced by a new show, Janette tout court. Janette continues her odyssey into Quebecois sexual m anners in an episode where she investigates what she called “s/m made in Quebec.” 18 As soon as Jacques Parizeau did indeed become the new premier of Quebec, one of his first statem ents was that it was time to make “Quebec into a nor­ mal country.” 19 As a final note, long after I had finished writing this essay, the Quebec ref­ erendum on sovereignty failed by a mere 50,000 votes (or less than 1 per­ cent). Jacques Parizeau disgraced him self by blam ing the defeat on Anglophone moneyed interests and the ethnic vote. He resigned without apologizing.

Chapter 4 1 The exact wording of Chapter 1.1, Article 10, is as follows: “Everyone has the right to the recognition and exercise, in full equality, of the rights and lib­ erties of the person, without distinction, exclusion or preference founded on race, color, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except in m easures set out by law, religion, political conviction, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, handicap or the use of a m eans to over­ com e this handicap.” The trouble com es later when in Article 137 sexual orientation disappears as a valid reason for contesting exclusion or discrim­ ination before any social benefits regime, be it private or state funded. For the record, I do not think that the issue of conjugal rights for samesex partners is by any means the m ost im portant stake in the current legal contestations. It is im portant only insofar as the legal definition of the fam ­ ily is restructured to include various form s of affective relationships. 2 In Lucy M aud M ontgom ery’s classic story, the “unconventional” Anne is adopted by an elderly sibling couple. With respect to the brief submitted on conjugal rights, Boyd’s was a w elcom e intervention in that we (G loria Escomel, Lise Harou, Nicole Lacelle, and I) sought to point out that, say, two sisters who had lived together all their lives should be eligible to share in each o th e r’s retirem ent benefits. Boyd, however, did not expand on the

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i Protujn numerous and highly meditated girlfriend rituals that the tomboy Anne initiates with her “bosom friend” Diana. 3 My thanks to Judith Halberstam for reminding me of this point. While obviously key to this argument about gender and queer childhood, the work of deconstructing the binarism of gender, especially in regard to transexuality,is beyond the scope of my essay. However, I refer the reader to Halberstam’s work on female masculinity (1994), Sandy Stone’s on post­ transsexuality (1992), and Ki Namaste’s on the position of transsexuality within queer theory (1994). If the epistemological basis of these quantitative studies is inadequate to the study of gender identification and homosexu­ ality, the question of transsexuality is totally beyond their ken. However, as Namaste argues, queer theory itself has so far proven to be less than illumi­ nating on this point. 4 In a beautiful visual project, Martha Townsend’s site-responsive installation La chasse galerie

replays the magic and the material, national, and gender

specificity of this tale (Strokestown, Ireland, 1989).

Q u jB 1 Having dealt with a fair amount of criticism that my work is overly theo­ retical, it should be clear that I am not encouraging a strain of anti-intellectualism that surfaces in some feminist critiques. The outside is also a chal­ lenge to nontheory types to read a little closer, just as it is for me to write less densely (this essay being the exception to the rule). 2 Morton does explicitly recognize the polemical nature of his text, and in a footnote that flags one of the pretextual conditions of its publication, he states that the essay was turned down by Critical Inquiry “on the grounds that it ‘personalizes,’ becomes ‘polemical,’” against which Morton defends him­ self by arguing that “the scholarly/polemical binary is itself maintained by the very people who are maintaining dominant academic power relations; they need the term ‘polemic’ to get rid of that scholarship not in their class interests” (1993: 143 fn). 3 It does strikes me as astonishing that over ten years after his death so many Anglo-American theorists can continue to run on strange readings of Foucault’s theory: that discourse has replaced materiality; that power is rendered vapid; that he was a rampant individualist; etc. Of course, readings are influenced by the disciplinary and geopolitical space in which Foucault

is read. Thus, it is notable that feminist and queer cultural geographers, many theorists in the humanities in Australia, and several of my Canadian colleagues produce foucauldian-inspired social theory that has little to do with the ways in which Foucault has been taken up and/or put down in American literature departments. 4 Elsewhere (1992; 1993), I have given a more exhaustive account of Deleuze’s reading of Foucault through the use of the figure of the fold (lepli). 5 The members of the group presenting the brief were Gloria Escomel, Lise Harou, Nicole Lacelle, and 1.1 thank them for including me in this relay race, the point of which was an argument for other forms of familial sociality.

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index A Lure for Knowledge,

Braidotti, Rosi, 41, 47, 110

138

Agamben, Giorgio, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27,

Brault, Michel, 65, 80, 89 Brossard, Nicole, 59, 60

44, 68, 101 AIDS, 97, 138, 146

Brunt, Rosalind, 143

Allison, Dorothy, 31

Butler, Judith, 13, 14, 25, 47, 56

Althusser, Louis, 25, 139, 145 am orous melancholia, 114 Anne o f Green G ables , 82,

104

Anthropologie in pragmatischer H m sichtabgejasst ,

115

childhood, 35, 9 5 -101, 103- 119, 121-123 chronotype, 35 Cixous, Helene, 53

Anshaw, Carol, 41

Colette, 56—58, 78

Anzaldua, Gloria, 31

com m unication, 41—44, 74, 145

Appadurai, Arjun, 147

cooption, 141, 144, 146, 150

Aquin, Hubert, 77, 78

Cosmic Z oom , 73

Arcand, Denys, 86, 87

Crimp, Douglas, 138

architecture 3, 146

cultural criticism, 12, 41, 46, 52 cultural insider, 135, 144, 151

Baudrillard, Jean, 34 becoming, 6, 7, 88-90, 103, 118, 119,

cultural studies, 5, 19, 22, 34, 95, 127, 129-132, 135, 138-142, 144, 148, 151

121, 144; becoming—other, 5, 14, 15, 76, 138, 153; becoming—horse,

de Lauretis, Teresa, 47, 78, 138—140

39—62; becoming—postcolonial, 19,

Deleuze, Gilles, 7, 13-15, 24, 25, 41,

27; becoming—queer, 19, 137 Bell, David, 10

44, 45, 47- 55, 61, 69, 71, 76, 91, 95, 117, 118, 133, 134, 148, 149, 153

Bellour, Raymond, 45, 55, 102

Delphy, Christine, 78

Benjam in, Walter, 19

departure, 13, 31, 45, 47, 66, 96, 98, 99,

Bergson, Henri, 53, 61, 117, 118

123,130, 136

Berlant, Lauren, 145

depth, 32, 34, 35, 71, 121, 136

Berthelot, Jean Michel, 72

desire, 32-35, 39-5 0 , 71, 88- 90, 109,

Bhabha, Homi, 19-21, 26- 28, 30, 34

110, 115, 116, 152; and belonging, 8,

Billingham, R.E., 105

14, 19, 23, 27, 35, 40, 89; as force,

Boyd, Marian, 104

27—30; productive, 12—14; and psy-

IZS.

Ilspeth Probun choanalysis, 46; lesbian, 13, 20, 25, 95; queer, 25, 46, 53, 61 Donzelot, Jacques, 134, 147

Guattari, Felix, 24, 43, 44, 49—51, 54, 149 Guillaum in, Colette, 78, 79, 139

Doty, Alexander, 138, 144,151 Dyer, Richard, 9

Hall, Radclyffe, 58 Hall, Stuart, 5, 6, 25, 145, 149

Enfance et histoire ,

101

ethnicity, 5, 59, 62, 77, 79, 106, 127

Halperin, David, 11, 47, 48 Haraway, Donna, 6 Heal, Linda, 109

feminism, 46, 69, 78, 79, 95, 129, 130, 135, 141 Fennario, David, 3 Foucault, Michel, 7, 9—14, 23—25, 29, 31- 34, 43, 47, 48, 52, 53, 61, 95-9 7 ,

Hennegan, Alison, 58 Hennessy, Rosemary, 139—141, 143 heterosexual, 57, 79, 81, 86—88, 103, 106, 107 heterotopia, 9—11

101, 102, 112, 113, 132, 133, 142, 145,

HIV, 146

148, 149, 153

Hockenberry, S.L., 105

Fremont, Christiane, 69

Hoggart, Richard, 141

Freud, Sigmund, 35, 50, 102

Hometowns: Gay M en W rite A bout Where

Fuss, Diana, 47, 137, 138

They Belong,

110

homosexuality, 28, 31, 35, 86—88, Galford, Ellen, 20, 21 Gatens, Moira, 41 gaze, 30, 53, 117 gender, 5, 10, 23, 35, 56, 57, 62, 67, 68, 72, 78, 79, 85, 89, 90, 96, 100, 105-110, 117, 139, 144, 152

106-108 homosociality, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86, 90, 106 horses, 11, 30, 39, 41, 45, 50-52, 54-60, 62, 82-84 Hutcheon, Linda, 74, 77

genealogy, 96, 112, 113, 116, 139 Gilroy, Paul, 135-137 global, the, 69, 137, 140, 146, 147

identity, 3 - 5, 8, 21- 25, 28-30, 47, 54, 81- 84, 95, 96, 99, 100, 108, 110, 113,

Gom ez, Jewelle, 23, 30, 31

136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 151, 152;

Gordon, Colin, 14, 59, 75, 132

childhood, 96, 99, 105; identity pol­

Gramsci, Antonio, 143, 145

itics, 9, 14, 19, 41, 44, 96; Quebecois,

Grossberg, Lawrence, 34, 43, 44

67-78, 84, 86- 90

Grosz, Elizabeth, 13, 41, 46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 59, 133, 151, 153 Grover, Jan Zita, 138

Innis, Harold, 74, 75 Inside I Out,

137

interiority, 11, 12, 35, 148

Jackson, Michael, 65, 89

M asala,

Jameson, Fredric, 77, 78

Massumi, Brian, 24, 48, 53

Jankelevitch, Vladimir, 114, 116, 117

materiality, 6, 10, 12, 24, 69, 76, 78, 79,

Julien, Isaac, 31

40

83, 110, 131, 136, 137, 141 Mathieu, Nicole—Claude, 78, 119, 120

Kant, Im m anuel, 115

Mbembe, Achille, 29, 30

Kaplan, Cora, 145

M cLuhan, Marshall, 74

Kates, Nancy, 108

memory, 20, 21, 40, 41, 57, 81, 84,

KKK, 65, 89

96- 102, 103- 107, 109- 118, 120-122, 136

La maison suspendue,

119, 120

Miller, Peter, 130, 145-148, 151

Facan, Jacques, 46

Mitford, Nancy, 27, 28

language, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 21, 24—26, 31,

M oderato C antabile,

33, 35, 44, 58, 72, 101, 102, 127, 129, 145, 149-151

Montreal, 3- 5, 8, 25- 27, 30, 65, 66, 69, 70, 74, 80, 85-8 7 , 91, 104, 119, 120,

Le Declin de Vempire americain, Le sabotage amoureux,

86

95

127, 128, 153 M ontreal ville ouverte,

Lefebvre, Jean—Pierre, 73 Les Filles de C aleb,

53

85

M ontreal, P. Q ., 85

81—85, 150

Morris, Meaghan, 135

Lightfoot, Gordon, 75

Morton, Donald, 139, 141—144

lips, 56, 66, 78, 89

Muecke, Stephen, 72

local, the, 30, 52, 69, 71, 110, 111, 115,

M y Brilliant Career,

129, 131, 132, 134, 137, 140, 142, 146,

M y Friend Flicka,

82

54

147, 149 locom otion, 11, 41 Logique du sens,

N ational Velvet,

96

Love in a C old Clim ate,

54

Negri, Toni, 148 27, 28, 65

Nestle, Joan, 31 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 43, 97, 113

Machery, Pierre, 31—33 M aking Things Perfectly Queer,

Northern Exposure,

144

Mandel, Eli, 74 marginalization, 11, 29, 48, 72- 75, 84,

76, 77

nostalgia, 35, 91, 95, 103, 111, 112, 114-118, 121, 122 Nothomb, Amelie 95

141 M arnie,

45, 46, 55

Oranges A re N ot the Only Fruit,

111, 112

Marsan, Jean—Claude, 3

outside belonging, 5, 8, 12, 14

Martin, Biddy, 12, 46, 73, 97

Paris, Sherri, 138, 139

i8 o

Elspeth Probqn Parlerpour Parler,

87

100, 101, 105

Patton, Paul, 50, 148, 151

Segrest, Mab, 31

Paul, Jay, 105

Sexing the Self,

Peck, Dale, 97

sexuality, 20, 32, 48, 67, 78, 79, 84, 89,

6

phallus, 46, 58, 59

9 0 ,105, 129, 130, 132, 136, 141, 145,

Philo, Chris, 33, 34

150-152; childhood, 99, 108, 109,

Plain and T all , 82

116; and difference, 23, 59, 68, 71,

pleasure, 45, 47, 48, 58, 84, 139, 142,

72; queer, 28, 189; Havelock Ellis,

144

58

postm odernism , 8, 77, 129, 142

Simon, Sherry, 3, 4

power, 28-30, 45, 47, 48, 51, 57, 72- 74,

singularity, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 15, 21—24,

86, 133, 134, 142, 145, 146, 149, 151

27, 31, 41, 42, 51, 53, 58,68, 69, 71,

psychiatry, 99, 108

72, 76, 78, 84, 89, 90, 97, 110, 111,

psychoanalysis, 46, 47, 50, 99, 108, 116

131, 132, 136, 152 skin, 5, 6, 14, 15, 128, 153

Quebec, 5, 26, 30, 65-67, 71-7 4 , 78, 80, 81, 84, 86-90, 103, 104, 119, 127, 150 queer theory, 12, 13, 69, 96, 101, 129, 138-142, 146

sociology of the skin, 5 Soja, Edward, 10 specificity, 9, 10, 22—24, 34, 42, 72, 136, 152 Starobinski, Jean, 114, 115

racism, 6, 32, 139

stigmata, 101

Radford, Jean, 58

surface, 11-15, 19-21, 23, 28-35, 45,

Railroad Trilogy,

75

Raymond Roussel,

31, 33

Revel, Jacques, 102

53, 71, 77, 78, 96, 101-103, 107, 121, 122, 130, 131, 136-139, 141, 144, 145, 148, 150-153

Reynolds, Margaret, 111 Robson, Ruthann, 59

technology of the self, 102

Roof, Judith, 138

The Dyke and the Dybbuk,

Rose, Nikolas, 130, 145-148, 151

The King and I,

20

82

The Lesbian Postmodern,

138

s/m, 48, 86, 87

The Order o f Things,

Said, Edward, 20

The Prime o f M iss fe a n Brodie,

Sarah,

82

7

The Pure and the Impure,

Savoy, Eric, 55, 137-139

The Simpsons,

Sawhney, Sabina, 27

The Straight M ind,

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 13, 14, 25,

The Well o f Loneliness,

56

145 139 57, 58

82

index

trains, 8, 11, 39, 40, 75

White, Edmund, 99,

translation, 20, 26, 31, 53, 147-149, 151

White, Flayden, 11,

transportation, 41

Wiegman, Robyn, 138

Tremblay, Michel, 66, 86, 87, 119, 121

Williams, Raymond, 131, 132, 141 Winterson, Jeanette, 111—113, 120

Vattimo, Gianno, 134

Wittig, Monique, 139

Vigneault, Gilles, 74, 80 Volatile Bodies,

49

Voltaire, Francois, 74

Ybarra-Frausto, Tomas, 30, 31

X8l