A Lady Spinning Yarn Who Happened to Be a Man: The Term “Hermaphrodite” in
Commentaries to the Divine Comedy
Leon Jacobowitz Efron, the Cohn Institute and the Graduate School of History, Tel
Aviv University
In canto 26 of Purgatorio, the second part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the soul of the
Italian love poet Guido Guinizelli describes the sinners being purified along with him at
the seventh circle of Purgatory as ones whose sin was “hermaphroditic.” Contemporary
scholarship agrees the meaning of the term hermaphroditic in Dante’s language is
“heterosexual”, a term which of course was not available before the 19th century.
However, the early commentators of the Divine Comedy struggled with Dante’s choice of
this term. They give three kinds of interpretation to it, which mirror the modern
distinction between sex, gender and sexuality and sometimes, as expected, conflate these
distinctions. Thus, some see hermaphroditism as physical androgyny, others see it as
gender ambiguity or gender crossing, and others still see it as a term for bisexuality.
Another place in the Comedy (Inferno 20) narrates how the Greek prophet Tiresias
became a woman for seven years before becoming a man again in a transsexual change of
sorts. This verse led to another interesting discussion on the term hermaphrodite in the
commentary of the Olivetan monk Guido da Pisa.
The lecture will analyze the different understanding of gender, sex and sexuality in the
commentaries using the interesting anecdotes the commentators supplied from their
personal lives, anecdotes which demonstrate the vagueness that existed, and to a large
extent still does, regarding the distinction between sex, sexuality and gender. Thus, for
example, the commentator Francesco da Buti, in a discussion on hermaphroditism tells of
a person he knew as a boy who dressed as a man but spoke of himself as a woman and
worked as a spinner of yarn, an occupation considered feminine.
In the lecture, we shall also see how commentators claim that those who have genitalia
that enables them to have “heterosexual” sex with both sexes, such as those with inborn
androgyny, must choose only one sex with which they may have intercourse throughout
their lives according to the law. This claim could be interpreted allegorically as an early
erasure of the possibility of bisexuality, as a type of bisexualophobia, denying the
possibility of mobility in sexual attraction, while commanding the object of one’s desire
to be of one type only.
Gnostically Queer: Gender Trouble in Gnosticism
Jonathan Cahana, Department of Comparative Religion, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
“And when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be
male nor the female be female … then you will enter [the kingdom].”
Gospel of Thomas 22
“[I turned] inward toward acquaintance [with] the entireties, the Barbelo aeon, and I
beheld the holy powers from the luminaries of the masculine female virgin Barbelo…”
The Foreigner 59
“…And the females that they call ‘virgins’ are the ones who have never experienced the
worldly intercourse of ordinary natural marriage as far as the reception of sperm goes.”
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 26.11.10
My paper attempts to delineate and analyze the queer-like worldview evinced in Gnostic
writings. While these “heretic” early Christians, active already in the 2nd century of our
era, remodeled and retold the creation story vis à vis the biblical and Platonic accounts,
they did this significantly in order to express their own views regarding gender and
sexuality. In turn, this “invented” story of origins has been used by them in order to
explain and account for their queer-like stance over against the patriarchal mainstream
culture. Evidence will be brought as well to show that this stance has also found its
expression in sexual rituals performed by at least some of them.
The mythological world as presented by those Gnostics comprises two separate realms:
The preexistent pure pleroma, inhabited by many entities which are either genderless, or,
more often, ones whose gender is elusive (e.g., referred to as “she” but designated as the
“thrice male”), and a realm of the rulers (or archons), a result of a cosmic catastrophe, in
which gender is pointedly and repeatedly defined, both regarding gods and regarding
humans. While the Gnostics originally belonged to that heavenly realm, they are
currently trapped (together with the rest of humanity) in the realm of the rulers, and also,
as a consequence, are under its compulsory process of gendering. Employing Judith
Butler’s notions of gendering, citationality, performativity and subversion, I would raise
the possibility that since these people had no basis in their “past” for the naturalization of
heterosexuality – actually, according to them, a result of a heavenly calamity and a curse
of an evil, gendered, masculine god – they had no “choice” but to do their best to miscite
those norms, thus subverting the compulsory process of gendering, in a way similar to
some of the theatrical actions performed today by queer activists.
In my paper I intend to discuss a number of choice ancient Gnostic texts, including The
Apocryphon of John, The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Judas and The Foreigner, as
well as some instances of proto-orthodox polemical writing directed against those
Gnostics, notably the description of their sexual rites in the Panarion of Epiphanius of
Salamis. Moreover, a preliminary phenomenological comparison between the gnostic
endeavor to subvert gendering and some modern attempts to do so will be offered. I hope
to show that even though many differences do exist, there are also important similarities
which are both enlightening and troubling.
No (Future) Guaranties: Becoming-Revolutionary, Cinema and the Prospects for Change.
Nir Kedem, School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University
What is left of the celebrated potential queer theory once offered – instigating political
change? Has it fallen back to gay identity politics? Has it been normalized, incorporated
into hegemony? And why is it a problem? This paper aims to re-articulate "queerness"
from the perspective of change, following Halperin's conception of "queerness" as
insistence on constantly responding to the urgent need to resist all forms of normativity,
and any attempt at normalization. Through concepts such as "becoming-revolutionary",
"micropolitics" and others, the cosmo/political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari in its conjunctures with queer theory, offers a new way of looking at queerness
in its relations to change.
This paper will argue that Queerness is not only a revolutionary force far from outliving
its potential, but is itself a tactics of change; it is change's structuring principle. In
Western culture normativity is constituted through representation and signification –
namely, through the logic of exclusion that differentiates between origin and copy, hence
creating the Standard for any evaluation and judgment. Queerness, therefore, acts as a
prominent apparatus that serves to undermine representation, pushing it to its limits.
Queerness problematizes the ethics and politics of representation by way of constantly representing the Impossible: the one that is (conceptualized as) unrepresentable, or
unworthy of representation in culture.
This tactics is primarily evident in cinema, the most mimetic of cultural apparatuses of
representation. Studying the Actualizations of such tactics in the films of Bruce LaBruce,
John Cameron Mitchell and others exposes their specific effects as they operate in the
cinematic medium, and helps outline the conditions within which any queerness
"becomes" a becoming-as-change, which it also sets forth.
Undone by Normalcy: Reading “The Elephant Man” through Judith Butler
Tomer Sassonkin, School of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University
The life story of Joseph Merrick (1862-1890), more widely known as “the elephant man,”
has survived in popular culture, to a great extent, thanks to David Lynch’s 1980 film. The
film depicts Merrick’s exploitation and abuse at the hands of a cruel freak show world,
and his subsequent rescue by a compassionate Victorian doctor, Frederick Treves (18531923), who had arranged permanent residence for Merrick at the Royal London Hospital.
Various studies have foregrounded the gap between Lynch’s cinematic narrative, heavily
based on Treves’s own memoirs, and the historical facts pertaining to Merrick’s life, as
well as to the positive role which the Victorian freak show had played for some of its
performers.1
In my lecture, I will address both Lynch’s film and historical facts from Merrick’s life. I
will suggest the relevance of Merrick’s story (via the film) as a strong allegory of the
modes by which radical alterity comes to find its place in both the margins of human
social existence and in its normative center, to the movement between these two spaces
(margins, center), and to the price one has to pay in each of them. This reading of “the
elephant man” will be facilitated by two of Judith Butler’s more recent texts, Undoing
Gender and Giving an Account of Oneself, viz., by turning to their shared understanding
of “humanness” as a normative position not everybody is authorized to occupy; to their
understanding that for those who are so authorized, occupying this position (as with any
identity) calls for permanent work; and to the realization that identity norms both
construct or “do” us, in our cultural and personal intelligibility, but at the same time and
by necessity, they “undo” us, inter alia, by erasing those singular, non-reducible, and
“other” aspects of our existence.
Lynch’s narrative effects a dichotomy between the filthy, sick, precarious, and cruel freak
show, on the one hand, and the sanitary, healthy, secure and caring hospital, on the other;
between, on the one hand, Merrick’s existence as (almost) an animal, deprived of
language, either naked trapped in a cage or clad in cap and hood so as to conceal his
deformed physicality, and on the other hand, Merrick’s existence as (almost) human,
conversing and communicating, wearing his “Sunday Best” while entertaining London’s
upper circles for afternoon tea. Through Butler, I will propose reading the freak show
world as a queer site of human marginality, wherein individuals defy those morphologies
Nadja Durbach, “Re-Examining the Elephant Man,” Cultural and Social History, Vol. 4, no. 2 (2007): 193-214;
Paul Anthony Darke, “The Elephant Man (David Lynch, EMI Films, 1980): An Analysis from a Disabled
Perspective,” Disability & Society, Vol. 9, no. 3 (1994): 327-342.
1
and bodily practices which set the threshold for what counts as “human.” Conversely, I
will propose reading the hospital world as an instance of the normative modality by
which individuals are made into human subjects,2 and thus, Merrick’s movement from
one world onto the other, as the normalizing process which effects Merrick’s humanity,
but only at the cost of his undoing.
Through Butler, I will suggest that Lynch’s narrative, while clearly a one-sided depiction
of a positive fantasy of normalcy, is nonetheless a depiction of a fantasy with an
unavoidable and substantial price tag attached to it. Even though Merrick’s existence is
cinematically shown to be unbearable in the queer margins, while (more) livable in the
normative center, Merrick is still required to pay for such normative livability, ultimately,
with his life.
Technologies of Gender Crossing: Playing with/in transgendered bodies
Eli Avidan Azar, Department of Literature, Tel Aviv University
In the western culture, transgendered people who are interested in having gender
reassignment procedures need to meet the criteria set by the medical establishment. These
standards are guided by the truth discourse about gender, which perceives a person’s
genitals as markers of his or hers true gender identity. Since the request of gender
reassignment undermines this discourse, the medical establishment applies dichotomist
logic that allegedly settles the incoherence. “The truth” about the person’s gender is
therefore relocated in the “mind”, making his or hers anatomy incompatible with their
gender identity, a contradiction which is supposed to be solved by gender reassignment
procedures. This concept, produced and represented at the doctor’s office as well as by
popular culture, often does not coincide with transgendered people’s bodily experience.
Since many transgendered people rely on medical technology, they are required to adjust
their personal narrative to the hegemonic story, even if they don’t identify completely
with the other gender, or don’t perceive physical transformation as means to create
correlation between body and mind. This self-subjugation leads to the erasure of any
experience inconsistent with the paradigmatic narrative.
In my lecture, I will present a mode of resistance to the narrative and way of thought
forced upon transgendered people, using the digital game as a practice that allows
simultaneous embodiment of different genders. I would argue that the digital game
deviates the set of binaries in western thought, truth/false, real/imaginary,
presence/absence, subject/object and self/other, and so creates an ambivalent relation to
the player’s reality, body and subjectivity.
Jay Prosser (1998) finds the autobiography as an alternative to the medical discourse,
which resists the erasure of transgender history and provides visibility to transgendered
subjects. Following Prosser, and in order to avoid reproduction of the truth discourse, I
will use my biography and examine my body at play, as one option of transgendered
embodiment amongst many. The lecture will include examples from popular digital
games.
By this, I do not mean to imply that queer practices may be free of any operation of norms. The point is
rather that in relation to the prevailing, normative stance of “humanness”, queer practices - even if only partly are exterior, defiant, and resistant.
2
Parental and Psychological Differences among Lesbian Mothers, Single Heterosexual
Mothers and Married Heterosexual Mothers
Tomer Shechner, Tel Aviv University
The main goal of this work was to examine the effect of unique family structures on
parental variables. More specifically, associations between minority stress and
psychological and parental distress experienced by mothers, and the moderating effect of
social support, were studied. Findings indicated that although lesbian and single
heterosexual mothers reported higher levels of perceived stigma than heterosexual
married mothers, differences emerged on psychological and parental outcomes only
between mothers from the two heterosexual groups. Social support was higher for lesbian
than heterosexual single mothers, and served as a moderator of minority stress only for
this group.
The study of these groups is both unique and of particular interest due to the distinctive
constellation of Israeli society and extension of research on non-normative families
beyond Western Europe and North America. The present study highlights ways in which
social and individual processes interact and affect psychological outcomes among
minority groups.
In the Lion's Den: The Debate over the New Sex Reassignment Surgery Directive
Nora Grinberg, Transgender rights advocate and gender counselor
Last year, the ministry of health set up a special committee to revise the existing directive
for performing sex reassignment surgeries. The committee, most of whose members
belonged to the medical establishment, included two unlikely integrants: a representative
of Physicians for Human Rights, and the lecturer, who represented the transgender
community. From the start, the discussions were marked by the clash of two opposed
paradigms of transgender medical treatment: the traditional medicalizing model of gender
variant identity with its paternalist clinical approach, and a non-pathologizing model
based on respect for the patient's autonomy and a damage-reduction approach. The debate
included for the first time matters of ethics, human rights and the law while
simultaneously touching upon cultural biases and the institutional control and regulation
of gender nonconforming identities.
Israeli Lesbigay’s Mainstreaming Trajectory
Amit Kama, Department of Communication, Academic College of Emek Yezreel
This paper focuses on various aspects of the efforts and successes on part of the Jewish
Israeli lesbigay community for collective self-definition and civil status and above all on
its unrelenting need and yearning to be included and embraced in the very political,
social, and cultural core of mainstream, hegemonic civil society. Although it is grounded
in ample empirical and historical evidence from a wide range of practical and discursive
fields, it involves epistemic as well as ideological difficulties that may cause heated
opposition by queer scholars.
Are They Naturally Insulted? Four Paradigms in the Heterosexual Media Discourse about
the Jerusalem Pride March
Gilad Padva, Film & TV Department and the Communication Department, Tel
Aviv University; School of Education, Beit Berl Academic College
The Pride March in Jerusalem in 2006 was intensively resisted by the local ultraOrthodox Jewish community. For four years, the Jerusalem Pride March was a sort of
limited and constrained version of the Tel Aviv Pride March. Nevertheless, in 2005 the
ultra-Orthodox demonstrator Yishai Schlissel stabbed three marches, who were
hospitalized because of their injuries (Schlissel was later sentenced for 12 years in jail
and was ordered to pay compensation of about 70,000 USD). A year later, the ultraOrthodox community decided to prevent the annual Pride March by all means.
Those who opposed the March because of religious and moral reasons were supported by
secular Jewish people, including major parts of the Israeli mainstream media, who
claimed that it is better to maintain Pride Marches in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat only, and
not to anger or to hurt the ultra-Orthodox Jews' feelings.
This study examines different perspectives about the Pride March in the heterosexual
media discourse that year, as reflected in texts that were published in NRG, an Israeli
Internet website owned by Ma'ariv, Israel's second largest newspaper, since March 2006
to December 2006.
This article focuses on four ideological and philosophical paradigms, which are
manifested, exposed and/or criticized in this heterosexual media discourse: the paradigm
of the natural dominance; the paradigm of the insulted dominance; the paradigm of the
democratic dominance; and the paradigm of the private/public dominance.
This study provides the sexual minorities some critical instruments for elaborating their
rhetoric confrontation with hatred mechanisms, who exploit the particular values of
tolerance, freedom, democracy and human dignity, in order to confront the GLBT
community, who wishes to celebrate its (homo)sexual pride. This study may also
illuminate the heterosexual majority's perspective on democratic values in modern
society.
Pride in Education panel
Chair: Shilo Guy, Ph.D., School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University
In recent years the collaboration between the Israeli education system and LGBT
community organizations (especially Hoshen and IGY) has been deepened, with the aim
of promoting a change in the Israeli education system towards tolerance, awareness and
promotion of sensitivity to sexual minority issues. The panel will discuss these changes
through three presentations, presenting different aspects of the issue: changes in LGBT
school students' experiences; The competing of Hoshen volunteers within schools (both
in front of straight school students and teachers), and the efforts of the education system
(mainly through the work of 'SHEFI' – the ministry of education's psychology-counseling
services) to promote sexual minority issues within the system.
Presentation 1: A subversive opportunity with State sponsorship
Efrat Rotem, Hoshen
Presentation 2: Homophobia in Israeli Schools: How Much Time Matters?
Guy Shilo & Sari Lavi, IGY Research team.
In 2004, Israeli Gay Youth Organization conducted the first Israeli research exploring
experiences of LGBT school students within the Israeli education system, showing high
levels of Homophobia and prejudice experienced by sexual minority students within
Israeli schools. Due to changes of recent years within the ministry of education toward
the issue of sexual minority, the organization conducted a comparative research, to
explore whether these macro changes are manifested in school students experiences.
Participations in the 2008 study were 390 high school students, aged 12-18 (M=16.1,
SD=1.2), among which 56% boys, 42% girls, and 2% identified as transgender. Most of
the participants (67%) identified as gays/lesbians, 31% as bisexuals, secular (83%), Jews
(97%). Participants filled the school climate questioner adapted and translated from
GLSEN (Kosciw & Cullen, 2002; Kosciw, 2004, Pizmony-Levi et.al., 2005). We added
to the original questioner items from a national research on violence in the Israeli
education system and an open question regarding students' experiences.
The comparison of the two samples (2004 and 2008), revealed small differences. High
percentages of the students were exposed to significant levels of prejudice and
homophobia within school, and to violence and sexual assaults regarding their sexual
orientation.
The presentation includes few comparative analysis between the two samples (2004,
2008) and a qualitative analysis of students' answers related to their experiences and
recommendations to the education system. We discuss optional explanations to the fact
that the macro-organizational positive changes do not manifest in high school students'
experiences.
Presentation 3: The Psychological-Counseling services
Tali Treger, the Psychological-Counseling services, Ministry of Education.
In recent years, the psychological-counseling services in the ministry of education has
made a tremendous progress in trying to include issues related to sexual orientation
within the curricula and implement them in the day to day school work. The presenter
will relate to the two presenters and will expand the discussion on the ways the ministry
of education relates to issues concerning sexual orientation and LGBT students.
Developmental Experiences of Transgender Youth
Arnold H. Grossman, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University
This presentation will report findings from the largest study with transgender youth
conducted in the United States; the first study conducted directly with transgender youth
versus retrospective findings reported mostly by transsexual adults in clinical settings. In
this study, 55 transgender youth from New York City reported on their gender identity
and gender expression developmental milestones, as well as their current gender
expression in various settings. They also described their parental reactions to their gender
nonconformity as children, and their mothers’ and father’s initial and current reactions to
their disclosed transgender identity. The youth were ages of 15 to 21, with 24
transitioning as FTM and 31 transitioning as MTF. All of the youth reported feeling
different from others in early childhood, were told that they were different, and were
called either tomboy or sissy. More than two-thirds of the youth reported that their
parents told them to stop acting like a tomboy or sissy and they needed counseling for
being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. As children, approximately four-fifths of the
FTM youth preferred boys’ games and sports, and about two-thirds liked rough-and
tumble play, imagined themselves as sports figures, and wanted to grow up like their
fathers. About four-fifths of the MTF youth preferred to play with dolls, imagined
themselves as dancers or models, and wanted to grow up to be like their mothers.
Approximately two-thirds of both groups preferred wearing clothes of the other birth sex
and wished they had been born that sex. About one quarter of the youth went to
counseling to change their gender identity. The more gender non-conforming the youth
were the younger the age their parents asked about their sexual orientation or gender
identity, the more psychological and physical abuse they experienced from their parents,
and the younger the youth disclosed their transgender identity. Forty-three of the
participants’ mothers and 26 of their fathers knew about their gender identities. The youth
reported that 54% of their mothers and 63% if their fathers initially reacted negatively to
their disclosure, and 50% of the mothers and 44% of their fathers reacted negatively at
the time of the interviews, an average of three years later. Additional differences between
MTF and FTM youth will be reported as well as implications for parents and
practitioners.
Exactly the Same Sex: Sexual Consultation in the Yishuv in the 1930s
Liat Kozma, Hebrew University
In the early 1930s, three sexual consultation centers operated in Tel Aviv: one run by
Kupat Holim, one by Hadasah, and one by an individual doctor, Dr. Avraham Matmon.
Q&A columns in /Davar /daily and in /Habri'ut/ magazine addressed readers' questions
on sexual maters. The purpose of these consultation centers, as formulated by their
founders, was a national one. First, eugenics, or "improvement of the race". Newspaper
adds encouraged couples to resort to the station before marriage, in order to prevent the
birth of those whose existence was purportedly burdening the Yishuv: the incurably ill,
criminals, prostitutes and homosexuals (indeed!). Second, sexual consultation, especially
for the newly-wed, was supposed to prevent sexual difficulties, and thus help stabilize
heterosexual unions and prevent divorce. Q&A columns, as well as Hadasah reports,
attest that men and women were not very interested in improvement of the race.
Hundreds who turned to these centers during the 1930s were much more interested in
consulting doctors about contraception, abortion, masturbation and impotency.
The lecture will trace the origin of these stations in Weimar sexual reform and in Soviet
family planning programs. It will examine the uniqueness of sexual discourse in the
Yishuv, which unlike its German counterpart ignored homosexuality and was ambivalent
about abortion. The lecture will conclude with the termination of these centers in the late
1930s and early 1940s. The Arab Revolt, the Second World War and the holocaust
marginalized a discourse that promoted contraception. The holocaust turned pro-natalism,
more than ever, into a national agenda.
The purpose of the discussion is to examine sexual discourse as both policing and
liberating. This discourse, I argue, was fueled, not merely by the establishment, but also
by individual men and women who turned to specialists and urged them to measure,
evaluate and police their sexuality.
“Ata Havera Sheli”: You are (he is) my girlfriend - between Yona Wallach and Judith
Butler
Ronny Almog, Philosophy Department, Tel-Aviv University
What first stands out in Yona Wallach's poem"You are (he is) my girlfriend" is its clear
dismantling of the two basic identities-essences that many of us deeply feel: womanhood
and manhood. But this dismantling is not purely revolutionary, because it is characterized
by sharp movements within a dichotomy. From 'boyfriend' to 'girlfriend'. From 'she' to
'he' to 'she'. A danger lies in wait, then, for this dismantling. A danger of falling into the
dichotomy that it strives to break. A danger of not leaving space beyond the borders. A
danger of gendering again.
Does Wallach's poem form a solid opinion about the meaning of gender identity,
although it expresses conflicting points of view? Does the poem's chaos indicate a lack of
coherency or does this chaos contain a quest, a rhetorical strategy? Does Wallach's
writing style, which flings out ideas and is built of jumbled feelings, endeavour to express
something about the poem's contents?
With these questions in mind, I place Wallach's poem across from Judith Butler's article,
"Critically queer", which touches on similar themes but in a very different style. Butler's
article is structured, conscious and has a very clear aim -- to object to essentialist
conception of gender. Through the interaction between the texts I examine the different
ways that each writer dismantles gender and discover where the authors' style takes the
content.
In her intentionality, Butler succeeds in dismantling identities without being ensnared. On
the contrary, the chaotic style of Wallach's text allows her to reach a revelation about
identity. A revelation that perhaps enables her text to achieve a more extensive breakage
of gender constructs, in spite of the fact that it falls into those constructs along the
journey. For me, Butler's text opens many possibilities, including the one that it itself
doesn’t allow -- letting the 'self' speak for a moment from inside of me, a possibility that
Wallach does reach.
Reading these two texts together enables a clear recognition of the existence of such a
moment or possibility, which emerges after pacing inside Butler’s logical argument and
floating in Wallach’s unconstrained poetry.
Feminist Sex & Power relations: From the Sex Wars to Today
Yael Mishali, School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University.
In this paper I will explore how the Sex Wars shaped feminist and lesbian paradigms of
power relations that continue to affect contemporary sexual discourse. Supporting Amber
Hollibaugh's (Hollibaugh, 2000) approach, I will argue that instead of denying or
eliminating power from the sexual arena, we should attempt to conceptualize the
distribution of power anew, enabling women to agree to sex instead of refusing it.
According to Katharine MacKinnon, (MacKinnon, 1990) conducting a distribution of
power in a different space, for instance, lesbian, is meaningless, as every space becomes
sexual only by reproducing the same power relations that form the basis of patriarchy,
even if men do not participate. I will suggest that this monolithic view perseveres even
today, as I will demonstrate via MacKinnon's lecture in last November, at the Tel Aviv
University, Israel. I will apply Michel Foucault's (Foucault, 1982) framing of power to
distinguish between power relations and violence, and Katharine Millersdaughter's
(Millersdaughter, 1997) point of view, in order to dissect a complex relationship between
sexual power relations and sexual traumas, which evades the pathological narrative.
To this end I will examine Butch-Femme culture as a case study for identity or a practice
that cannot exist outside of power, and as an intersection of queer and feminist theory.
The paper will incorporate my personal narrative in order to avoid essentialist models, by
placing the text as one possible experience.
Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That's Out of Joint
Lee Edelman, Fletcher Professor of English Literature, Tufts University
Negativity, like the queer, is intolerable, even to those who think themselves queer. Its
insistence on non-identity spurs our continuous efforts to positivize its resistance to
normativity. Though Adorno observed that “society stays alive, not despite its
antagonism, but because of it," the queerness of non-identity provokes repeated attempts
to redeem it by turning it into something pragmatic and comprehensible, like political
action or collective practices that could confirm a social order that would affirm the
survival of the queer. “Against Survival” draws on work by Derrida, Lacan, and
Shakespeare to think queer theory in relation to questions of negativity and futurity and to
assert the radical refusal of queerness to cohere in any quotidian practices aimed at
making its negativity the ground for new forms of communal life or new modes of
viability. Queerness, instead, as this talk will suggest, works against survival, even
against its own survival, except to the extent that antagonism is how “society stays alive.”
In that sense queerness amounts to the rupture that turns hope against itself in order to
maintain the radical negativity that no identity could hope to survive.