The purpose of this blog is to practice theoretical writing that avoids the loftiness for which I'm well known. I will be crass, base, hopefully a little offensive, and I will include other media such as videos, images, and references to other blogs and websites.
Melissa and I are doing work on Queer as theory, practice and politics. The inquiry has lead me to start meditations on faggot - is there a theory, practice and politics of faggotry? In my experience, the answer is yes. Faggot practice, for instance, is the insistence on non-normative masculine gender performance, as well as transgressive sexual (we don't need to get too specific) practice - acting like a faggot. The politics of faggotry is in our insistence to be represented without the liberal strategy of downplaying or demeaning our behavior. At the same time, the political faggot resists being codified in his behavior. Effeminate gay men on television are not faggots. They are characatures of our ideal constitution - weak, unimportant, comical, useless. The political faggot insists on his legitimate representation. The theory of faggotry will be my next project. It may borrow from the theory of Queer, although it may stand to counter it.
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A blog intended as open space to work through some theory. My intention is to ground theory in experience, an attempt to avert its loftiness without compromising the power of theory that attracts me to it.
1 comment:
My friend Richard had a series of challenging questions as to the nature of "faggotry." His questions came from the critique that "faggot" is most used as a demeaning insult, which is all too true.
I specified to him that I am treating "faggot" as a self-determined identity, and its self-identifying properties apply when the subject sees himself as a gendered other and/or a sexual other. There is a lot of potential in identifying as other for a theory of faggotry.
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