This article’s form, more so than most articles, is directly shaped by the circumstances of its writing. The first author, who submitted it to the journal, passed away before the article finished the publication process. The editors passed it along to the second author, “to provide perspective and to address revision” (p.2). She felt uncomfortable altering Hoogestraat’s text beyond minor sentence-level editing without her permission, so instead, she presents the article as it was originally written, interspersed with her own (clearly labeled) commentary and responses. The result is, as the title suggests, a dialogue about the differences between “GLBT” (culture, community, ethos) and “queer” (culture, community, ethos).
Hoogestraat’s part uses Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart as an example of the construction of gay identity/ethos, and Glasby’s part uses Adrienne Rich’s poem “Yom Kippur” as a counterexample of queer identity/ethos.
Quotes I Marked (some with my commentary)
(p. 3) “Usually defined as a controversial and antagonistic verbal attack, Rand (2008) recasts the polemic as a genre that enables agency, not through the text or speaker, but rather through the form’s effect, affect, and subsequent action” —Glasby defines queer as polemical, but not (or at least less so) gay
(p.4) Quote from James S. Baumlin suggesting postmodernism might be defined as “an age after ethos, since the very notion of the sovereign individual now falls under question”
(p.7) Quote from Butler and Athanasiou: “So much depends on how we understand the ‘I’ who crafts herself, since it will not be a fully agentic subject who initiates that crafting. It will be an ‘I’ who is already crafted, but also who is compelled to craft against her crafted condition”
(p.7) Quote from Alexander and Rhodes- “Now that the homosexual is a much more visible subject, one who is, at times, allowed to speak, then what kind of ethos is that queer allowed?”
(p.7) “It is important to acknowledge if the desire of the rhetor is to appeal to a LGBTQ or non-LGBTQ audience, for what is valued is different, and whether or not the rhetor desires and/or values legitimization” If queerness instead of gayness includes being opposed to (or at least not valuing legitimization), where does that put would-be queer academics? I kinda have to value (some level of) legitimization for the sake of my career, and anything that’s “queer” that I write that is lauded by the academy….must not be that queer after all, under these definitions. It’s such a paradox, of activism (presumably toward a goal, presumably of liberation) and being anti-institutions, anti-normative. If you achieve your liberatory goal, won’t it then be “normal”/accepted to be/do whatever?
I can’t help but think of the line in The Incredibles: “If everyone is Super….then no one will be.” That’s totally true for queerness insofar as it is defined as anti-normative. Or rather, if we successfully dismantle norms, then that anti-normativity becomes normal/accepted. If we abolish gender/the gender binary, then gender stops mattering, which is paradoxical when you want to also honor how gender matters quite a lot to many trans people. If I succeed in my bisexual activist goals, I’ll organize my own identity out of existence/mattering. Which isn’t BAD, but it presents some potential conflicts and contradictions, especially for “queerness” as anti-normative, especially for approaches rooted in identity politics, like Queer Nation-esque approaches.
(p.9-10) “A gay ethos might be concerned with a non-LGBTQ audience (this looking for approval and to establish themselves as “normal’ or ‘safe’ or ‘the same’) whereas a queer ethos cares not about appearing or being normal, but rather about being engaged in critically analyzing the importance of normality and investigating and dismantling the notion of the normative”
(p.10) “What [might it] mean to consciously and intentionally occupy identities in bad faith” - the second half of the sentence refers to “bottom of the barrel identities [that] Warner advocates for in The Trouble with Normal. I’m not super sure what Glasby means here, since what comes to mind for me is people like Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug, who falsely occupied POC identities. I don’t think that’s what Glasby means, but I’m also not sure what she DOES mean. Maybe it means refusing to accept the negative elements of a queer identity, refusal to accept that you are bad/ought to feel shame? Like, disidentifying, kind of?
(p.11) “Fryer (2010) advocates for the emergence of ‘a new field',’ one that centers on the ethics of identity, arguing, ‘the motivating question is not primarily the traditional question of ethics, what ought we to do? Instead, the motivating question becomes, in this unethical world, this world of hatred and injustice, who ought we to be?’”
(p.12) Quote from Butler “For whom is outness a historically available and affordable option. Is there an unmarked class character to the demand for universal ‘outness’?” This question also makes me wonder about the various factors that lead some people to be out despite pressing class-related reasons not to be (like Leslie Feinberg), while others choose the pain of staying closeted as the better option for their own survival. A later quote on the same page from Halperin— “To come out is precisely to expose oneself to a different set of dangers and constraints.” You’re always choosing which of two situations seems more manageable, even though both have difficulties.
(p.13) Glasby puts her definition in a slightly different way: “A queer ethos is less concerned with non-queer/LGBTQ audiences, focusing more on other queer/LGBTQ individuals, so the rhetor’s moves, appeals, strategies, and content are not concerned with establishing credibility despite/in spite of being queer/LGBTQ.”
The phrase “despite/in spite of being queer/LGBTQ” hurts me, because I feel that tension about multiple aspects of my identity. I wrote about the tension and double-vision I feel when I read scholarship on anxiety/depression rhetorics as someone diagnosed with both of these, as a conference paper I was supposed to present at RSA this past May (cancelled due to COVID). I never want to write and try to establish credibility IN SPITE OF some aspect of myself, but there are so many pressures to do so, both material (I professionally need people to take me seriously and respect my scholarship) and subconscious (some of it is probably just learned discomfort/deeply ingrained notions of scientific “objectivity”).
In thinking through all of this, I have both the blessing and the curse of thinking about it as both a researcher looking to study queer rhetoric and composition, but that research itself is also a piece of queer rhetoric and queer composition. Sometimes, I find myself reading these books and articles more in terms of how to shape my own writing, rather than how to shape my research design/goals. Which then makes those lines all the more blurry. I’ve been waiting to re-read Will Banks’ “Written Through the Body,” since it’s the only thing on my list I’ve read before and I want to come back to it with the most distance/new perspective possible. But from my memory, that article blurs those lines an awful lot as well. He’s writing about teaching composition from a queer working class embodiment, but he’s also writing about writing as a queer working class writer himself. The article performs the very moves it’s discussing. Which is good! I think more articles should do that. But all the queer writing moves in the world aren’t worth much if I don’t have something to write about, so I need to be careful to read each article with both things in mind.
Sources Marked
Fryer (2010)
Wallace and Alexander (2009)
Alexander and Rhodes (2011, 2012)
Rand (2014)
Glasby (2014)