Angelides set out to write a genealogy (in the Foucauldian sense) of bisexuality as a concept. He ultimately argues that the hetero/homo binary (theorized by Sedgwick and others) is impossible without bisexuality. Or rather, any binary is defined against the idea that there might be a both/neither. Binaries do the work of eliminating overlap between categories.
Foucault describes his process like this: “I start with a problem in the terms in which it is currently posed and attempt to establish its genealogy; genealogy means that I conduct the analysis starting from the present situation.” (Angelides p. 11, Foucault p. 238)
In the introduction, he talks about how the historiographical method of distinguishing between homosexual acts and homosexual identities just displaces the question of bisexuality. What is a bisexual act? Being intimate with people of multiple genders simultaneously? But a multi-person sexual interaction could have many different configurations of acts, and any given person in the interaction may not do “bisexual acts” during that time. And how can we know when someone’s relationships with people of multiple genders are due to multiplicities of desire, vs. due to other reasons? (Socio-economic necessity or expectations, for example.) We can’t, unless someone’s letters, diaries, etc. provide evidence one way or the other. So, Chris Cagle describes the common approach as “monosexual gay historiography.”
Quotes/Passages I’ve Marked
p.8 — Lisa Duggan suggested that queer theory concepts applied to LG history texts might be fruitful, but mostly that hasn’t happened. Queer theory and LG history have “strained relations".” Angelides suggests part of this issue is “an implicit and unproductive distinction between social constructionism and deconstruction.” He says this distinction is silly bc both methods rely on historicity/historical analysis of shifting categories, so they definitely are not in opposition to each other.
p.10 “In this book I would like to initiate a productive exchange between the two fields of queer theory and gay/lesbian history. What I am endeavoring to work toward is what I will call a form of deconstructive history; or more specifically in this case, a queer deconstructive history….In order to do this I want to situate bisexuality not as marginal to discourses of sexuality…but as central to any understanding of the historical construction of binary categories of sexuality.”
p.10 “The more tangible objective of this study, then, is to employ bisexuality as a heuristic device for rereading and rethinking some of the critical moments in the history, theory and politics of sexuality.”
p.12 “Garber’s Vice Versa is less a study of history than an examination of particular instances of bisexuality as they have appeared in a wide range of historical texts.”
p.13— criticism of the Merl Storr anthology (Bisexuality: A Critical Reader), saying that while it does “attempt to document the historical production of thought in relation to bisexuality in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries…these chapters are not historicized analyses of such work”
p.17— argues bisexuality has been cast (in theorizations) as always in the past or the future, never existing in the present. “My argument is that the elision of bisexuality from the present tense has been one of the primary discursive strategies employed in an effort to avoid a collapse of sexual boundaries— a crisis of sexual identity”
p.26— Paraphrasing Irigaray as saying that women are symbolically constructed as “object of the phallic economy,” meaning that “she is but the mirror through which masculine identity is constructed and reproduced.” Masculinity is often defined as “not being girly.” Angelides also says Irigaray is saying that gender itself (as a category/concept( is phallagocentric, I think because the whole result of dividing people into genders is to shore up masculine identity and therefore masculine power. I’m not TOTALLY sure I’m understanding this correctly though. Also talks about the shift in Western thought from “all humans are one thing, women are just inverted forms of men” to “there are two fundamentally different kinds of humans. but male is the best kind.”
p.73— Paraphrasing Freud, childhood sexuality is “a universal prerequisite to the development of gender identification. Normality…is but a convoluted and precarious achievement.” Freud also helped break apart “normal sexuality” from “procreation” by showing how sexual development matters in other ways too. Also quotes from a letter in which Freud tells a woman not to worry that her son is gay because while it’s unusual, there’s nothing wrong or unnatural about it. He also refused to treat homosexuals in therapy unless they showed symptoms of normal things you would go to psychoanalysis for. Being gay was not a cause in and of itself for him.
p.119- Some stats from Kinsey— 18% of white American men had had both homosexual and heterosexual experiences in the past 3 years, and 46% had had them at some point in their lives.
p.122— Melbourne chapter of American Radicalesbians (the group from Tales from the Lavender Menace) also agreed that everyone’s sexuality starts the same in its base nature, but we choose to express it differently. The sexuality of a gay person and of a straight person are not fundamentally different.
p.125— 1972, Melbourne Gay Liberation Publications Group publishes article reflecting current anxieties about too many straights in the Gay Lib movement. Steve Gavin, writing in a NY gay lib magazine, wrote about how straights and bisexuals (a word he puts in scare quotes) should stay out of the movement and should not be included in consciousness raising groups. Angelides says the issue of consciousness raising groups was how the “gay lib for gays only” idea really became a big issue.
p.146— Foucault viewed gay liberation movements as not liberating at all, but a new form of falling prey to the “compulsion to discourse” about sex. Homosexual identity was created by history, so embracing that identity is just following along those same lines of history. quote from Foucault- “It is not enough to liberate sexuality. We also have to liberate ourselves…from the very notion of sexuality.” He saw the movement as useful in terms of getting more civil rights, but that was about it. Also said the phrase “let us liberate our sexuality” doesn’t really have a useful meaning.
p.154 and 157— Critiques of Foucault
p.163- Purpose for the chapter is, “lots of people have noticed bisexual erasure, but nobody’s really made a convincing argument for WHY that has occurred”
p.174 and p.183— Critiques of Sedgwick
p.176— “Bisexuality…is unthinkable outside of binary logic” (in this case the binary is homo/hetero, not male/female)
p.183- treating sexuality and gender as two separate things might work for some people, but for some people, they are very much tied up with each other! “I would argue also that this kind of exclusionary mapping of sexuality serves to sustain the analytical distance Sedgwick has installed between feminism and gay/lesbian/queer studies. That is, bisexuality (and indeed transgenderism) is the pawn that is forced out in an act of methodological and disciplinary secessionism”
p.186— In relation to the above, we have to always remember that “sexuality” as a category first emerged as a disorder of gender. So, while we may often think about them as separate now, they are two divergences of the same initial thing.
p.196 “This deconstructive genealogy is intended, to quote Foucault, ‘not to discover the roots of our identity, but to commit itself to its dissipation.’”
p.197- “Any notion of identity is inherently repressive of internal differences”
Sources I’ve Marked
“A Gay Manifesto” by Carl Wittman and “Gay is Good” by Martha Shelley both suggest that everyone is naturally bisexual and people divide themselves into straight and gay for sociopolitical reasons.
Fuss Inside/Out
Du Plessis “Blatantly Bisexual, Or Unthinking Queer Theory”
p.248- note 39, a list of works critiquing queer theory