Odd Couples
In the chapter of The Century on Freud, Badiou makes a number of admirably clear statements about sexuality:
[Freud]…anticipated something patently evident today: the creative resource constituted by the homosexuality – whether latent or explicit – of every human subject…Freud boldly maintains that homosexuality is only one of the components of generic sexuality. There is nothing either natural or obvious about the fact that the object of desire for a subject is borne by the opposite sex. Rather, it is the result of a long and fortuitous construction.
In the face of such a forceful declaration of the non-naturality of heterosexual libidinal investment, and the necessary participation of homosexuality in the generic multiplicity of sexual dispensations (given the fundamentally indiscriminate insistence of drives), one ought perhaps to hesitate before taking Badiou’s mathematized Lacanian theory of sexuation as inherently – even “rogueishly” – heterosexist or heteronormative. How many times will one be obliged to repeat that the Two of sexual difference is only nominally “masculine” and “feminine”, and that the impossible couple it forms is not the final destiny of all sexual beings but merely the most elementary figure of impossible-coupling or sexual non-relation?
The point of Badiou’s framing of love’s “coming aboard” in terms of the scene of Two has never been to deny that more extensive intersubjective configurations are possible (two, or three, or four… – in any case, always n+1, for any n that knows how to number its components), or even very common (what use would a theory of sexuation be that could not acknowledge the richest possible variety of tragicomic screw-ups?), but simply to isolate the figure which establishes the common non-viability – hence, the radical equality – of all intersubjective configurations.
There is no basis here for any sort of privilege of the heterosexual; still less of the familial mommy-daddy couple and its Oedipal offspring. Neither is it required that, between homosexual partners, there be a distribution of sexuated roles such that one maps on to the “masculine” and the other onto the “feminine” component of the heterosexual couple. That this sometimes appears to happen in practice is a contingency that should be approached with the utmost care. On the one hand, it does perhaps indicate the force of a heternormative compulsion that successive waves of feminist and queer insurgency have barely begun to dislodge from our culture. On the other hand, one should always be aware that things are not necessarily as they seem, and that the manipulation of semblance belongs to the technics of resistance as much as to the operational domain of societal control.
Badiou’s recent criticisms of the homo-heteronormative turn in sexual politics strike me as both timely and fully justified. The establishment in UK law of civil partnerships is in many respects a positive step, and I do not begrudge any of its beneficiaries the real advantages that they may have gained from it, but it revises the terms of inclusion in such a way as to entrench other exclusions, and has by no means put an end to the bitter unfairness of the legal nullification of non-standard social/sexual bonds. As I suggested a couple of posts back, the truth process attached to “the queer event” (which I identify, perhaps sentimentally, with the Stonewall riots and the politics of “visibility” which followed) entails an ongoing transvaluation of the value of “kinship”, an epic undertaking to which Badiou’s description of the composition of a truth as a process of fidelity without finality seems especially appropriate.
In effect, the reactionaries – churchmen, moralists, Daily Mail opinion columnists – are right to say that there is no clear limit to this transvaluation, that it overflows every predicative determination of kinship, leaving nothing untouched; but they are wrong to suppose that this process is therefore one of pure dissolution and social unbinding, delivering human society and biology alike to a catastrophic degeneracy. On the contrary, what is happening is that kinship is for the first time being thought beyond its Oedipal determinations, beyond the horizon of reproductive futurism, as the form of the social bond in its primary contingency, without concern for past (genealogy) or future (the symbolic child) but in the full force of its affinitive power and the present that it composes.
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:33 pm
>There is nothing either natural or obvious about the fact that the object of desire for a subject is borne by the opposite sex.
Dunno. I’m from the “form follows function” crowd. Given the set {‘penis’,'anus’,'vagina’} I’m seeing one set of two as obvious. That, plus the fact that the species naturally carries on from that union of two (and not at all from any of the other possibilities) makes this Badiou fellow rather suspect.
But I’ll gently, lovingly ignore these attempts to remodel the human condition along arbitrary lines.
>kinship is for the first time being thought beyond its Oedipal determinations, beyond the horizon of reproductive futurism, as the form of the social bond in its primary contingency, without concern for past (genealogy) or future (the symbolic child) but in the full force of its affinitive power and the present that it composes.
2+2!=3, and so forth. These people certainly do apply their creativity in interesting directions, but it remains to be seen if they are not plucked off the sleeve of history like so much unwanted lint.
Possibly there will one day be a page for neo-Sophists on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophists
June 4th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Because it’s not altogether clear whether by “these people” you mean sophists, queers or both, I’m going to let this comment stand: it’s nasty, but not unequivocally exterminationist. I would observe, however, that we are all going to be plucked off the sleeve of history…
In any case, isn’t there a little more to desire than cocks, cunts and arseholes? Speaking for myself, I don’t find any of these things the least bit desirable for its own sake.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Good riposte to Osborne. One could add that it’s faintly ridiculous to accuse Badiou of “heterosexism” given that his founding example of philosophy’s engagement with love is, errm, Plato’s Symposium.
Also – I don’t think it’s sentimental to identify (nominate?) Stonewall as evental. It certainly fits the bill politically (“the fags will never fight back” was the pre-riot doxa). What’s interesting is that perhaps it marks an amorous event too. Badiou is a bit vague on how events interact and how they straddle conditions – he admitted as much in his recent London seminar in response to a critical question from Alexander Garcia Duttman.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Excellent. Interesting also in light of the Edelman conference, where someone brought up Freud’s Three Essays, the ‘we are all perverts’ thesis of which sadly ended up in ‘no, WE’RE perverts’. The ‘queer event’ (which seemed in his case much like slotting the latest thinker into the apparatus) is interesting in that (at least in the line from Carpenter, Hirschfeld, through to the aformentioned Freud essays, and Butler before she got dull) it represents a sort of perverse universalism.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
it perves a purpose, you might say…
June 9th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
The point of perversion being, as it were, to always miss the point…
June 15th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Neither is it required that, between homosexual partners, there be a distribution of sexuated roles such that one maps on to the “masculine” and the other onto the “feminine” component of the heterosexual couple. That this sometimes appears to happen in practice is a contingency that should be approached with the utmost care. On the one hand, it does perhaps indicate the force of a heternormative compulsion that successive waves of feminist and queer insurgency have barely begun to dislodge from our culture
I don’t understand this. (Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by sexuated roles) In a hetero or homo relationship, at least temporarily, one needs to be the man, and the other the woman. You can switch from one position to the other, but ultimately you’re taking a position. You can NOT call it ”man and woman”, you can call it ”X and Y”, but structurally speaking obviously there is a shaft and a hole. What constitutes a ”heteronormative compulsion” here?
June 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
obviously there is a shaft and a hole
Only in the specific case of penile intromission is there a “shaft” and a “hole”. There is rather considerably more to sex than penile intromission, as even straights know these days.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:30 am
I mean penile-anal or penile-vaginal intromission; obviously with reciprocal oral sex between two male partners you could have one “shaft” and one “hole” each.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:31 am
It’s just a pity that reciprocal buggery’s so awkward, although I guess if a lot of guys formed a big circle…
June 15th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I mean penile-anal or penile-vaginal intromission; obviously with reciprocal oral sex between two male partners you could have one “shaft” and one “hole” each.
yes but structurally there is still only the shaft and the hole (male/female, active/passive, X and Y, …)
unless you posit some third element, like David Cronenberg’s spinal anus, I’m afraid we’re stuck with this binarity
what I’m trying to say is when a gay man is buggered, how is he different from a woman being buggered, so that he would earn the title ”gay” which in queer theory seems to constitute some kind of a separate entity or even an entity so radically different that it undermines heteronormativity?
June 15th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I hadn’t understood sexual difference as necessarily coalescing around that kind of insertor/insertee (to use Bersani’s terminology) binarity. It can do, but then it also can not do. Bersani’s very critical of the emphasis in Foucault and Dworkin (now there’s a pair) on diffuse, non-local, non-binarised erogeneity (e.g. in S&M, idealized lesbian “whole-body” sex, etc.), which he thinks is “redemptive” in intent and symptomatic of an aversion to fucking as such. That may be so; but I don’t intend to let my entire theoretical viewpoint be dominated by his variety of cock-worship either…
June 15th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Bersani’s very critical of the emphasis in Foucault and Dworkin (now there’s a pair) on diffuse, non-local, non-binarised erogeneity (e.g. in S&M, idealized lesbian “whole-body” sex, etc.), which he thinks is “redemptive” in intent and symptomatic of an aversion to fucking as such.
Well, they’re right, fucking is generally awful on its own. Whole body surely sex isn’t an idealised unattainable, it’s actually a terrific system of biomorphic perversion: rimming, toe-sucking, spit-exchange, perineal licking, biting, ear-sex, whipping, heel-sucking, squatting… this is what being human is all about? That and other things, obviously, but it’s hard to think about that right now.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
That may be so; but I don’t intend to let my entire theoretical viewpoint be dominated by his variety of cock-worship either…
i just got bersani from ben, so i can’t comment immediately, but why do you feel he was proposing cock worship?
June 15th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I’m pretty sure it’s the essay on S&M in “Homos” that features the expression “phallic oblation”. Although I don’t have the book to hand – I borrowed it from the university library at DMU – so I can’t be absolutely certain that’s what it said…
Squatting? I know the housing crisis is bad; but there’s surely no need to eroticize it…
June 15th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I meant squatting to take a poo or a pee on someone.
June 16th, 2007 at 7:28 am
…you’re just not going to let me derail your attempts to lower the tone by wit, are you?
Still, you’re right of course: when Dworkin and others talk about “whole body” sex, can they reasonably exclude the shit and piss?
July 4th, 2007 at 12:05 am
On the one hand, it does perhaps indicate the force of a heternormative compulsion that successive waves of feminist and queer insurgency have barely begun to dislodge from our culture.
But how do you envisage this queer adumbration practically? How do you introduce a third element? A new sexual organ? An ambisexual being? It’s possible in science fiction, perhaps.