In “Queer and Now” Sedgwick manages to accomplish something none of the philosophers we have studied thus far have rigorously attempted. In exploring the definition of the designation queer and the various interpretations of political concerns of this classification, she gives readers a glimpse into the lives of those who struggle daily with the issues we have spoken about in class. Though I am not naïve enough to have come into this class with no understanding of the political roots of Queer Theory, when working through dense and highly theoretical language it is remarkably easy to forget these issues affect all people’s daily lives, and impact many individuals in dramatic and heartbreaking ways. By evoking the images of the countless teenagers who commit suicide each year due to the manner in which society condemns their identity, the individuals for whom Christmas -a holiday “itself constituted in the image of ‘the family’- is a time of exclusion from a grand sense of unity rather than a source of joy, and the people who struggle to hold onto life in the face of physically devastating illnesses while simultaneously having death wished upon them from members of society who regard them as filth, Sedgwick ensures her readers never lose sight of the tangible stakes of her argument (6) As the introduction comes to a close, her meditation on the anti-intellectualism of our age made me realize just how much her ideas affect my own life in ways I never had realized.
In the last segment of her argument, Sedgwick meditates on “political correctness” and the origin of this term. She asserts the political right of our nation has succeeded in lumping everything from Marxism to Queer Theory under “the rubric of ‘politically correct’” in “a coup of cynical slovenliness unmatched since the artistic and academic purges of Germany and Russia in the thirties”(18). Designating theoretical perspectives which contradict their own beliefs under this terminology is brilliant to say the least. People hate politics. The word politics and its many variations have come to signify dishonesty and ruthless self-interest within our culture, immediately evoking a sense of distrust in many Americans. Labeling courses of study under the heading politically correct is an easy way to generate or amplify the distrust, suspicion, or ignorance many American have for these already marginalized viewpoints. However, the aspect of this assertion I find truly alarming is the hint Sedgwick provides that this covertly hateful discourse is ingrained within and acting upon the universities of our nation, institutions which are supposed to serve as safe havens for all ideas with academic merit regardless of their political capital. Sedgwick ends her introduction on the note that “Newsweek pontificated that under the reign of multiculturalism in colleges, ‘it would not be enough for a student to refrain from insulting homosexuals….He or she would be expected to…study their literature and culture alongside that of Plato, Shakespeare, and Locke”(20). The dismissal of texts falling under the discipline of Queer Theory and other stigmatized disciplines as an obligatory read in order to maintain a false sense of societal equality rather than an opportunity to explore texts in which meanings do not “line up tidily with each other” and “invest those sights with fascination and love,” is insulting to the people who creates these texts and appreciate these texts for both their artistic merit and messages of tolerance.
It is possible, and quite likely, that this portion of this article hit home for me because I am currently reading Homer’s The Iliad, a classic which could easily be take the place of the work of Locke or Shakespeare as book which is allegedly more worthy of study than more modern works within the realm of Queer Theory, in one my English courses here at Michigan State University. I do love The Iliad, and I believe there is something about the humanity of the character Achilles that strikes me as timeless. When my professor asks us why young scholars throughout the world are still reading this text, I usually base my reply around the feeling The Iliad generates that there is something constant in human nature. As I worked through the text, the fact that the Trojans and Achaeans featured within the epic glorified the past and their genealogical roots became abundantly clear. Throughout Book 2 of the epic, the descriptions of the fighting men assert that though these men are glorious, they are not quite as strong or valiant as the fathers who preceded them. This sentiment is reinforced by the usage of epithets that actually define these men in terms of their ancestors; Achilles himself is introduced as “Peleus’ son” in works first line(Homer 1). In regarding these classics as the greatest literature to which students of our era have access and ascribing our own meanings onto characters who are removed from us historically by a temporal distance that is difficult to grasp, are we romanticizing the past in a way similar to these warriors? If so, could this action be partially motivated by an effort to hold onto what we perceive to be the norms of the past? The question is certainly as troubling one.
- Tracy
Works Cited
Homer, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox. The Iliad. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.:
Viking. 1990. Print.
Viking. 1990. Print.
Sedgwick, Eve. "Queer and Now." 1993. Print.
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