| ESRC
RESEARCH GROUP ON CARE, VALUES AND THE FUTURE OF WELFARE
University of Leeds
Workshop
Paper No 8
Prepared for Workshop Two
Statistics and Theories for Understanding Social Change
Friday 21 January 2000
Sasha Roseneil
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF POSTMODERN
TRANSFORMATIONS OF SEXUALITY AND CATHEXIS
`an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western
culture must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its
central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate
a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition'
(Sedgwick, 1991:1)
`homosexuality
is no longer to be seen simply as marginal with regard to
a dominant stable form of sexuality (heterosexuality) against
which it would be defined either by opposition or by homology.
In other words, it is no longer to be seen either as merely
transgressive or deviant vis-à-vis a proper, natural
sexuality (i.e. institutionalized reproductive sexuality),
according to the older, pathological model, or as just another,
optional `life-style', according to the model of contemporary
North American pluralism… [R]ather than marking the limits
of social space by designating a place at the edge of culture,
gay sexuality in its specific female and male cultural (or
subcultural) forms acts as an agency of social process whose
mode of functioning is both interactive and yet resistant,
both participatory and yet distinct, claiming at once equality
and difference, demanding political representation
while insisting on its material and historical specificity'
(de Lauretis, 1991:iii).
Introduction
At
the heart of the intellectual framework within which CAVA
is situated is the recognition that we are currently living
through a period of intense and profound social change. Thus
far this change has been conceptualized, through Fiona's work,
in terms of transformations within three interconnected spheres
- `family' (which she defines as the `organization of social
reproduction and intimacy'), `nation' (`nationhood and nation-state')
and `work' (`production')(1).
The aim of this paper is to add another dimension to our understanding
of the social changes which provide the context within which
we are working - the realm of sexuality and cathexis. The
paper proceeds from the position that an exploration of transformations
of sexuality and cathexis must be central to any theorization
of postmodernity(2).
By contributing to the historical and contemporary context
within which the research programme is located, I am seeking
to make a theoretical, and political, intervention, which
has implications across the whole of the research programme.
The paper is therefore a `position paper', which sets forth
an argument about the importance of relations of sexuality
and cathexis in understandings of social change, about how
we might seek to analyze this, and about the direction and
nature of contemporary transformations in the realm of sexuality
and cathexis.
After
much deliberation, I have chosen to speak of sexuality
and cathexis, in order to capture the notion both of
the organization of erotic relations and the organization
of emotionally charged affective relations (3).
I will not attempt a definition which circumscribes the `proper
domain' of sexuality and cathexis, because what is important
about relations of sexuality and cathexis is that they permeate,
sometimes indeed saturate, the entire social formation (4).
Whilst some of what I will be talking about can be considered
under the rubric of change within the sphere, and in cultural
meanings, of `family', my frame of reference cross-cuts the
public/private divide, and is concerned also with shifts in
non-familial and public forms of sociality.
The
paper is divided into two main sections. In the first I offer
an overview of how understandings of sexuality have changed
over time, focusing on sociological knowledge about sexuality
and moving on to a discussion of recent developments in queer
theory, which I argue can contribute in significant ways to
our thinking about sexuality. This section concludes with
an outline of how we might seek to `queer' our analytical
framework for CAVA. The second part of the paper then goes
on to trace some of the shifts in the organization of sexuality
and cathexis between adults in the second half of the twentieth
century, discussing the emergence of modern sexual identities,
and the shifts in the relationship between `the homosexual'
and `the heterosexual', as categories, identities and ways
of life. I then focus particularly on what I conceptualize
as the `queer tendencies' which I suggest characterize the
re-organization of relations of sexuality and cathexis in
the postmodern world. The paper concludes with an appeal for
our research to resist the forces that will impel us towards
regression to the heteronorm.
What
the paper is not…
But
before I go any further, I should be clear about what remains
outside my remit here. The paper is not a comprehensive discussion
of the relationship between sexuality and the discipline of
social policy. It is not an analysis of the many and varied
ways in which social policies construct, invoke and regulate
sexuality, and there are many aspects of sexuality with which
social policies are concerned that I do not examine (5).
Neither is the paper a review of the way that social policies
affect different categories of sexual subjects, of the role
of social policy in constructing heterosexuality in particular
ways or of its heteronormative assumptions and discriminatory
practices. Nor is it a detailed discussion of the history
of sexuality or of cathexis in the post war period, as relevant
as an exploration of the implications of the `sexual revolution',
of the era of AIDS, or of the increased commodification of
sex, for example, would be (6).
Also beyond the scope of this paper is an analysis of historical
shifts in adult-child relations and in the construction of
childhood; a more complete understanding of the historicity
of relations of cathexis during this period would explore
this.
Section
1 : Changing Sexual Knowledges
Beginnings….
The
intellectual conditions of the 19th century which
gave rise to the birth of sociology also contributed to changing
understandings of sexuality in European culture. As religion
began to lose its hold, and science took its place in structuring
dominant ways of thinking about the world, sexuality came
to be understood as a natural, biological force which had
to be contained and channelled by society. But although the
period which saw the beginnings of the discipline of sociology
also witnessed the flourishing of public discourse, scientific
knowledge and social and political conflicts about sexuality,
it was not until the second half of the twentieth century
that sociology turned its attention to the study of sexuality
(7). Before this,
sexology - the `science of sex'-, psychoanalysis and psychiatry
shared a `nativist' view of sexuality (Connell, 1997), which
informed the sex surveys of Dickinson and Beam (1932), Davis
(1929) and, most famously, Kinsey (1948 and 1953) in the US,
and `Little Kinsey' (Stanley 1995) (8),
and which lives on in popular discourses about sexuality today.
A
Sociology of Sexuality
Sociology's
theoretical engagement with sexuality began to take shape
in the late 1960s. Social constructionist approaches to sexuality,
which denaturalized sexual behaviour, were pioneered by Gagnon
and Simon (1967, 1973), who coined the notion of the `sexual
script' and McIntosh (1968), who drew on labelling theory
developed within the sociology of deviance to develop the
concept of the homosexual `role', and to question its construction
as a distinct identity. Then, from the 1970s onwards, the
radical sexual politics of the women's movement and the lesbian
and gay movement provided the impetus and context for a burgeoning
of sociological work on sexuality which sought to theorize
and challenge dominant constructions of heterosexuality, and
to document lesbian and gay lives. Following in the footsteps
of Gagnon and Simon and McIntosh was the work of Plummer (1975),
who developed a symbolic interactionist approach to `sexual
stigma' and, taking a rather different trajectory, the historically-grounded
analyses of sexuality of Smith-Rosenberg (1975), Katz (1976),
Weeks (1977) and Foucault (1979). This group's work, which
traces the historical emergence of `the homosexual', was crucial
in establishing the idea of the historicity of sexuality,
the acceptance of which is central to the argument of this
paper, and Foucault's writings, in particular, have been seen
as central to later theorizing of sexuality for its the critique
of the `repressive hypothesis', and for its linking of the
analysis of sexuality with other forms of power. Alongside
this work a number of sociologists, generally from within
the subfield of `deviance', conducted studies of homosexual
community, practice and identity, ranging from Humphreys'
(1978) ethnography of `tearoom trade' to Ponse's (1978) research
on the construction of lesbian identity. Then the onset of
the AIDS crisis in the mid 1980s led to a surge in research
increasingly backed by government funding, ranging from large
scale studies of sexual behaviour to numerous studies of media
representations and popular discourses about AIDS.
Taken
together this work represents a significant body of knowledge
about sexuality in general, and about the construction of
homosexuality and lesbian and gay experiences and communities
in particular. However, whilst the there is now a substantial
sub-field of sociology concerned with the study of sexuality,
both empirically and theoretically, the mainstream of the
discipline remains largely untouched; as Stein and Plummer
(1996) point out, `the sexual revolution' in sociology is
still missing (9).
The study of lesbians and gay men continues to be regarded
as particularistic and of little wider interest, and sexuality
is rarely seen as a significant social cleavage, as a variable
in large scale empirical research, or theorized as a dynamic
of social change.
Social
policy and sexuality
The
situation with respect to the study of sexuality in the discipline
of social policy is even worse than that in sociology. With
the exception of Carabine's (1992, 1996, 1998) work, there
is an almost complete absence of sustained attention to the
area of sexuality, despite the fact that social policies are,
in a multitude of ways, concerned with sexuality. Lesbians,
gay men, bisexuals and transgender people remain largely invisible,
heterosexuality is the absent referent, and heteronormativity
rules the roost (10).
A few writers mention non-heterosexual welfare subjects in
passing, but the fundamental assumption of the welfare subject's
heterosexuality has only really been challenged in health
policy, where the exigencies of AIDS have demanded it.
Queer
Theory
It
was against the backdrop of AIDS and the American New Right's
virulently anti-homosexual politics of the 1980s, and from
within increasingly large, diverse and conflicted lesbian
and gay communities, that a new strand of thinking about sexuality
emerged within the humanities in the 1990s: queer theory (11).
Drawing on poststructuralism, particularly Foucault and Derrida,
and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this rather amorphous body of
work shares a critique of the minoritizing epistemology which
has underpinned both most academic thinking about homosexuality
and the dominant politics within gay communities (12).
This minoritizing view sees `homo/heterosexual definition
… as an issue of active importance primarily for a small,
distinct, relatively fixed homosexual minority', rather than
`seeing it … as an issue of continuing determining importance
in the lives of people across the spectrum of sexualities'
(Sedgwick, 1999:1). Queer theory identifies the homo/heterosexual
binary, and its related opposition, `inside/ outside' (Fuss,
1991), as a central organizing principle of modern society
and culture, and takes this binary as its key problematic
and political target (13).
In common with other poststructuralist understandings of the
exclusionary and regulatory nature of binary identity categories,
queer theory rejects the idea of a unified homosexual identity,
and sees the construction of sexual identities around the
hierarchically structured binary opposition of homo/heterosexual
as inherently unstable. The fracturing and tensions within
the category of homosexuality and the fluidities and non-fixity
of various homosexualities are thus foregrounded. Differences
between lesbians and gay men, to which lesbian feminism had
long been pointing, and between the multifarious, and multiple,
identifications of those within the `queer community' - lipstick
lesbians, s/m-ers, muscle marys, opera queens, bisexuals,
transsexuals, the transgendered, those who identify as black,
Asian, Irish, Jewish … - become theoretically important. Equally,
heterosexuality is also problematized and is rendered as much
less monolithic and unassailable than earlier theory (feminist
and sociological) has tended to regard it, and its construction
and maintenance through acts of exclusion vis-a-vis homosexuality
are placed on the agenda to be studied (14).
Queering
Our Frameworks
Initially
queer theory developed within the humanities largely without
reference to the thirty years of research and theorizing about
sexuality that has taken place within sociology, despite the
clear (and unacknowledged) parallels between the two fields'
social constructionist understandings of sexuality (15).
This has led to some unfounded assumptions of novelty, an
overly textual orientation, an underdeveloped concept of the
social, and a lack of engagement with `real' material, everyday
life and social practices and processes in queer theory, of
which social scientists might rightly be critical (16).
However, I would suggest that there is much that is exciting
and important in queer theory. Its interrogation of sexual
identity categories, and its enactment of a shift in focus
from the margins, on the homosexual, to a focus on the constitution
of the homo/heterosexual binary represent important developments
in the theorization of sexuality. Moreover, its foundational
claim, as expressed by Sedgwick and quoted at the beginning
of the paper, that an understanding of sexuality, and in particular,
of the homo/heterosexual binary, must be central to any analysis
of modern western culture, has significant implications for
social and cultural theory in general.
Along
with a number of other social scientists, working within a
range of disciplines - sociology, geography, socio-legal studies,
international relations - I would like to advocate the `queering'
of our analytical frameworks (17).
A queer sociological perspective would bring queer theory's
interrogation of identity categories into dialogue with a
sociological concern to theorize and historicize social change
in the realm of sexuality. It would see relations of sexuality
and cathexis as central dynamic forces within society, focusing
attention on the homo/heterosexual binary and on heteronormativity
- on studying the `centre', the `inside', as well as the margins,
and the `outside' (Stein and Plummer, 1996). We can learn
from the importance queer theory places on culture, placing
it within a sociological analysis which recognizes that the
postmodern world is characterized by `economies of signs'
(Lash and Urry, 1994), by the ever increasing aestheticization
of everyday life (18).
But we would combine queer theory's attention to the realm
of the cultural with a more sociological analysis of social
practices, processes and lived experience. Thus far queer
theorists have, true to their poststructuralist roots, tended
to favour analyses of structural and discursive regulation
over attention to the resistance and creative agency of human
actors in the realm of sexuality (19).
Their work has been concerned with analyzing the cultural
processes by which the homo/heterosexual binary is upheld,
with how heterosexuality is continuously re-naturalized and
re-prioritized, and with how heteronormativity operates as
a mode of regulation of identities and cultural and social
possibilities (20).
It has also tended to direct its gaze backwards in time, failing
to remark upon and engage with contemporary social change
(21). It
has not begun to explore how the homo/heterosexual binary
and its hierarchical power relations might be undergoing challenge
and transformation in the contemporary world. In contrast,
a queer sociology, I would suggest, should seek to transcend
the limitations of a poststructuralist ontology, reaching
for a compromise between poststructuralism and humanism which
enables the theorization of human agency within historical,
social and cultural contexts (22).
It would have a keen eye for tendencies towards social change,
for shifts, movement and destabilization in established relations
of sexuality and cathexis.
So,
in advocating the queering of our analytical framework, I
am suggesting much more than just `adding in' the study of
lesbians and gay men. Doing this - making sure that we consider
how to research across sexual differences - is just the starting
point; CAVA must take seriously non-normative sexualities,
and must allow lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and all those
whose lives transgress heteronormative assumptions a place
in our analyses. There is a tendency amongst liberal-minded
social scientists, in the wake of the challenges of the new
social movements, to speak of the importance of attention
to `difference', and in recent years sexuality has been added
to the list of differences which it is considered necessary
to include, alongside gender, race/ ethnicity, and, sometimes,
disability. The problem with this is that `differences' are
different from each other, and sexual differences have their
own specific difficulties of definition and identification.
Sexual difference is not always visible, indeed, as Sedgwick
(1991) points out, there is an `epistemology of the closet',
based on secrecy and outings, in twentieth century culture,
which constitutes a particular form of domination, unlike
others. This means that the act of speaking of sexual differences
is vital, but we must be aware that pinning them down and
delineating membership of sexual categories is impossible;
sexuality is ambiguous, identifications are fluctuating, strategically
performed, yet sometimes also ascribed.
Section
2: Changing Relations of Sexuality and Cathexis
The
Modern Regime
It
is now widely accepted by historians of sexuality that the
idea of the existence of `the homosexual' as a category of
person distinct from `the heterosexual' was born in the second
half of the nineteenth century (23).
By the start of the twentieth century there was in widespread
circulation in a proliferation of medical, legal, literary
and psychological discourses for which the homo/heterosexual
binary was axiomatic. So it was that there came into existence
`a world-mapping by which every person, just as he or she
was necessarily assignable to a male or female gender, was
now considered necessarily assignable as well to a homo- or
a hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity that was full of
implications, however confusing, for even the ostensibly least
sexual aspects of personal existence' (Sedgwick, 1991:2).
In this `world-mapping' marital heterosexuality occupied the
centre, constructed as normal, natural and desirable, with
homosexuality as the marginal, perverse, unnatural other,
subject to a range of different legal, medical and social
sanctions and forms of regulation.
From
the 1910s onwards sexologists began to develop an ideal of
the married heterosexual couple bound together by sexual intimacy
rather than just economic and social necessity (24).
This model of hetero-relationality came to replace the nineteenth
century `separate spheres' ideology which had underpinned
the Victorian family and which had allowed, and even encouraged,
strong, sometimes passionate, homo-relational ties of love
and friendship (25).
Particular emphasis was placed on persuading women of the
importance of fulfilling their emotional and sexual desires
through their marital relationship (26).
By the 1950s the idea of `the primarily sexual nature of conjugality'
(Weeks, 1985:27) was firmly established in Britain, and the
confluence of sexuality and cathexis within the marital heterosexual
relationship became established, supported by a panoply of
cultural forms ranging from Hollywood cinema to women's magazines,
as well as by social, legal and political institutions and
their policies. Not least amongst these, of course, was the
post-war welfare state, which assumed as its subject the married,
heterosexual man and his family.
Under
the conditions of the post-war sexual and cathectic regime
of hegemonic marital heterosexuality, non-normative relations
of sexuality and cathexis were lived at the margins. Seidman
(1996) and Adam (1995) suggest that although the 1950s are
widely perceived to have been conservative, the seeds of the
sexual rebellions of the 1960s were sown by the geographical
mobility, prosperity and social liberalization which followed
the war, and they point to the emergence of homophile organizations,
which began, very tentatively, to claim a public voice for
homosexuals, and the cultural interventions of rock music
and the beatniks, which offered a challenge to dominant sexual
mores. And in Britain 1957 saw the publication of the Wolfenden
Report advocating homosexual law reform some 10 years before
the passing of the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized
sex between men over 21 in private. Whilst the `sexual revolution'
of the 1960s is easily and often overstated, the emergence
of the women's liberation movement, lesbian feminism, and
gay liberation politics from the New Left, and the growth
of visible subcultures of lesbians and gay men in the metropolises
began to expand the public space of the non-heterosexual margins
(27).
The Stonewall riot of 1969, when `drag queens, dykes, street
people and bar boys' responded to a police raid on a Greenwich
Village gay bar `first with jeers and high camp, and then
with a hail of coins, paving stones, and parking meters' (Adam,
1995:81) was an epiphanic moment; it marked the beginnings
of gay liberation, which had as its aim `to free the homosexual
in everyone', to overthrow compulsory heterosexuality and
thus eventually, the boundaries between the homosexual and
the heterosexual (Adam, 1995:84). The radical demands of gay
liberation (which were to be echoed in the queer politics
of the 1990s) faded by the mid 1970s, giving way to a more
assimilationist politics demanding equal rights and protection
for lesbians and gay men as a minority group, and the 1970s
and 80s saw the growth of self-confident lesbian and gay communities
with their own institutions and traditions. The AIDS epidemic,
which decimated the population of gay men in the global gay
cities, called forth new forms of political activism and self-help
welfare organization, and ultimately, at a collective level,
strengthened the ties of communality and sociality amongst
those who survived.
One
of the traditions of lesbian and gay life that took off in
the 1970s, post Stonewall, was the `coming out story'. Plummer's
(1995) discussion of the telling of sexual stories identifies
the coming out story as an archetypal modernist tale, featuring
a linear progression from a period of suffering to the crucial
moment of self-discovery, and ending with a satisfactory resolution
in the form of the achievement of a secure identity as lesbian
or gay amidst a supportive community. But whilst the notion
of `coming out' is firmly rooted in the `epistemology of the
closet' and the modern homo/heterosexual binary, the situation
in the late twentieth century in which many tens of thousands
of people have `come out' (including an ever increasing number
of public figures), and have made their sexual and cathectic
relationships with members of their own sex highly visible,
has actually served to create the context for the postmodernization
of the regime of sexuality and cathexis (28).
As Seidman, Meeks and Traschen (1999) argue, for many lesbians
and gay men today homosexuality has been so normalized that
they are effectively `beyond the closet'.
The
Postmodernization of Sexuality and Cathexis, or Queer Tendencies
Offering
support (perhaps!) to my contention about the significance
of sexuality and cathexis to understandings of social change,
there is now a body of literature theorizing the changes which
characterize the contemporary social condition which, unlike
classic sociological narratives of the development of modernity,
gives a certain prominence to questions of sexuality and cathexis.
This work suggests that there is underway a shift in relations
of cathexis. Giddens's (1992) argument about the `transformation
of intimacy' and Beck and Beck-Gernscheim's (1995) and Beck-Gernscheim's
(1999) work on the changing meanings and practices of love
and family relationships posit the idea that in the contemporary
world processes of individualization and de-traditionalization
and increased self-reflexivity are opening up new possibilities
and expectations in heterosexual relationships (29).
With a (rather cursory) nod in the direction of feminist scholarship
and activism, their work recognizes the significance of the
shifts in gender relations consequent particularly on the
changed consciousness and identities which women have developed
in the wake of the women's liberation movement.
Giddens
considers the transformation of intimacy which he sees as
currently in train to be of `great, and generalizable, importance'
(1992:2). He charts the changes in the nature of marriage
which are constituted by the emergence of the `pure relationship',
a relationship of sexual and emotional equality between men
and women, and links this with the development of `plastic
sexuality', which is freed from `the needs of reproduction'
(1991:2). He identifies lesbians and gay men as `pioneers'
in the pure relationship and plastic sexuality, and hence
at the forefront of processes of individualization and de-traditionalization
(30).
Whilst
there are undoubtedly criticisms to be made of this body of
work (e.g. Jamieson, 1998), the belief that this literature
offers important insights into, or at least raises questions
about, contemporary social change is one of the fundamental
premises of CAVA. But I now wish to extend this analysis of
changing relations of cathexis to consider the constitution
of the sexual more generally. Giddens's idea that lesbians
and gay men are forging new paths for heterosexuals as well
as for themselves is developed by Weeks, Donovan and Heaphy
who suggest that `one of the most remarkable features of domestic
change over recent years is … the emergence of common patterns
in both homosexual and heterosexual ways of life as a result
of these long-term shifts in relationship patterns' (1999:85)
(31). In
other words, changes in the organization of cathexis are impacting
upon the wider organization of sexuality.
It
is my argument that we are currently witnessing a significant
destabilization of the hetero/homosexual binary. The hierarchical
relationship between the two sides of the binary, and its
mapping onto an inside/ out opposition is undergoing intense
challenge, and the normativity and naturalness of both heterosexuality
and hetero-relationality have come into question (32).
In addition to the yearning for `pure relationship' which
is increasingly shared by those on either side of the homo/heterosexual
binary, there are, I would suggest, a number of `queer tendencies'
at work, and play, in the postmodern world.
The
first of these `queer tendencies' is that underway within
lesbian and gay communities themselves: the tendency to auto-critique
at both the individual and collective level which is producing
a fracturing of the modern homosexual identity. `Queer theory'
may be an elite academic practice, but queer theorizing, and
the questioning of the regulatory aspects of lesbian and gay
identity and community, is an everyday activity for many within
contemporary lesbian and gay communities. Recent years have
seen an upsurge of discussion within public forums of communities
about a range of issues which challenge the assumed coherence
and constituency of lesbian and gay communities and fixity
of sexual practice; for instance, lesbians having sex with
men, and gay men having sex with women are openly discussed,
and bisexuality and transgenderism are on the agenda. It is
the era of `post-gay' (Sinfield, 1996), or `anti-gay' (Simpson,
1996), of queer, postmodern stories `in the making, which
shun unities and uniformities; reject naturalism and determinacies;
seek out immanences and ironies; and ultimately find pastiche,
complexities and shifting perspectives' (Plummer, 1995:133)(33).
- the
decentring of hetero-relations
Much
has been written in recent years about the meaning of the
dramatic rise in divorce rates over the past 30 years (34),
about the increase in the number of births outside marriage
(35) (and
to a lesser extent outside any lasting heterosexual relationship
- births to mothers who are `single by choice'), about the
rise in the proportion of children being brought up by a lone
parent (36),
about the growing proportion of households that are composed
of one person (37),
and the climbing proportion of women who are not having children.
However, this commentary has tended to focus on the meaning
of these changes in terms of gender relations and the family;
it has not addressed their implications with respect to the
established organization of sexuality. This is surprising
because it seems to me that these changes speak of a significant
decentring of heterorelations, as the heterosexual couple,
and particularly the married, co-resident heterosexual couple
with children, no longer occupies the centre-ground of British
society, and cannot be taken for granted as the basic unit
in society. By 1995-6 only 23% of all households comprised
a married couple with dependent children (Social Trends, 1997).
Postmodern living arrangements are diverse, fluid and unresolved,
and heterorelations are no longer as hegemonic as once they
were.
This
social decentring of heterorelations finds its expression
and reflection in popular culture. Consider, for example,
the television programmes, particularly the dramas and sitcoms,
which have achieved particular popularity recently: `Friends',
`This Life', `Absolutely Fabulous', `Ellen', `Frasier', `Grace
Under Fire', `Seinfeld', `Men Behaving Badly'. All of them
are fundamentally post-heterorelational, concerned with the
embeddness of friends in daily life, and offering images of
the warmth and affection provided by networks of friends in
an age of insecure and/ or transitory sexual relationships.
And in popular music, the enormous success of the Spice Girls
can be read as evidence of the decentring of hetero-relations
amongst a teen and pre-teenage female audience which, from
the 1950s onwards, has directed the emotional and erotic energy
of its fandom towards male popstars and boy bands. The Spice
Girls have not just offered their fans a range of models of
contemporary femininity with which to identify, which includes
one - Sporty - which clearly draws on lesbian street style,
but also, more radically and uniquely they have captured a
generation of girls' passion outside the framework of hetero-relationality
and heterosexuality. The question `who is your favourite Spice
Girl?', is as much about which Spice Girl is desired, as about
which one is identified with. Moreover, the Spice Girls' `philosophy'
of `girlpower' is a reworking of basic feminist principles
about the importance of female friendship, seeking to inspire
girls to respect and value themselves and their girlfriends,
mothers, and sisters, and challenging the cultural prioritization
of masculinity and male needs and desires. It is certainly
no accident that each concert in the 1998 SpiceWorld Tour
included in it a cover of Annie Lennox's `Sisters are Doing
it For Themselves' and ended with a rendition of the gay anthem
first popularized by Sister Sledge, `We are Family'. I digress….
- The
emergence of hetero-reflexivity
Another
facet of the destabilization of the homo/heterosexual binary
is that heterosexuality is increasingly a conscious state
which has to be produced, checked, self-regulated, monitored
and thought about in relation to its other, in a way that
was not necessary when heteronormativity was more secure and
lesbian and gay alternatives were less visible and self-confident
(38).
It used to be that it was homosexuality that had to be produced
and thought-out, with heterosexuality the unreflexive inside
that did not have to consider its position. But in recent
years, from `backlash' anxieties about political correctness
and the `threatened' position of the white, heterosexual male
and his normal family, as exemplified in Section 28 of the
Local Government Act, to the ever growing number of personal
ads placed in newspapers by heterosexuals forced to name themselves
as such, heterosexuality has become de-naturalized and reflexive.
Even women's magazines, once the arch-promoters of a naturalized,
normative heterosexuality, are now encouraging their readers
to engage in the reflexive consideration of their sexual desires
by means of the self-administered questionnaire, which at
the end, when scores are added up, refuses to locate readers
in clearly demarcated sexual identity categories, but rather
valorizes self-awareness and sexual openness (39).
- the
cultural valorizing of the queer
If,
as exhorted by queer theory, we take seriously the realm of
culture in our attempts to understand shifts in relations
of sexuality, contemporary developments in popular culture
become significant indicators of the zeitgeist. I would like
to suggest that there is underway, in Britain perhaps more
than elsewhere, a queering of popular culture, a valorizing
of the sexually ambiguous, and of that which transgresses
rigid boundaries of gender. Whilst sexual and gender ambiguity
are not new in popular culture, having moved out of the exclusive
province of a culturally elite avant-garde in the 1970s with
David Bowie, Patti Smith, Marc Bolan, and in the early 1980s,
Boy George and the `new romantics', the 1990s' desire to confuse
and transgress the homo/heterosexual binary is of a different
order. Whereas the gender-benders of the 1970s and early 1980s
had something of a freak-show about them, and were kept a
safe distance from their fans, whose normality was perhaps
reconstituted in contrast with the stars' allowable excesses,
the cultural valorizing of the queer at the end of the 1990s
is far more participatory and closer to everyday life. This
can be seen in three areas of popular culture: dance culture,
fashion magazines and television.
Clubbing
has been the growth leisure pursuit of the 1990s, engaging
millions of young people (of an increasing range of ages)
in a participatory dance culture in which bands and producers
of music are no more important, indeed are less important,
than those on the dance floor and the DJs who mix the records.
What matters is not the identity of those who make the music,
but the relations which are forged amongst those who create
and constitute the club. A democracy of the dancefloor has
developed, breaking down the production/ consumption distinction.
Dance culture has its roots in the house music born in black
gay clubs in New York, Chicago and Detroit, in which boundaries
of sexuality (and race) have developed a fluidity. With their
roots amongst black gay men, these clubs welcomed men and
women of every sexual orientation and gender identification,
and a queering of dance music was underway. In Britain, as
in the US, the clubs where new dance music is tested and hits
break, the clubs which lead fashion in music, clothing and
attitude, are queer clubs: not exclusively gay, but emerging
from a gay/lesbian community and identity, usually established
and run by gay or lesbian promoters, and destabilizing sexual
identity categories by welcoming anyone with a queer enough
attitude. It is not sexual identity that matters in gaining
admission to the coolest clubs, or even sexual acts, but rather
a way of thinking and an attitude of openness and fluidity.
`Queer' has become, in British popular culture, an attitude
and a stance which rocks the homo/heterosexual binary, and
is one to which a generation aspires (40).
Further
evidence of the aspirational status of the queer is to be
found in fashion magazines, which over the past decade have
increasingly used queer imagery, in which sexual and gender
ambiguity is foregrounded through the use of non-conventionally
heterosexual models and playing with cross-dressing, and homo-erotic
desire is regularly represented or hinted at (41).
Of course, this sort of imagery is open to a range of possible
readings, and meaning is generated in interaction between
the viewer and the text, but I would suggest that the present
moment is one at which queer readings of these sorts of images
are more available than ever before.
Finally,
television has also in recent years brought a queer sensibility
into millions of living rooms. In sharp contrast to the tradition
of laughing at homosexual men's gender performances in classic
British comedies such as `Are You Being Served?', and `Carry
On' films, `All Rise for Julian Clary', which is shown at
prime time on Saturday night on BBC1, enacts a queer reversal
and directs attention to the humour inherent in the heterosexuality
and traditional renditions of masculinity of the audience.
Julian Clary, a highly politicized, `out' gay man, makes constant,
extremely sexually explicit, reference to his own homosexuality,
but the show revolves equally around laughing at, and pointing
out the absurdity of normal heterosexual masculinity, particularly
that of the police and the military. Clary plays the role
of judge and adjudicates according to his own set of queer,
camp values on a range of matters brought to him by the audience.
Thus the privileging of heteronormative behaviour is reversed
and the queer valorized.
The
pessimistic critique of the tendencies which I identify as
the cultural valorizing of the queer sees them as evidence
of the extension of commodity culture into previously uncommodified
subcultures, and of the ability of capitalism to colonize
and utilize lesbian and gay identities in its relentless search
for profit, exploiting their otherness whilst maintaining
mainstream heterosexual positionality (42).
Whilst there is some truth in this analysis, it is my opinion
that such an argument neglects the recontextualizations that
are possible within commodity culture, and fails to see how
capital might be running to catch up with transformations
of sexuality which are already underway.
Conclusion
I
have argued that there are significant transformations of
sexuality and cathexis underway within postmodernity, and
that as a consequence the homo/heterosexual binary is facing
destabilization, and heteronormativity is being challenged.
It is important to acknowledge that the queer tendencies I
have identified are impacting upon the general population
unevenly; they are particularly urban, and they particularly
affect a younger generation that has the sub-cultural capital
to partake of them (43).
But I am not just talking of a queer avant-garde. Reflexive
heterosexual identities are becoming increasingly widespread,
and heterorelations no longer have the same hold on the general
population in an era of postmodern relations of cathexis.
There are, of course, countervailing tendencies, in the form
of various expressions of sexual and gender fundamentalism,
and amongst the lesbians and gay men (still a majority) who
are tenaciously holding on to identity categories, and I do
not wish to suggest a straightforward narrative of liberation
or revolution. But, these queer tendencies - the postmodernization
of relations of sexuality and cathexis - are powerful social
forces, the impact and extent of which it is hard to predict.
I
realize there might be some discomfort amongst some members
of the research group about the arguments in this paper. Some
of you might have questions about the suggestions in the second
half of the paper about the direction of contemporary social
change in the realm of sexuality; a sceptical attitude towards
what are propositional, speculative ideas is to be welcomed.
But more fundamentally I anticipate that the idea of `queering'
our analytical frameworks might meet rather more resistance.
Some of this might come down to a dislike of the terminology,
its seeming lack of social scientific rigour and its historical
baggage (though the latter is precisely why the term has been
coined). Some might dislike the influence of poststructuralism
which runs through my rendering of a queer sociology. There
might also be a concern about the `public face' of CAVA, both
as presented to the academic community, particularly the mainstream
of the discipline of social policy, and to the wider world
- the research network, `users', politicians, and the media
(44). There
might be a desire to take on board some of the ideas presented
here without `shouting from the rooftops' about it.
I
would like to encourage us to discuss these issues, if indeed
they are issues for us a group. And I would like to conclude
by making the following points:
- CAVA
is inherently political; there are certain base-line assumptions
embedded in the research programme which speak of a particular
shared political and theoretical orientation, arising out
of a history of engagement with feminist and post-marxist
critical thought. Whilst we might not broadcast these assumptions
to the world, we must be aware of them amongst ourselves.
In this context, I would suggest that it is appropriate
to consider the political stance we are taking in relation
to questions of sexuality. We must not underestimate the
power of the forces which silence us when we try to challenge
heteronormativity (blatant homophobia is easier to speak
against, and rarer). When we are imagining the research,
constructing it in our minds and planning it, and when we
are talking about it with those outside the research group,
there will be a tendency to imagine the `normal' subjects
of our research, and those normal subjects, however re-constituted,
flexible, fluid and negotiated their families may be, will
almost invariably be heterosexual. If we do not actively
decide to queer our assumptions, the research will ineluctably
be drawn back to the heteronorm.
- On
the other hand, and more optimistically, we should also
be aware of how the wider world is changing, how public
attitudes are shifting (as evidenced very recently in public
opinion supporting the lifting of the ban on gays in the
military and repealing Section 28), and should not assume
that heteronormativity is stronger than it is. The world
out there is an awful lot queerer than academics give it
credit for, even `New Labour'. Just compare the conceptualization
of relations of sexuality and cathexis invoked by William
Beveridge in 1942 with those of Paul Boeteng in 1999:
Report
on the Social Insurance and Allied Services, by William Beveridge:
"During
marriage most women will not be gainfully employed (p.50)…housewives
as mothers have vital work to do in ensuring the adequate
continuance of the British race and British ideals in the
world…" (1942:117)
At
the Memorial Gathering in Soho Square after the bombing of
the Admiral Duncan pub in Old Compton Street, Paul Boeteng,
Minister of State at the Home Office and Deputy Home Secretary
with responsibility for family policy:
"Brothers
and sisters [pause]. I am here to say, on behalf of your government,
that there is nothing so precious to the creation of the just,
tolerant human society that is our objective than to preserve
by all means possible its inclusivity. The right to be different,
the freedom to express diversity, is at the heart of what
this government is about…"
(2
May 1999)
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FOOTNOTES
1. See Williams (1989, 1992, 1995) and papers
for Workshop 1. Back
2. I use the designation `postmodernity'
to refer to the contemporary social formation, fully cognisant
of the debate between those who prefer to speak of `late modernity'
(e.g. Giddens, 1991, 1992, 1995; Plummer, 1995) and those
who prefer the term `postmodernity' (Bauman, 1992; Lash and
Urry, 1994). For further elaboration of my position on postmodernity
see Roseneil (1999). Back
3. I am drawing on the work of Connell
(1987) who uses the term `cathexis', which he takes from Freud,
to refer to the structure that organizes `the construction
of emotionally charged social relations with "objects"
(i.e. other people) in the real world' (1987:112). However,
I do not embrace the structuralism of Connell's analytical
framework, and like Dowsett (1996) I disagree with Connell's
location of the sexual and the cathectic within the structure
of gender. It is perhaps also necessary to explain why I prefer
the notion of cathexis over that of `intimacy', which has
achieved such popularity in social science and the discourse
of self-help in recent years (see Giddens, 1993; Jamison,
1997): whereas cathexis refers to a wide-range of types of
affective bonds, intimacy, it seems to me, is better reserved
for speaking of a very particular type of emotional relationship,
a relationship of mutual disclosure in which people participate
as equals. Back
4. There is a parallel here with the feminist
insight that categories of gender, and gendered oppressions,
extend beyond that which appears explicitly gendered. Back
5. For instance, abortion, contraception,
divorce, pregnancy and motherhood, sex education, HIV and
AIDS, prostitution, sexual violence. Back
6. See for example Weeks (1985), Hawkes
(1995). Back
7. For discussions of the history of sociology's
engagement with sexuality see Plummer (1975; 1995; 1998),
Seidman (1996), Stein and Plummer (1996), Weeks and Holland
(1996) Back
8. `Little Kinsey' was carried out in
the UK in 1949 by Mass Observation (see Stanley, 1995). Back
9. Stein and Plummer (1996) draw on Judith
Stacey and Barrie Thorne's earlier critique of the `missing
feminist revolution in sociology'. Back
10. A notable exception to this are the
Open University `Social Policy: Welfare, Power and Diversity'
texts: Hughes (1998) and Saraga (1998). I am also exempting
socio-legal studies of sexuality, which often consider issues
of social policy. Back
11. Texts which have come to assume foundational
status within queer theory include: Sedgwick (1991), Butler
(1991), de Lauretis (1991), Fuss (1991) and Warner (1991).
What was going on in 1991???? Back
12. For a clear discussion of the influences
of poststructuralism on queer theory see Namaste (1996). Back
13. Fuss (1991) draws on psychoanalytic
understandings of processes of alienation, splitting and identification,
which produce a self and an other, an interiority and an exteriority.
Back
14. See particularly Butler (1991).
Back
15. This point is made by Seidman (1996),
Stein and Plummer (1996) and Jackson (1999). Back
16. These criticisms are made by, inter
alia, Warner (1993), Seidman (1996) and Stein and Plummer
(1996). Back
17. On queering sociology, see contributors
to Seidman (1996), geography, Ingram et al (1997), socio-legal
studies, Stychin (1995) and international relations, Weber
(1999). I have written elsewhere about queering feminism (Roseneil,
1999) and queering the sociology of social movements (Roseneil,
1998). Back
18. On processes of `culturalization'
and the aestheticization of everyday life see Lash (1994)
and Crook et al (1990). Back
19. For instance, in developing an
argument for a queer sociology, Namaste wholeheartedly embraces
poststructuralism, but fails to consider the problems which
sociologists might encounter in the abandonment of all vestiges
of a humanist ontology. I have argued elsewhere (Roseneil,
1995) for the importance of transcending the humanist/ poststructuralist
binary. See also Barrett (1990). Back
20. See contributions to Seidman (1996).
Back
21. A recent article by Seidman et
al (1999) is an exception to this. Back
22. Structuration theory still, in
my mind, offers the best solution to the agency/structure
conundrum. (See Giddens, 1984). Back
23. The terms appear to have been
coined by Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1868, though there were not
used in print until 1869 (homosexuality) and 1880 (heterosexuality),
according to Katz (1995). See also Weeks (1977, 1981, 1985),
Katz (1983, 1995), Foucault (1978). Back
24. For histories of marriage see
Stone (1979, 1993) and Gillis (1985), and on marriage in the
immediate post-war period, see Finch and Summerfield (1991)
and Morgan (1991). Back
25. See Smith Rosenberg (1976), Weeks
(1985), Fadermann (1981) and Jeffreys (1985). Back
26. See Jeffreys (1985). Back
27. On the rise of the lesbian and
gay movement see Adam (1995) and d'Emilio (1983). Back
28. A trickle of voluntary `outings'
amongst public figures, which began in Britain with Michael
Cashman and Ian McKellan at the end of the 1980s in response
to the passing of Section 28, had become something of a deluge
by the end of the 1990s, as kd lang, Ellen de Generes, Chris
Smith, Angela Eagle, and even Michael Portillo declared their
homosexuality to a decreasingly surprised public. Back
29. The research of Finch (1989)
and Finch and Mason (1993) on family obligations suggests
that family ties are now understood less in terms of obligations
constituted by fixed ties of blood, and more in terms of negotiated
commitments, which are less clearly differentiated from other
relationships. Back
30. In this acknowledgement of non-heterosexual
identities and practices Giddens's work differs from that
of Beck and Beck-Gernscheim whose discussion fails to acknowledge
its exclusive concern with heterosexuality. Back
31. Bech (1997, 1999) makes a similar
argument. Back
32. Watney (1988) and Fuss (1991)
made early suggestions that such a process was underway..
Back
33. Plummer is more sceptical than
I am about the existence of such stories. Back
34. Between 1971 and 1994 the number
of divorces doubled; 37% of recent marriages are predicted
to end in divorce (OPCS Marriage and Divorce Statistics, 1991).
Back
35. By 1992 31% of live births were
outside marriage (Population Trends, 1993). Back
36. In 1991 lone parent families were
almost 20% of all families with dependent children (GHS, 1991).
Back
37. In 1961 this was 4%,by 1995-6
it was 13%. Back
38. I am hereby disagreeing with
Smart who argues that `the immense verbosity around heterosexual
acts has not produced the heterosexual' (1996:228). Back
39. For instance, Company, July 1996.
Back
40. My argument here parallels Back's
(1996) argument about the emergence of a new hybrid ethnicity
characterized by high degrees of egalitarianism and anti-racism
amongst young people through popular culture's mixing of black
and white cultural codes and styles. Back
41. See Lewis (199.) on women's magazines
and Simpson on men's magazines. Back
42. See Hennessy (1995). Back
43. The notion of `sub-cultural capital'
is coined by Thornton (1995) in her discussion of club cultures.
Back
44. For an excellent discussion of
the way in which the assumptions of queer theory can be utilized
in public discourse without baffling the audience, see Duggan
(1995). Back
BACK
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