نوشته ی استیون سیدمن
ترجمه ی حمید پرنیان
در نیمه ی نخست این سده (بیستم)، امورجنسی به شیوه ای در فرهنگ مردمی جامعه ی آمریکایی جاری شد که جامعه شناسی نمی توانست نادیده اش بگیرد. سراسر میانه ی این سده، جامعه شناسان کارهای شان را به میزان چشم گیری برگزار کردند. دبستان شیکاگو به مطالعه ی رانندگان کامیون، مهاجران، کارگران کارخانه، و نوجوانان نابهنجار اجتماعی پرداخت، اما درباره ی قلمروی امورجنسی چیزی برای گفتن ندارد. نظریه پردازانی همچون پارک، کولی، توماس، پرسونس، و آگبورن درباره ی الگوهای شهری، رشد خویشتن، سازمان سیاسی، ساختار کنش اجتماعی، و توسعه ی فن آوری - این موضوعات ارزشمند - کار کرده اند اما درباره ی جنسی سازی خویشتن ها یا نهادها چیزی نگفته اند یا (اگر گفته اند) کم گفته اند. سرانجام، در حالی که جامعه شناسان همه ی موضوعات ممکن را بررسی کردند، و در حالی که بررسی های جنسی مباحث مردمی و هیجان آور رو به فزونی بود (همچون دیویس 1929؛ دیکینسون و بیم 1932؛ کینسی و همکاران 1948، 1953)، جامعه شناسان فنون تجربی خویش را برای بررسی امورجنسی انسانی گسترش ندادند.
برای این که جامعه شناسان امرجنسی را جدی بگیرند دگرگونی های دهه ی 1950 و آشفتگی های مردمی دهه ی 1960 مورد نیاز بود. سال های پس از جنگ گاهی محافظه کارانه بود، اما جنگ، الگوهای پویایی، کامیابی (اقتصادی)، و آزادی اجتماعی آداب جنسی را سست نمود. دهه ی 1950 در فرهنگ آمریکایی بدن و امورجنسی دگرگونی هایی رخ داد؛ پیدایش موسیقی راک، راه افتادن جنبش زنان، و پدیداری سازمان های همجنسگرادوست، و سبک های پوشش ژولیده و شورشی، (یعنی) همه ی کسانی که از هنجارهای اجتماعی و جنسی سرپیچی می کنند، دست در دست یکدیگر داشتند. دهه ی 1960 شورش جنسی را به درام ملی و مردمی ای تبدیل کرد. جنبش زنان، آزادی خواهی همجنسگرایان، فمینیسم همجنسگرا، فرهنگ فرهنگ ستیزی، نشریاتی همچون Playboy و کتابچه هایی همچون The Joy of Sex، و تندروهای فرهنگی ای همچون هربرت مارکوس و نورمن براون شورش جنسی را در کانون دگرگونی اجتماعی گذاشتند.
جامعه شناسی امورجنسی در دوره ی
پس از جنگ در آمریکا پدیدار شد (همچون؛ هنسلین 1971؛ ریس 1967). هرچند این جامعه
شناسی، امورجنسی را به عنوان حوزه ی ویژه ای همچون سازمان ها، جرم، یا جمعیت شناسی
بررسی می کرد. امورجنسی ویژگی فردی
پنداشته می شد، که تجلی فردی آن از سوی هنجارها و نگرش های اجتماعی شکل می گرفت. به
امورجنسی و جامعه به عنوان دو چیز متضاد یکدیگر نگریسته می شد؛ جامعه خواه به
عنوان فضایی دست و پاگیر و خواه به عنوان فضایی مداراگر با رهایی جنسی، دارای
اهمیت بود. انگاره ی «رژیم جنسی»، انگاره ی حوزه ی معانی جنسی، گفتمان ها، و کنش
های جنسی که با نهادها و جنبش های اجتماعی در هم بافته اند، غایب بودند. افزون بر
این، اگرچه جامعه شناسان، الگوهای امورجنسی مرسوم (سنتی) – آیین های پیش از
ازدواج، ازدواج، و آمیزش جنسی بیرون از راه ازدواج – را بررسی کرده اند اما بیشتر
ادبیات (کارهای شان) با امورجنسی «منحرف» چون تن فروشی، پورنوگرافی، و
(برانگیزاننده ترین شان) همجنس گرایی درگیر بود.
جامعه شناسی همجنسگرایی به عنوان
بخشی از جامعه شناسی امورجنسی پدیدار شد (همچون؛ گاگنون و سیمون 1967a، 1964b؛ ریس 1964؛ ساگارین 1969). جامعه شناسی، همجنسگرایی را به عنوان
ابژه ی دانش در زمینه ای بررسی کرد که در بالاترین دیدگاه مردمی و سیاست پردازی
درباره ی همجنسگرایی بود. زمینه ی اجتماعی پدیداری جامعه شناسی همجنسگرایی دست کم
نیاز دارد تا نگاشته شود.
Sociology was positioned ambivalently with regard to the making of homosexuality as
a site of political conflict and knowledge. Undoubtedly, the growing national public
awareness of homosexuality and the surfacing of social concepts of homosexuality
prompted sociologists to conceive of homosexuality as within their domain of knowledge.
Sociologists approached homosexuality as a social stigma to be managed; they analyzed
the ways in which homosexuals adapted to a hostile society. Through the 1970s, sociologists
studied the homosexual (mostly the male homosexual) as a creature of the sexual
underworld of hustlers, prostitutes, prisons, tearooms, baths, and bars (e.g., Humphreys
1970; Kirkham 1971; A. Reiss 1961; Weinberg and Williams 1975). My impression is
that much of this sociology aimed to figure the homosexual as a victim of unjust discrimination.
Nevertheless, sociologists contributed to the public perception of the homosexual
as a strange, exotic "other" in contrast to the normal, respectable heterosexual.
Sociological perspectives on sexuality in the 1960s and early 1970s, particularly the
labeling theory of Howard Becker (1963), Goffman (1963), and Schur (1971) and the
"sexual script" concept of John Gagnon and William Simon (1973), proved influential in
shaping knowledges of sexuality and homosexuality. In the late 1970s and early 1980s,
however, a new sociology of homosexuality was fashioned, primarily by lesbian- and gayidentified
and often feminist sociologists. This new cadre of sociologists took over the
conceptual tools of sociology, as well as drawing heavily from feminism and critical social
approaches circulating in the lesbian and gay movements, to study gay life (e.g., Harry
and Devall 1979; Levine 1979a, 1979b; Murray 1979; Plummer 1975, 198 1; Troiden
1988; Warren 1974). This work underscored the social meaning of homosexuality. It
contributed to recent gay theory, which has largely neglected sociological research as a
distinctive social tradition of sex studies (Epstein this issue). The sociology of homosexuality
from the early 1970s through the 1980s has not played a major role in recent lesbian
and gay theory debates, in part because sociologists did not critically investigate the
categories of sexuality, heterosexuality, and homosexuality; they never questioned the
social functioning of the hetero/homosexual binary as the master category of a modem
regime of sexuality (Namaste this issue; Stein and Plummer this issue). Moreover, sociologists
lacked historical perspective while perpetuating an approach that isolated the
question of homosexuality from the broader question of modernization and politics (Ingraham
this issue).
As homosexuality was being inserted into public discourses and made into an object of
knowledge in academic disciplines, a gay theory was developing outside academe. For
example, as sociologists were beginning to think of sex as a social fact, knowledges came
out of the women's and gay movements, as I mentioned above. With the formation of
homophile groups in the 1950s (e.g., the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis),
homosexuality was alternatively theorized as a property of all individuals or as a property
of a segment of the human population. The naturalization of homosexuality was intended
to legitimate homosexuality. Moreover, despite the radicalization of gay theory in lesbian
feminism and gay liberation in the 1970s, few people challenged the view of homosexuality
as a natural condition and a key marker of self-identity. A good deal of lesbian feminist
and gay liberationist theory simply reversed the dominant sexual hierarchy by asserting
the naturalness and normality of homosexuality. For universalists, normalization was often
connected to a political strategy of assimilationism, while the minoritization of homosexuality
was often wedded to a separatist agenda or to a politics of difference (e.g., Bunch
1971; Johnston 1973). The notion of homosexuality as a universal category of the self
and a sexual identity was hardly questioned, if at all, in the homophile, lesbian feminist,
and gay liberationist discourses (exceptions include Altman 197 1 ; Macintosh 1968).
As the initial wave of an antihomophobic, gay affirmative politic (roughly from 1968
to 1973) passed into a period of community building, personal empowerment, and local
struggles, we can speak of a new period in lesbian and gay theory, the age of social
constructionism. Drawing from labeling and phenomenological theory, and influenced
heavily by Marxism and feminism, social constructionists had roots in academia and
activism. At the heart of a social constructionist perspective is the rejection of the antithesis
of sex and society. Sex is viewed as fundamentally social; the categories of sex--especially
heterosexuality and homosexuality, but also the whole regime of modem sexual types,
classifications, and norms-are understood as social and historical facts. With respect to
homosexuality, the chief theme was that "homosexuality" or (more appropriately) samesex
experiences were not a uniform, identical phenomenon, but that their meaning and
social role varied historically. In particular, constructionists argued that "the homosexual"
cannot be assumed to be a transhistorical identity; instead the category of homosexuality
operates as marking a distinct psychological and physical human type or identity only in
modem Western societies. Michel Foucault provided the classic statement: "As defined
by ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their
perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century
homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, a life form. . . . Nothing that
went into the total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present
in him: at the root of all his actions . . . because it was a secret that always gave itself
away (1980:43). Foucault's thesis of the social construction of "the homosexual" found
parallel articulation in the concurrent work of Jonathan Katz (1976), Carroll Smith-
Rosenberg (1 973, Randolph Trumbach (1977), and Jeffrey Weeks (1977).
Foucault's genealogical studies of sexuality aimed at exposing a whole sexual regime
as a social and political event. In this regard, Foucault questioned the political strategy of
an affirmative lesbian and gay movement on the grounds that it unwittingly reproduced
this regime. Foucault's deconstructionist message, however, fell on largely deaf ears in
the context of a politics affirming identity and the prodigious efforts at lesbian and gay
community building in the 1970s. A good deal of social constructionist studies through
the early 1980s sought to explain the origin, social meaning, and changing forms of the
modem homosexual (e.g ., D'Emilio 1983; Faderman 198 1 ; Plummer 198 1). Although
this literature challenged essentialist or universalistic understandings of homosexuality, it
was often tied to a politics of the making of a homosexual minority. Instead of asserting
the homosexual as a natural fact made into a political minority by social prejudice,
constructionists traced the social factors that produced a homosexual subject or identity,
which functioned as the foundation for the building of a minority, ethnic-like community
and politics. Social constructionist studies often functioned as legitimations for the organization
of lesbian and gay subcultures into ethnic-like minorities (Epstein 1987; Seidman
1993).2
Social constructionist perspectives dominated studies of homosexuality through the
1980s and have been institutionalized in lesbian and gay studies programs in the 1990s.
Debates about essentialism (Stein 1992) and the rise, meaning, and changing social forms
of homosexual identities and communities are at the core of lesbian and gay social studies.
Since the late 1980s, however, aspects of this constructionist perspective have been
contested; its own conceptual and political silences and exclusions have been exposed. In
particular, discourses that sometimes circulate under the rubric of queer theory, though
often impossible to differentiate from constructionist texts, have sought to shift the debate
somewhat away from explaining the modem homosexual to questions of the operation of
the hetero/homosexual binary, from an exclusive preoccupation with homosexuality to a
focus on heterosexuality as a social and political organizing principle, and from a politics
of minority interest to a politics of knowledge and difference (Seidman 1994). What is
the social context of the rise of queer theory?
By the end of the 1970s, the gay and lesbian movement had achieved such a level of
subcultural elaboration and general social tolerance that a politics of cultural and social
mainstreaming far overshadowed both the defensive strategies (e.g., the Mattachine Society)
and the revolutionary politics of the previous decades. Thus Dennis Altman (1982),
a keen observer of the gay movement in the 1970s, could speak of the homosexualization
of America. Yet at this very historical moment, events were conspiring to put lesbian and
gay life into crisis.
A backlash against homosexuality, spearheaded by the new right but widely supported
by neoconservatives and mainstream Republicans, punctured illusions of a coming era of
tolerance and sexual pluralism (Adam 1987; Patton 1985; Seidman 1992). The AIDS
epidemic both energized the anti-gay backlash and put lesbians and gay men on the
defensive as religious and medicalized models which discredited homosexuality were
rehabilitated in public discourses. Although the AIDS crisis also demonstrated the strength
of established gay institutions, for many lesbians and gay men it underscored the limits
of a politics of minority rights and inclusion. Both the backlash and the AIDS crisis
prompted a renewal of radical activism, of a politics of confrontation, coalition building,
and the need for a critical theory that would link gay empowerment to broad institutional
change.
Internal developments similarly prompted a shift in gay theory and politics. Longsimmering
internal differences erupted around the issues of race and sex. By the early
1980s, a public culture fashioned by lesbian and gay people of color registered sharp
criticisms of mainstream gay culture and politics for its marginalization, devaluation, and
exclusion of their experiences, interests, values, and unique forms of life (e.g., their
language, writing, political perspectives, relationships, and particular modes of oppression).
The concept of lesbian and gay identity that served as the foundation for building
a community and organizing politically was criticized as reflecting a white, middle-class
experience or standpoint (Anzaldua and Moraga 1983; Beam 1986; Lorde 1984; Moraga
1983; Hemphill 1991). The categories of "lesbian" and "gay" were criticized for functioning
as disciplining political forces. Simultaneously, lesbian feminism was further put
into crisis by challenges to its foundational concept of sexuality and sexual ethics. At the
heart of lesbian feminism, especially in the late 1970s, was an understanding of the
difference between men and women anchored in a spiritualized concept of female sexuality
and an eroticization of the male that imagined male desire as revealing a logic of misogyny
and domination. Being a woman and a lesbian meant exhibiting in one's desires, fantasies,
and behaviors a lesbian-feminist sexual and social identity. Many lesbians, and feminists
in general, criticized lesbian feminism for marking their own erotic and intimate lives as
deviant or male-identified (e.g., Allison 1981; Bright 1984; Califia 1979, 1981; Rubin
1983). In the course of what some describe as the feminist "sex wars," a virtual parade
of female and lesbian sexualities (e.g., butch-fems, sadomasochists, sensualists of all
kinds) entered the public text of lesbian culture, mocking the idea of a unified lesbian
sexual identity (Ferguson 1989; Phelan 1989; Seidman 1992). The intent of people of
color and of sex rebels was to encourage social differences to surface in gay and lesbian
life, but one consequence was to raise questions about the very foundations of gay culture
and politics.
Some people in the lesbian and gay communities reacted to the "crisis" by reasserting
a natural foundation for homosexuality (e.g., the gay brain) in order to unify homosexuals
in the face of a political backlash, to defend themselves against attacks prompted by the
plague, and to overcome growing internal discord. Many activists and intellectuals,
however, moved in the opposite direction, affirming a stronger thesis of the social construction
of homosexuality, which took the form of radical politics of difference. Although
people of color and sex rebels pressured gay culture in this direction, there appeared a
new cadre of theorists, influenced profoundly by French poststructuralism and Lacanian
psychoanalysis, who have significantly altered the terrain of gay theory and politics (e.g.,
Butler 1990; de Lauretis 1991; Doty 1993; Fuss 1991; Sedgwick 1990; Warner 1993). If
queer theory speaks to a serious epistemic shift, I think it is to this refigured conceptual
field.
As the contributors to this symposium make clear, queer theory has accrued multiple
meanings, from a merely useful shorthand way to speak of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgendered studies to a theoretical sensibility that pivots on transgression or permanent
rebellion. I take as central to queer theory its challenge to what has been the dominant
foundational concept of both homophobic and affirmative homosexual theory: the assumption
of a homosexual subject or identity. I interpret queer theory as contesting this
foundation and therefore the very telos of Western homosexual politics.
Modem Western homophobic and gay affirmative theory has assumed a homosexual
subject. Dispute materialized over its origin (natural or social), its changing social forms
and roles, its moral meaning, and its politics. There has been hardly any serious disagreement
regarding the assumption that homosexual theory and politics have as their object
"the homosexual" as a stable, unified, and identifiable agent. Drawing from the critique
of unitary identity politics by people of color and by sex rebels, and from the poststructural
critique of "representational" models of language, queer theorists argue that identities are
always multiple or at best composites, with an infinite number of ways in which "identitycomponents"
(e.g., sexual orientation, race, class, nationality, gender, age, ableness) can
intersect or combine. Any specific identity construction, moreover, is arbitrary, unstable,
and exclusionary. Identity constructions necessarily entail the silencing or exclusion of
some experiences or forms of life. For example, the assertion of a black, middle-class,
American lesbian identity silences differences in this social category that relate to religion,
regional location, subcultural identification, relation to feminism, age, or education.
Identity constructs are necessarily unstable because they elicit opposition or indeed produce
resistance by those whose experiences, interests, or forms of life are submerged by the
assertion of identity. Finally, rather than viewing affirmations of identity as necessarily
liberating, queer theorists figure them as disciplinary and regulatory structures. Identity
constructions function, if you will, as templates defining selves and behaviors and therefore
as excluding a range of possible ways to frame one's self, body, desires, actions, and
social relations.
Approaching identities as multiple, unstable, and regulatory may suggest to critics the
undermining of gay theory and politics, but for queer theorists it presents new and
productive possibilities. Although I detect a strain of anti-identity politics in some queer
theory, the aim is not to abandon identity as a category of knowledge and politics but to
render it permanently open and contestable as to its meaning and political role. In other
words, decisions about identity categories become pragmatic, related to concerns of
situational advantage, political gain, and conceptual utility. The gain of figuring identity
as permanently open as to its meaning and political use, say queer theorists, is that it
encourages the public surfacing of differences or a culture where multiple voices and
interests are heard and shape gay life and politics.
Queer theory articulates a related objection to a homosexual theory and politics organized
on the ground of the homosexual subject: This project reproduces the heterohomosexual
binary, a code that perpetuates the heterosexualization of society (Namaste
this issue). Modem Western affirmative homosexual theory may naturalize or normalize
the gay subject or even may register it as an agent of social liberation, but it has the effect
of consolidating heterosexuality and homosexuality as master categories of sexual and
social identity; it reinforces the modem regime of sexuality. Queer theory wishes to
challenge the regime of sexuality itself-that is, the knowledges that construct the self as
sexual and that assume heterosexuality and homosexuality as categories marking the truth
of sexual selves. The modem system of sexuality organized around the heterosexual or
homosexual self is approached as a system of knowledge, one that structures the institutional
and cultural life of Western societies. In other words, queer theorists view heterosexuality
and homosexuality not simply as identities or social statuses but as categories
of knowledge, a language that frames what we know as bodies, desires, sexualities,
identities; this is a normative language that erects moral boundaries and political hierarchies.
Queer theorists shift their focus from an exclusive preoccupation with the oppression
and liberation of the homosexual subject to an analysis of the institutional practices and
discourses producing sexual knowledges and how they organize social life, with particular
attention to the way in which these knowledges and social practices repress differences.
In this regard, queer theory is suggesting that the study of homosexuality should not be a
study of a minority-the making of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/subject-but a study of those
knowledges and social practices which organize "society" as a whole by sexualizingheterosexualizing
or homosexualizing-bodies, desires, acts, identities, social relations,
knowledges, culture, and social institutions. Queer theory aspires to transform homosexual
theory into a general social theory or one standpoint from which to analyze whole societies.
As of this writing, queer theory and sociology have barely acknowledged one another.
Queer theory has largely been the creation of academics, mostly feminists and mostly
humanities professors. Sociologists are almost invisible in these discussions (Irvine this
issue). This is somewhat ironic in light of the gesturing of queer theory towards a general
social analysis. Moreover, the silence of sociologists is most unfortunate because queer
theory has been criticized for its textualism or "underdeveloped" concept of the social
(e.g., Hennessy 1993; Seidman forthcoming; Warner 1993). Sociologists have much to
learn from queer theory (Irvine this issue) as well as the opportunity to make a serious
contribution.
This symposium is intended to bring to an end the mutual neglect between queer
theorists and sociologists. It asks the following questions: What is queer theory? How
does it speak to sociologists? How does it challenge sociologists to reexamine their
paradigms, and how might sociology speak to queer theory? What would a queer theory
which seriously engaged sociology look like? The queer-ing of sociology and the sociologizing
of queer theory are the twin themes and hopes of this symposium.
A final word about risk and courage is in order. Alan Sica deserves much credit for
supporting this symposium, the first of its kind in a sociology journal. It was an act of
risk and trust on his part; I hope he has not been disappointed. I have enormous admiration
for the contributors. Aside from myself and Ken Plummer, either they are junior faculty
members or anticipate entering the job market shortly. Although identifying with a queer
standpoint has achieved a level of tolerance and perhaps some cultural currency in the
humanities, queer perspectives are barely visible in sociology. These contributors have
wagered, perhaps unconsciously but surely bravely, that their contesting of knowledges
will be taken on its own terms as part of the ongoing sociological conversation about the
understanding and shape of contemporary humanity. Finally, I wish to thank Charles
Lemert, whose encouragement of this project and whose respect for "the other" has been
as gentle and loving as it has been unyielding and provoking.
+ نوشته شده در پنجشنبه بیست و چهارم آبان 1386ساعت 17:45 توسط حمید پرنیان
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