Remembering Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009)

Two brilliant women sadly passed away in April after long battles with cancer. The legendary small screen actress Bea Arthur (1922-2009), whose obituary was of course well publicized, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009), the scholar and activist who revolutionised gay and lesbian studies. Gary Needham and Liz Morrish both pay their tributes to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

It’s now significant that I remember reading Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love (1999) while looking after the grandmother who raised me and who was fading away from (the then unknown) rapid metastasis from breast cancer. I never thought of that affective link between these two influential figures in my life until now. I came to Eve Sedgwick and queer theory on my own in my first year as a postgraduate in Glasgow (in 2000) since it was something that was never taught to me so I never knew what to expect from it, yet, I knew that I ought to start exploring it. Well, I can honestly say queer theory transformed my academic life and purpose, namely the relationship between my identity and what was really the point of being an academic in the first place; a real transformation where film studies (my discipline) was usurped by queer and LGBT studies. I’d probably be writing histories of Italian cinema and obscure movies (not that they aren’t important things to write about) if it wasn’t for the inspiration and insight that I owe to Eve Sedgwick and her books Between Men (1985), Epistemology of the Closet (1990), Tendencies (1993), and Touching Feeling (2003). I’m sure we all secretly have our favourite scholars but Eve was different in that she never seemed to be writing from the measured distance of most scholarship. When she wrote, especially in Tendencies, you got the feeling that a good friend was telling you this stuff. There was something about Eve’s writing that felt more like an act of sharing and the joy of her writing and thinking was not only that it was smart, in fact really smart, but that it was heartfelt and honest. So when I read that on the 12th of April Eve had passed away from the same thing as my grandmother I was deeply saddened. Even though I’ve never met Eve Sedgwick, the experience was as if a friend had somehow passed away; that’s the kind of effect that Eve’s writing has on you. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be the scholar I am without Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. (Gary)

Eve Sedgwick was for me the Martina Navratilova of queer theory, dominating all over the place and queering the disciplines, but mystifyingly, she was not quite entirely queer herself. She leaves a husband of some 40 years. Well, that’s how the straight world might see her, but then Sedgwick’s entire project was to disrupt our expectations and conventional readings, even of the category queer. Perhaps the work which shocked the most was an essay “Jane Austen and the masturbating girl” (1989) which challenges the traditional interpretation of the behaviour of Austen’s characters. Sedgwick was rapidly elevated to queer diva status even as she was reviled by the Right in the US during the ‘culture wars’ of the 1990s. This was a time of divided campuses, when individuals were obliged to take sides. Just admitting to having read Epistemology of the Closet or Tendencies marked you as a queer radical committed to the downfall of Western civilization. Stanley Fish opened up space for alternative literary approaches at Duke and recruited Sedgwick, and she soon gathered around her a group of young thinkers and together they carried queer theory forward to its accepted position in critical theory today. (Liz)

(photo credit: David Shankbone, permissions)

Richard Johnson: Gender Insurgency and Neo-Liberal Reform: The Academy Twice Transformed?

A report on a paper by Richard Johnson delivered at the University of Birmingham 6th March 2009 in the series: 'Gender and Sexuality: The Discursive Limits of "Equality" in Higher Education'

This talk marked a kind of ironic homecoming for Richard Johnson, as he taught at the University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1974 to 1993. CCCS was, unfathomably, closed in 1991 and a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology formed. It, too, was closed by the University in 2002, in the wake of rumours that this was revenge for the centre’s oppositional stance to the University’s administration. At this point Richard left Birmingham, and at Nottingham Trent many of us were privileged to enjoy his generosity of time and spirit, until his retirement.

Richard argued that neoliberalism didn’t just start in 1975, but we are now seeing an intensification of its embrace. While noting Karl Polyani’s view that economies are embedded in cultures, Richard made the point that these dominant models never wholly expunge other trajectories. The fact that neoliberalism is not all-encompassing is what makes it possible to critique the structures which attempt to govern and regulate us in the academy. Furthermore, as much as these other perspectives exist alongside the dominant ones, there remains the possibility of a looking back to a previous existence and perhaps a re-installation of that ethos.

Richard’s talk took a biographical turn as he reflected on the phases and transitions across his own academic career. This began in Cambridge in a collegial, but gender and class-segregated setting. At Birmingham there was less segregation of class, and slowly there appeared more women colleagues as feminists fought their way into academic space and legitimacy. Alliances with the 1968 student movement resulted in a greater democratization of the university and of power relations between staff and students.

The neoliberal phase began with Richard’s move to NTU, more or less in concert with the accession to power of New Labour. He reports finding many echoes at NTU of the Blairite interventionist impulse to over-regulate, inspect, audit and punish those who do not comply. However, despite this he was delighted to find that cultural studies at NTU was not a marginalised project. It was well embedded in the academy and successful in research. Ironically, he found, much of the exciting collaborative work fell away under RAE pressures to perform individually. In his view, the decision to buy in experienced researchers (such as himself) resulted in a reproduction of patriarchy, a teaching/ research divide and a gender hierarchy.

Richard left us with a call to subvert the neoliberal governmentality he saw at NTU and more generally in the ‘new’ and ‘old’ universities. He offered two strategies: a return to collective work, activism and the formation of ‘little networks’ (let’s hope this blog is a start!); also a revitalised demand for democracy in universities, with real representation on key decision-making bodies.

Swimming in Queer Theory - Judith Halberstam@Warwick (Part 2)

Following the queer theory workshop and lunch (Part 1), Liz Morrish and Gary Needham attended a formal presentation by Judith Halberstam on the subject of the cut and collage in queer/feminist art.

This paper followed of from some of the issues and artists previously discussed in Halberstam’s In a Queer Time and Place (2005). Halberstam offered an analysis of several feminist/queer artists including Kara Walker and Yoko Ono. What interested Halberstam was the way in which collage, re-inscription and cutting are central devices in these artists’ practice. What drew Halberstam to cutting and collage is the way in which the practice re-organizes meaning through juxtapositions and absences which could be thought of as queer. Halberstam urged us to consider through various works the moments when subjects become illegible thus unreadable, unknowable, and resistant, subjects who refuse to cohere and subject who embrace passivity as a form of agency. Gary thinks some of this connects quite well with some earlier 1990s queer work in photography (namely Della Grace Volcano and Catherine Opie) in which the subject’s gender becomes illegible and unreadable and includes in the canon images of Judith/Jack Halberstam. The conclusion drawn from Halberstam’s presentation also returned us to the queer theory workshop from earlier that morning, in that, Halberstam asked the audience to consider the possibility of embracing negativity and passivity as viable political acts of resistance for queers. The larger framing of Halberstam’s new work in queer theory would seem to suggests that queerness is (and should be) “the problem of the subject itself”.
(photo credit: Arbitrary.Marks/Colleen Keating)

Swimming in Queer Theory - Judith Halberstam@Warwick (Part 1)

Liz Morrish and Gary Needham participated in a day of queer theory events on the 16th February organised by Cath Lambert and led by Judith Halberstam; these included a queer theory workshop, lunch, and a formal paper on queer and feminist art.

The morning session workshop was on trends in queer theory in which Judith Halberstam identified several new avenues of exploration that she saw as the vanguard in recent queer scholarship. The workshop was structured around three readings that the participants (about 20 of us) had been given in advance. These were the introductory chapters to Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), Rod Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique (2004), and Heather Love’s Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer Theory (2007). Usefully, Halberstam effortlessly teased out the main arguments from each of these introductions in order to pose much broader questions about the direction queer theory might be heading over the next few years. We feel they are worth summarising here.

Edelman’s No Future is by now a well-rehearsed critique of the normative effects of temporality that reveals how the figure of the child functions as the lynchpin of a future defined solely in reproductive and familial terms. Queerness occupies the side of those ‘not fighting for the children’ thus queers are defined as future-negating. Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black proposes critique of US sociology that defines as aberrant everything which lies outside of the white family. Queer theory, then, must acknowledge its genealogy and affiliation with women of color feminism in order to develop a queer of color analysis. Ferguson’s work not only racializes queer theory’s implicit whiteness but also seeks to undo the rigid disciplinarity that has often kept the study of race and sexuality separate from one another. Finally, Heather Love’s Feeling Backward suggests that is too early for queers to turn away from the shame, and recommends we engage in a ‘backward looking’ as a way to investigate the shame which is part of our history and identity. Even in an era that celebrates gay pride, there are those traces – structures of feeling – that leave an indelible trace of shame. Shame thus “lives on in pride” despite attempts to appropriate it as a reverse discourse.

Judith Halberstam prompted us into group discussion in order to think about how the future of queer theory (paradoxically based on concepts of backwardness and negativity). The questions that came out of these complex arguments were to get us thinking about how we (as queers) might embrace a negative impulse in directly political terms as a form of resistance to the prevailing social order. Halberstam also asked could we find a way out of melancholia, shame and negativity – and what are the political alternatives and what are the other legacies we can activate? How can we imagine a queer future in the absence of ‘the Child’? Can we also speak of a queer affectivity? If the goals of queer theory have been to shatter, resist, disrupt - what other projects can we claim for queer theory?

While the workshop did raise more questions than it could possible answer it proved a useful overview of some recent trends in queer theory and the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves especially if we are to maintain queer theory as a distinctly political and relevant form of critique and analysis.

Liz found Judith Halberstam terrific and likewise Gary was impressed by the effortlessness with which she brought together these three distinct debates in queer theory. Unlike so many queer theory divas, Judith was approachable, unselfconscious, interested and extremely skilled at managing a discussion with participants at different levels of understanding. Over lunch Liz discovered, much to her delight, that Judith was a major swim-head with an obsession about water that rivalled her own. Given Liz’s readings of Halberstam’s Female Masculinity and Drag King Book not to mention the various articles on butchness, FTM and transgender – indeed, given Liz’s reading of Judith super-cool masculine physical self-presentation – Liz was intrigued at the idea of negotiating a pool with Judith (what swim attire would she wear?) and of course the women’s locker room. Cursing herself for not bringing her cozzie, Liz realised she wasn’t going to find out experientially, so she asked Judith instead. They discussed the practices, paradoxes, concealments and confoundings of gender in the swimming environment. Fascinating stuff. What a duo and what a challenge to gender normativity. Liz will always regret not swimming with Judith Halberstam. And off Judith went to turn heads in the Warwick pool leaving Liz to debate Warwick’s campus cuisine with Gary.
(photo credit: Arbitrary.Marks/Colleen Keating)

For Us or Against Us?

A report on Mary Evans’ paper, ‘For Us or Against Us: Coercion and Consensus in Higher Education’, delivered at the University of Birmingham, 20th February 2009. By Liz Morrish.

Mary Evans produced a well-researched and structured argument in support of her thesis that neoliberal discourse and institutions (especially elite institutions) have produced a new kind of compliant and conformist female academic who completely accepts the new values of the university. Universities have embraced the values of the marketplace and models of social action based on enterprise. While embracing these new ideas, elite institutions have resisted moves towards greater diversity in student admissions.

The demands that the academic engages with the economic forces visited upon the university have in turn produced a new labouring self, perhaps a formulaic over-socialised persona, who is unrelentingly positive and engaged in academic entrepreneurship. This demands a negotiation with the institution which is gendered. Women analyse difficulties as failings of the self, rather than deficiencies in the institution. These latter become inadmissible, just as anger with institutional values becomes pathologized. Advancement through the hierarchy of the university is available only to compliant ‘good girls’. In this way, gender discrimination is no longer overt and categorical, but covert and is seen in pressure to conform to the ideal. For men, greater toleration of individuality is permitted, but women have to do more work to conform, squeezing out any possibility for ‘the person’ to emerge.

In terms of admission to elite institutions, the ideal remains the confident student with recognisable aspirations. Difference, if identifiable, must be articulated and accounted for. The person of promise and enthusiasm is the neoliberal ideal and privilege bestowed on that person will be seen as earned and legitimate. Perhaps this is the ultimate ‘confidence trick’ ?

Beyond Homosexual Desire

On Friday 27th February Liz Morrish is presenting on a panel entitled 'Beyond homosexual desire: Linguistic approaches to queer identities' along with Helen Sauntson of University of Birmingham. The panel is part of the 1st International CCCU Queer Studies Conference: Queering Paradigms.

Gender and Sexuality: The Discursive Limits of ‘Equality’ in Higher Education

Liz Morrish (NTU) and Helen Sauntson (University of Birmingham) are organising a series of seminars on 'Gender and Sexuality: The Discursive Limits of "Equality" in Higher Education' funded by a grant from the Dean's Fund at University of Birmingham. Future speakers include Richard Johnson and Joyce Canaan.

This seminar series investigates a number of areas of concern, regarding gender and sexuality, which are identifiable in the current British higher education environment. The series explores how current dominant ‘neoliberal’ discourses, which emphasise the commodification of higher education in the UK, function to set limits upon ‘equality’. Ironically, while these discourses often suggest a widening of opportunities within higher education with an emphasis upon unlimited individual freedom and choice, the lived experience can be rather different for women and sexual minorities. The seminar series will explore the impact such discourses are having upon gender and sexuality identities and practices in the academy. The aims of the seminar series are:

• To identify the characteristics of neoliberal discourse and its influence in the UK academy
• To identify effects which impact on women, sexual minorities and gender/sexuality scholarship
• To examine effects of on constituencies of scholars who are marginalised by neoliberal discourse
• To examine patterns of fiscal loss or reward as a result of neoliberal strategies of HEI management and planning

The next event is:

Friday 20th February 2009 10.00-12.00 (Selly Oak campus, room OLRC 104)
Professor Mary Evans, University of Kent
For Us or Against Us: Coercion and Consensus in Higher Education

In debates about the admissions of state school pupils to Oxbridge those defending Oxbridge have challenged the idea that universities should be 'engines of social change'. At the same time Oxbridge, and other universities have accepted the responsibility of 'enabling' entrepreneurship and other market led initiatives. I want to explore some of the implications of this position in terms of the 'making' of the person in higher education and in particular the ways in which conservative refusals of radical gender and class change re-inforce structural inequalities.

For further information, please contact Helen Sauntson