Wrapping it all up...

Here we are, at the end of the semester.  I find it only appropriate to use my last blog entry to elaborate on what I've taken away from all of our wonderful readings.  While you may pick up on a slight hint of sarcasm in that last statement, I really do mean it sincerely.  Here's why.

I came into class without any real footing in philosophy, but simply an interest to learn more about critical theory.  The way I've come to appreciate critical theory is that it affords readers a way of slicing and dicing any given material in a thousand different ways, to read and understand and appreciate the subtleties and nuances of works of literature.  Being a pretty big reader of classical literature, I have always felt that, which each book I read, my world, my perspective changed.  And I honestly feel that literary criticism endeavors on just that -- providing a new lens through which we read, then understand, then see our world. 

Now, as highly as I regarded critical theory, I came in only with the brief introduction I was given in Eng 280.  Here I thought our class would simply be a continuation of this mixed-bag approach -- Post-Colonialism, Marxist, New American, etc.  So I was a bit (okay, a lot) dismayed after our very first day of class, when we were presented with Queer THeory: Issues of Embodiment.  I felt like the victim of a bait and switch. 

However, I'm so very glad I didn't bail on this class.  It has been such a unique experience, sitting in a room with highly-intelligent individuals, discussing the Butler and Foucault.  Reading these works weren't easy for me, but I'm happy to say that yes, Dr. Renzi, I've learned a lot.  A ton, really. 

Gender has always been a tenuous construct in my mind, and reading (and digesting with the help of our class discussions) has really opened up my views.  The beginning of the readings made me feel as though the idea of gender itself is a damaging one that serves as a vehicle for oppression.  But coming full-circle, Butler's suggestions in Undoing Gender resonated with me much more -- that gender itself is a social construction and performance, yes, but it is a reality that we must subvert and expand and problematize until it becomes a construction that is, at least and perhaps most, tolerable. And how can we do this?  Through continuous discourse.  Thanks, Foucault.  Discourse is an incredibly powerful force, a tool that we can use to shape and reshape our landscape, as he so loquaciously imparted to us in The History of Sexuality P.1.

So what has all of this done for me?  I have a new appreciation and understanding for how loosely defined the term "queer" can really be.  That queerness is one thing, but the embodiment of it is an entirely different level.  Certainly, my perspective on gender and sexuality has changed.  My views on the importance of others have changed.  And I’ve taken away an arsenal of knowledge that will augment how I read texts from here on out, always looking for the queer, always looking for seemingly strange notions of embodiment.

Thanks for a great semester.

- terese

Hung and the Oppressive Gaze of Others

As I’m working on my “theory” about the third parties that are imposed onto and invited into queer relationships, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means to present yourself to the world as queer, in any manner, really.

After we watched Clyve’s clip from Hung, I really got to thinking about returning to a former public as a newly queered body.  So you go through this pretty intense series of operations and transformations that no doubt requires a great amount of healing and adjustment.  And after all of that, you have to face not just your loved ones and those important to you in your life, but also be subjected to dissection by those from your “former public” (to borrow from Clyve), open for humiliation and pain at every turn.  This isn’t far from the experience that others must feel when they come out of the closet.  There is always someone else who impacts your existence, whether it’s intentional and invited or not.  I can’t even fathom the fear and trepidation that Kyla must have felt, and while the show is fiction, it’s most certainly an everyday reality for a so many people. 

So what does this imply for the living experience of a queer?  We’ve read about it and discussed a few different aspects, from being intelligible to the trauma of living amongst the always almost dying AIDS community. This got me to thinking of the endless number of ways that a marginalized life is intruded upon, from private intimate moments to attending a class reunion… sometimes simply walking down the street.  We’re social, relational beings, so this undoing and building of one another is inevitable, but it has been quite an experience opening my perspective up to the undeniable and grossly hideous ways in which queer lifestyles and bodies are regarded.  So, cheers I suppose, to this class further expanding my horizons, though it makes me just a bit sad to think about.

- terese