Back Door To Hell

February 19th, 2010 by Nagypál Tamás

Introduction

In this paper I’d like to examine the discourse of coming out as heterosexual as ultimately asymmetrical to the ones involving sexual minorities. Using Judith Butler’s critique of gender identity as a starting point, I will develop the concept of the heterosexual coming out as the blind spot of Butler’s and Laclau’s politics of non-identity. I’ll draw on Slavoj Zizek’s psychoanalytic theory of the disavowed inherent transgression to supplement Butler’s notion of gender performativity in critiquing heteronormativity. Finally I’ll present the differences of the two theoretical frameworks through the case of a media quarrel between Sarah Palin and David Letterman that happened earlier this year.

Homosexual Coming Out vs. The Politics of Non-identity

When we think of a “coming out”, we usually think of it as a procedure concerning homosexuals. Furthermore, the idea some kind of isolated space, that of the closet is evoked where the person can come out from to the light of the public arena supposedly shared by all of us. Through this process, the fable tells us, even those who don’t share the sexual orientation of the majority can become a fully fledged members of society by (re)presenting themselves, since after all we are all different in some way. We all need to become what we are. It is the blind optimism of this doxa that Judith Butler criticizes in her Imitation and Gender Insubordination when she emphasizes the possible traps of the lesbian coming out and its assumption of an identity. She shows how every assertion of “this is what I am”, every disclosure of the “I” can work only through a radical exclusion, by concealing and repressing something through which process the “I” can gain clear boundaries. Coming out thus relies on and reproduces the closet, the space of being “in” in opposition to the triumphant being “out”[1].

So far, this is an argument about the impossibility of assuming any kind of identity. What makes the case of lesbian coming out more complicated, however, is the fact that homosexuality as a category has a history of designating the unnatural opposite of the heterosexual norm. Or, as Butler puts it in Bodies That Matter, heterosexual gender identity is formed through the disavowal of the same sex desire[2]. For this reason, a lesbian coming out involves an avowal of a prior disavowal, and it leaves intact the ideological framework that designates lesbian as a mere bad copy of heterosexuality as its original[3]. Someone with a lesbian identity constituted this way will count only as a secondary citizen in the supposedly equal public space. Butler’s argument is also a good illustration of what, in Hegelian terms, can be called the double inscription of heterosexuality operating in liberal democracy. It works both as the hegemonic universal (based on the normative exclusion) and as one of the particular identities in a series of apparent equivalences. The tolerant liberal democratic space thus can be viewed as a latest manifestation of what Ernesto Laclau calls universality based on the logic of incarnation where a particular is directly standing in for the universal. His example is the European universalism of the 19^th century, where, he argues, “there was no way to distinguish between European particularism and the universal functions it was supposed to incarnate, given that European universalism had constructed its identity through the cancellation of the logic of incarnation and, as a result, of the universalization of its own particularism.”[4]

Thus Butler, instead of the coming out, proposes the deconstruction of the hidden binary operating within the heteronormative universal. Instead of silently accepting that homosexuality is just a copy, the task is to demonstrate how the seemingly original heterosexuality is already an imitation. What heterosexuals imitate is “a phantasmatic ideal of a heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect”. The construction of an identity always fails, so the attempt has to be repeated again and again through a performance that both sustains the ideal and exposes its vulnerability. When Butler says that “[all] gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original”[5], we can understand this statement as the starting point of a different kind of community based on the universal non-identity of its subjects. Or to use again Laclau’s formulation: “[this] universal is part of my identity insofar as I am penetrated by a constitutive lack-that is, insofar as my differential identity has failed in its process of constitution. The universal emerges out of the particular not as some principle underlying and explaining it, but as an incomplete horizon suturing a dislocated particular identity.”[6] Just to be clear: this doesn’t mean that this new democracy would work without exclusions. As Butler herself formulates it, there is neither a subject, nor a social field without a set of exclusions already at work, without them we would get an unlivable fullness of psychosis. Real equality always remains an unreachable ideal[7]. What we can do is to prevent any particular to fix the meaning of the universal, to become naturalized; we can make sure “that the hegemonic configuration is always open to contestation and change”[8].

To summarize, Butler argues against homosexual coming out partly because it remains stuck within identity politics and partly because it sustains the liberal democratic political system built on several fixed hegemonic universals[9], among them (the identity of) heterosexuality. The underlying assumption is that the original sin of politics as well as its worst possible degeneration is the temptation of essentialism, that is, the reaching for a fixed identity. But is this really the ultimate horizon for a political struggle? In the remaining sections, I will show a different kind of threat that cannot be accounted for in the framework above. I will base my investigation on a blind spot of Butler’s theory: the possibility of coming out as heterosexual.

Coming Out As Heterosexual

In their Deconstructing Heterosexuality, Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson point out a fundamental asymmetry between lesbian and heterosexual feminists in terms of their sexual identity. While lesbian feminists usually proudly embrace their lesbian identity, their heterosexual colleagues tend to deny that their sexual orientation has anything to do with their feminist politics. They prefer to think of their sexuality as fluid, one that is open to possible same-sex relationships even if they have lived all their life as heterosexuals[10]. The authors criticize this attitude by arguing that such a “lack of reflexiveness is the privilege of power”. The problem for them is that by trying to mix together into the same category lesbian feminists and heterosexual feminists, the latter take away the specific political edge of the homosexuals claiming their oppressed identity[11]. Although I agree with this evaluation, I think it needs to be supplemented to be able to stand Butler’s critique. The problem is that the authors don’t really deal with the actual coming out of heterosexuals. Their primary example is that of “brave” heterosexual feminists who are decent enough to admit they are privileged[12]. We can hardly call this coming out as it is more about guilt than pride. The other example involves a feminine man who in all his life was considered gay until he decided to come out of his closet to himself, that is, not in public[13]. Thus the question remains: what does it mean to come out as heterosexual? And also: why is it political to come out as homosexual?

To delineate what I understand by coming out as heterosexual, I will use Slavoj Zizek’s critique of Butler’s theory of the heteronormative universal created through the disavowal of homosexuality. According to Zizek, “what universality excludes is not primarily the underprivileged Other whose status is reduced, constrained, and so on, but its own permanent founding gesture – a set of unwritten, unacknowledged practices which, while publicly disavowed, are nonetheless the ultimate support of the existing power edifice. The public power edifice is haunted also by its own disavowed particular obscene underside, by the particular practices which break its own public rule – in short, by its ‘inherent transgression’”[14]. In psychoanalytic terms we are dealing here with the gap between official symbolic (written) law and its supporting superego double of unwritten rituals (like humiliating initiatory practices of fraternity houses, pedophilia in the Catholic church or married men going to brothels) where the public law is suspended. According to Zizek, this gap is necessary for the symbolic to function, which means that besides the subject’s attempt to construct his or her identity as an answer to the normative interpellation we can also talk about the ideological practice of disidentification[15], involving the subject’s false illusion that he or she escaped, tricked the call of the law.

Is it then possible to avow this disavowal, to come out being proud of the very obscene rituals that the castrated phallic authority doesn’t allow us to express openly, let alone be proud of them? It seems impossible, as long as we move within the framework of the symbolic order. In that case, public presentation of the disavowed practices can break the smooth functioning of the symbolic, make power embarrassed, so to speak. This is how I would interpret the effectivity of a movement like Queer Nation. A slogan like “I praise God with my erection”[16] can be subversive precisely because it touches upon the obscene rituals within normative religious practices, or to put it bluntly, the fact that Christians themselves praise God with their erections. However, following Dagmar Herzog’s line of thought from her book Sex in Crisis, I’d like argue that in the last 10-15 years there is another form of power has been emerging that seems to be immune to such shaming attempts as it situates itself beyond the symbolic order. Herzog presents a strange shift in the Religious Right’s discourses on sex from a more repressive take to what she calls Christian pornography. The latter manifests itself first and foremost in public confessions of one’s sexual transgressions (sex with prostitutes, sex with minors, masturbation…) in explicit details, in a way that undermines the assumption that there is guilt involved at all[17]. And although there is an identity ideal evoked, that of non-castrated “wild man” who is not tamed by bourgeois conditioning[18], this pure masculinity is more like the impossible ideal of democracy that Laclau and Butler talk about; it can be approached by confessing/sacrificing new and new elements of actual male behavior on its altar. That is to say, the construction of an identity doesn’t play a role in either case, for Butler and Laclau because they consciously avoid it, and for the conservatives because they just don’t bother with appearances anymore.

To conclude this part, I’d like to define coming out as heterosexual as the above mentioned public avowal of the disavowed obscene underside of the heteronormative symbolic law. This can also explain why coming out as homosexual (or a member of any other sexual minority) can be perceived as a political act. In my view, it involves a disidentification with, a separation from the obscene rituals supporting the heteronormative symbolic[19]. This also sheds a new light to the question of the closet. What if the characteristic feature of a closeted person is that of disidentification? No matter what the actual content of his particular self-distanciation from the official law is, the very form of his performance will reify the hegemonic order. By sharing this ideological predisposition with members of the majority, he or she not only plays along with the normative symbolic law but with its superego underside as well. Thus coming out means not so much the entering to the public space from some isolated private hideout but a first step towards subverting the ruling symbolic by withdrawing its support from the most crucial place.

Letterman vs. Palin

And finally, to illustrate the different dimensions where Butler’s critique of gender identity and a Lacanian attack on proud heterosexuals can work, I will present an analysis of the media feud that happened between David Letterman and Sarah Palin this summer. The events started when Letterman, host of the currently number one late night talk show in the US, told a somewhat tasteless joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter on the June 10 episode of his program. Here is what he said: “Sarah Palin went to the Yankee game yesterday. There was one awkward moment during the seventh inning stretch: her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”[20] As it’s well known, Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter got in fact pregnant last year, which was an issue that created a controversy of its own thanks to Palin’s abstinence only sex education program and the way Bristol helped her to promote abstinence serving as the bad example. As for Letterman’s joke, complications started to appear when it became public that it was in fact not the (at the time already) 18 year old Bristol but Sarah Palin’s other daughter, the 14 year old Willow who attended the game with her mother. Palin issued a statement, accusing Letterman of joking about the statutory rape of minors and how with this kind of talk he contributes to the sexual exploitation of underage girls by older men, an outrage that happens in an “atrociously high rate”[21].

The fact that these accusations apparently made David Letterman very uncomfortable is a sign that he, at the time, occupied the place of symbolic authority, who’s functioning needs the disavowal of not only rape and sexual abuse but any kind knowledge of underage sexual activity as well. The next day he spent 8 minutes trying to reestablish the boundary at the age of 18 that makes it ok to consider a person sexually active – although as a gentleman, he also admitted the low quality of his joke concerning Bristol Palin: “Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was ok for her 14 year old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.”[22] It is crucial to distinguish on the one hand the slightly male chauvinist gender performance involving a series of sexist jokes about Sarah Palin herself that Letterman told since she entered the political scene (like describing her as a “slutty flight attendant” in the same June 10 monologue), and on the other this incident that actually broke the chain of performances by uncovering the disavowed underside that was there all along.

Sarah Palin didn’t accept Letterman’s answer, and came up with another statement attacking him more directly as one of the nation’s dirty old men abusing young girls. Responding to Letterman’s inviting them to the show, she wrote: “The Palins have no intention of providing a rating’s boost to Letterman’s show… Plus it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.” The paradox is that although this was obviously a cheap political ploy on her part to exploit a situation that happened by chance, she nonetheless was on the right track subverting a male dominated symbolic normativity. However, I’d like to emphasize, she was on the right track for the wrong reasons. When she was asked to explain the last part of her latest statement on the Today Show (“Do you suggest that David Letterman can’t be trusted around your 14 year old girl?”), she came up with a perplexing answer: “Maybe he couldn’t be trusted because Willow’s had enough of these type of comments and maybe Willow would want to uhhhhh ‘react’ to him in a way that maybe would catch him off guard”[23]. After watching Letterman being uncomfortable for 8 minutes by the mere thought of teenage sexuality, one can imagine what kind of “reaction” Palin talks about that would embarrass him even more. It might seem, again, that not counting her insistence of calling her daughter’s showing of her sexuality a reaction, Palin actually makes a valid feminist point (by presenting the agency of her daughter). But I like another reading of this little Freudian slip better, according to which Palin reproaches Letterman for not being a real enough man, not like those in the evangelical discourses, the ones who aren’t squeamish when it comes to fucking teenage girls. For me, this is the only way the whole story of Palin’s accusations make sense at the libidinal level, serving as a footnote to her political performance of self-objectification[24]. Her act is subversive, yes, but the subversion is in service of a sexual counterrevolution aiming at the restoration of the Freudian primal father.

As for Letterman, on Jun 18, he did the right thing that can be expected from a male figure of authority: he apologized to the Palins by taking full responsibility for the public perception of his joke regardless of his original intentions[25]. In psychoanalytic terms, this move is called identification with the symptom, with the return of the repressed of his gender performance materialized in an obscene joke he had no conscious control over. It is crucial to see that through this act, the “normal” order of things was restored, the disavowed content got excluded again, that is, the Palins can go back to where they belong: to the private sphere, to their family. It would be too much of a speculation to say that Palin resigning from the governorship for no apparent reason a couple of weeks later had anything to do with the Letterman-affair, but as the subsequent late show jokes suggest, the connection is made at least in fantasy[26].

What I was trying to show is that while a Butlerian critique of phallic gender identification is very effective applied to David Letterman’s performing the role of symbolic authority, Sarah Palin’s lack of concern for a coherent identity needs a different set of critical apparatus, that differentiates her gender performance from the non-identity Butler or Laclau talks about. My view is that it can be understood as serving the ideal of the “real man”, presented also in discourses of the Religious Right, the Freudian obscene father who has all the women and has unlimited sexual potential. Thus while technically siding with Butler’s project of the subversion of normative gender identities, her activities lead towards a much more sinister form of male domination.

References

Berlant, Lauren and Freeman, Elizabeth: “Queer Nationality” in: The Queen of America Goes To Washington City. Duke University Press, 1997, 145-174.

Butler, Judith: Bodies That Matter: On the Discoursive Limits of Sex, Routledge, 1993

Butler, Judith: “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” in: Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories/Gay Theories. London: Routledge, 1991, 13-31.

Butler, Judith and Laclau, Ernesto and Laddaga, Reinaldo: The Uses of Equality. Diacritics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring, 1997), 3-12.

Butler, Judith and Laclau, Ernesto and Zizek, Slavoj: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Discourses on the Left. London: Verso, 2000

Herzog, Dagmar: Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics. New York: Basic Books, 2008

Kitzinger, Celia and Wilkinson, Sue: “Deconstructing Hetero-sexuality: A Feminist Social-constructionist Perspective” in: Nickie Charles and Felicia Hughes-Freeland (eds.) Practicing Feminism: Identity, Difference, Power. Routledge, 1996, 135-154.

Laclau, Ernesto: Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity. October, Vol. 61, The Identity in Question (MIT University Press, Summer, 1992), 83-90.

Media

Hannity, Nov. 18, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx3l4kUNVQw

Late Show With David Letterman, June 11, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6FUwBmclo

Late Show With David Letterman, June 18, 2009

http://www.iviewtube.com/videos/59707/david-letterman-apologizes-to-sarah-palin-daughters

Late Show With David Letterman, July 07, 2009

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/07/letterman-takes-on-palin_n_226854.html

The Today Show With Matt Lauer, June 12, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKeZ8wgxl8U