Some members of the Queer Encounters network attended the first in a series of events by ‘Beyond Radical: Queer theory and the UK’. Beyond Radical is an AHRC-funded research network for UK-based scholars, artists and activists interested in the continued interrogation and development of queer theory. There was a lively panel of discussions and breakout groups on the topic of ‘Rethinking Radicality in Queer Theory’, and the event was a great chance to catch up with old friends and meet other researchers.
The conference centred the radicality of queer theory in the UK, asking whether radicality is something that we currently inhabit, have already passed through, or should still be aspiring to (or not). Many speakers responded to the challenges set out in the conference pre-readings from US-based queer theorists, which questioned the future of queer theory in a supposedly homonormative world, and the limits of anti-normativity. The conference took place in the context of the recent violent incursions by Hamas into Southern Israel and Israel’s blockading and bombing of Gaza. The need for radical politics therefore presented itself as both urgent and immediate. The speakers responded to this call in different ways.
Panel 1: Position Papers I Speakers: Sita Balani (QMUL); Oliver Davis (Warwick), ‘Why Radical Thought About Sex is Vital’; Mijke van der Drift (RCA)
Balani suggested that we move beyond anti-normativity to find alternatives to fascism, looking to become indifferent to difference. Davis argued that both queer theory and psychoanalysis have become tamed, bureaucratised, and de-sexed, and that instead of moving beyond radicality, we in fact still need to become radical. Van der Drift meditated on the ‘sad’ institutionalisation of trans studies through the TSQ, and her own journey from farmer to dancer to academic, struggling with the need for academic recognition.
Panel 2: Position Papers II Speakers: Dhiren Borisa (Sheffield/Jindal Global Law School); Alex Stoffel (QMUL), ‘Who’s the Enemy? On Order, Antagonism, and Desire in Queer Theory’; SM Rodriguez (LSE), ‘The Queer Radical and the Prison’; Clare Hemmings (LSE), ‘Tethered: A Tense History of Queer, Feminist Radicality’
Borisa used stories from his life experience as a queer Dalit person, travelling from his village in Rajasthan to university in India and now to the UK, to illustrate how exhausting it can be when the world expects precarious queers to be permanently radical. Stoffel drew attention to the anti-normative normativity which can be seen as the paradox at the heart of queer theory, and asked, if making normativity our enemy becomes self-defeating, what do we do? SM Rodriguez focused on moments of queer intimacy and possibility in the dehumanising environment of the Ugandan prison, from the perspective of an intersex person who the carceral institutions, structured around colonial ideas of sex and gender, find to be illegible. And Hemmings attempted to navigate the tensions of a trans-inclusive reading of gender critical feminists such as McKinnon and Dworkin, arguing that queer theory – and queer theorists as people – are inherently tethered to sexuality as an object of study.
Panel 3: ‘Unconference’ session Small group discussions around attendee-generated topics: returning to the position papers; discussing the pre-circulated texts; broaching a topic that has not yet been discussed
Panel 4: Radicality and Institutionalization Comments from four directors of research centres: Zeena Feldman (KCL/Queer@King’s); Olu Jenzen (Brighton/Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender); Ben Nichols (Manchester/Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture); Sam Solomon (Sussex/Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence)
The final panel considered what radicality might mean in institutions set up to study sexuality in a resource-scare academic environment. Feldman suggested practical ways to advance radicality within institutions. Jensen suggested wearing a ‘queer trickster hat’ in order to ‘hustle’ within institutions. Nichols argued for routinising the conservation of queer and other minoritised knowledge, citing the Manchester Sexuality Summer School as an example. And Solomon highlighted the lack of resources and frequent demands for volunteer labour in gender and sexuality studies. Hemmings intervened following the discussion, highlighting the need to consider racial structures in academia in any discussion of resources and precarity.
Based on these discussions, radicality appears to be a concept that is still very charged for queer theorists in the UK in 2023, whether they consider it to be something to aspire to or not. When speaking as theorists or story-tellers, many felt that radicality should be discarded – partly due to its co-option by the right and neoliberalism – in favour of less identity-driven, more grounded, less exhausting approaches. Davis was alone in arguing that radicality is still vitally important in a society in which the inherent queerness of both sex and identity are constantly normalised and tamed. He presented his take-down of attachment theory as a ‘radical analysis’, and Hemmings’ tense attempt to approach radical feminism from a trans-inclusive perspective could be seen as risky and even radical in today’s polarised environment. And it was clear that in institutional contexts, even small acts of radicality (such as including the word ‘queer’ in a course name) could have significant consequences for both the institution and the student. The question of who can afford to be radical lurked not far beneath the surface.
As a psychosocial scholar, I was interested to observe the appearance of psychoanalytic theory – another discipline with its own claims to radicality (Frosh, 2019) – on the edge of the conference. Dean and Davis’ critique of attachment theory came very much from the perspective of Lacanian scholarship, and could be seen as a replication of many internal feuds in psychoanalysis, albeit with a queer twist. Hemmings’s discussion of tethering and tension, and suggestion that we ‘sit with’ the difficulty of these tensions, seemed to draw on Bionian ideas of sitting with lack of knowledge. I felt that a psychoanalytic approach could have been useful at other moments as well: for example, in examining what it is that is so powerful about our sense of self-identity, especially in how it relates to gender and desire, and in thinking about the psychic reasons for our tendency to project disparaged feelings onto people who are seen as different from ourselves, collectively and individually. Psychoanalysis tells us that the unconscious is radically different, the source of powerful internal and external conflict; any examination of radicality surely needs to consider its unconscious roots? It would be interesting to pick up these threads in future events.
Report by:
Harriet Mossop hm21886@essex.ac.uk
Suggested pre-conference readings
Amin, K. (2016). Haunted by the 1990s: Queer Theory’s Affective Histories. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 44(3–4), 173–189. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2016.0041
Eng, D. L., & Puar, J. K. (2020). Introduction. Social Text, 38(4), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-8680414
Wiegman, R., & Wilson, E. A. (2015). Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions. Differences, 26(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2880582
Other references
Davis, O., & Dean, T. (2022). Hatred of sex. University of Nebraska Press.
Frosh, S. (2019). Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Society: What Remains Radical in Psychoanalysis? In R. G. T. Gipps & M. Lacewing (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (pp. 666–686). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198789703.013.44
Rubin, G. S. (2011). Geologies of Queer Studies. In Deviations (pp. 347–356). Duke University Press; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smmmj.18