tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3255507232812376933..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Dispatches from the Queer Future, Part I: Happiness, Killjoys, Sticky Objects, and a Plea for Arrested DevelopmentCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30893508823518421252008-06-02T13:50:00.000-04:002008-06-02T13:50:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: thanks so much to that link about the lov...Jeffrey: thanks so much to that link about the love notes exchanged by people riding the London tube; that was great. It also gave me a great idea for a short story that would be composed entirely of such notes, and I need a short story idea, actually [since my last published story was two years ago], so thanks again!<BR/><BR/>Mary Kate: I love your question, following my [and others'] thought, "what do words do?" Then you write,<BR/><BR/>"They communicate, with all the notions of gathering and bringing together that the latin root of the words demands -- but do they also do something more? Something that disrupts the idea of a horizon, because it comes to us from beyond our own temporal horizons?"<BR/><BR/>You wonder if you are "mystifying" things too much, but I don't think so. Words are themselves horizons of a sort [if we believe that such a thing as an etymology can be traced with some definitiveness], but if horizons, they are always horizons on the move, and at the same time that we look in their direction [latching onto a word, let's say] to *say* something that might capture not just one, but several historical meanings, we are also adding to those meanings and thereby moving that horizon, ever slightly, in another direction [or maybe, broadening it]. And not all uses of all words is ever as intentional or as precise as we sometimes like to imagine, and so "hap" is always there, somehow, in the ways in which words are deployed and maybe, also, reimagined, re-ported, carried, into other contexts and places. Words are always interstitial that way, always *there* and somewhere else at the same time.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-79129226281934291282008-06-02T08:38:00.000-04:002008-06-02T08:38:00.000-04:00For the first sentence of my previous comment, rea...For the first sentence of my previous comment, read "The happ (Old Norse word I have sworn to deploy at least once per day from now on) of reading MKH's comment followed immediately by...."Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-67290678931173778342008-06-02T06:03:00.000-04:002008-06-02T06:03:00.000-04:00The happ of what have you of reading MKH's comment...The <EM>happ</EM> of what have you of reading MKH's comment followed immediately by <A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4045606.ece" REL="nofollow">this</A> is almost too much to bear. How can love poems like:<BR/><BR/><EM>— “It was Monday, January 29. We got on at Bibliothèque. I was reading a book. We looked at each other twice. That's not a lot but it was intense and pleasant. It made me want to see you again”<BR/><BR/>— “I was eating a baguette and you a nectarine. We smiled at each other. When you got off at Ledru-Rollin station, you turned to smile at me one last time” </EM><BR/><BR/>not be part of the conversation Eileen has initiated?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-19664356205738616772008-06-01T23:49:00.000-04:002008-06-01T23:49:00.000-04:00Jumping in a day (or three) late, and possibly sho...Jumping in a day (or three) late, and possibly short at least a dollar, if not a dollar and change! -- This is a fascinating post, Eileen, not least of all because of the in-process-ness (I love Michael's "inter-between-ity"!!). Thus far I've only read Ahmed in the quotes I've seen from her here (but with a summer of phenomenology ahead of me, I think it's safe to say she's on my list!), but I'm very interested in what I see unfolding in the comments here about horizons, change, and language. <BR/><BR/>Jeffrey, you bring up the meaning of "hap" in Middle English, and "happ" in Old Norse, as an example of Ahmed "restoring the power to travel" to the word <I>happy</I>. That seems, to me, to intersect beautifully with some of Eileen's last words in the post proper, where she asks <BR/><BR/><I>What infinitude of horizons might open up in this lingering, this staying, this pausing over a particular point, a particular body, that never exhausts itself in its intermediacy, its inter-between-ity?* What is the tempo-spatiality of such a point, its constellation of affects and movements, its cartography, and how many lifetimes might I need to chart its territories?</I><BR/><BR/>It's strange to me to see these two thoughts in such proximity, because Eileen's evocation of the idea of a horizon seems so perfect for a non-static idea of meaning that inheres in language. Of course, this diverges from the idea of bodies-in-time, per se, but I wonder. If the accretion of meaning in words, the gradual growing by which they become unstable, unspecific, and potentially disruptive (as the idea of "fortune" when mixed with "happy" becomes disruptive to a static notion of happiness as <I>even possible</I>, given that it's always simply luck that's behind it all), is taken seriously, and as a distinct possibility (does the spiritual, ghostly meaning still inhabit the root of the term "ghastly"?), then what do words do? They communicate, with all the notions of gathering and bringing together than the latin root of the words demands -- but do they also do something more? Something that disrupts the idea of a horizon, because it comes to us from beyond our own temporal horizons? <BR/><BR/>Or am I mystifying language too much here, as I think aloud?Mary Kate Hurleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-17030212816953906952008-05-31T09:28:00.000-04:002008-05-31T09:28:00.000-04:00Nicola: I love that quotation from Baba.Scott: I'v...Nicola: I love that quotation from Baba.<BR/><BR/>Scott: I've always intuited the (e) in The(e)ories as a clever way of queering (ee) theory. But I can answer your question more directly [or indirectly and enigmatically], by way of Noreen Giffney and Michael O'Rourke, in an article they co-authored, "The 'E(ve)' in The(e)ories: Dreamreading Sedgwick in Retropsective Time" [published in "The Irish Feminist Review" 3 (2007): 6-21], where Noreen writes that "The(e)ories" is a<BR/><BR/>"neographism because it is a silent interruption and one which cannot be spoken or heard, rather it can be ascertained only through writing and reading.<BR/><BR/>. . .<BR/><BR/>While Derrida speaks of the 'a'--the letter he substitutes for the second 'e' in 'difference'--I will attend here to the insertion of an additional 'e' in 'The(e)ories.' Unlike the 'a' in 'differance,' which could be mistaken for a typographical error, the 'e' in 'The(e)ories' is encased within brackets to marks its appearance as a deliberate act. When we speak of differance, we gesture towards excess--that which cannot be categorised, reduced, known or made possible--an interventionist exorbitance which manifests materially in The(e)ories. The '(e)' of which I speak is an assemblage rather than a letter . . . ."<BR/><BR/>. . .<BR/><BR/>I am reminded . . . of what Derrida says of the 'a' in differance: 'it remains silent, secret, and discreet, like a tomb.' And so the '(e)' stands in here for a question mark and is designed to provoke thinking about the contexts within which questions, like 'What does the "(e)" in The(e)ories mean?' arise.<BR/><BR/>. . .<BR/><BR/>. . . the '(e)' clearly has some connection--at least in our minds, to 'queer.' . . . Queer loosely describes a diverse, often conflicting set of interdisciplinary approaches to desire, subjectivity, identity, relationality, ethics, and norms.<BR/><BR/>. . .<BR/><BR/>To return again to the '(e)' in The(e)ories, we might say that it exhibits the multiple genealogies and theories of queer that have led commentators such as Donald E. Hall to comment, 'there is no 'queer' theory in the singular, only many different voices and sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent perspectives that can loosely be called 'queer theories.' . . . Then again, the '(e)' may signal a queering of theory or the queerness of theory; 'a theoretical, rather than a sexual orientation.' [from a different work by Noreen and Myra J. Hird: "does queer theory entail the queering of theory?"]<BR/><BR/>. . .<BR/><BR/>There is a sense in which we have smuggled the '(e)' into a word, 'theories,' overburdened as it is at times with expectations of gravitas, just as we have ferreted away as renegades working on the edges of the university in a field, 'queer studies,' which remains unrecognised in Ireland and within a discourse, 'queer theory,' which provokes suspicion and derision in equal measure."<BR/><BR/>A word, too, from me [Eileen--lots of "e"s] about this point about Michael and Noreen working as "renegades" on the "edges of the university" in a country that not only does not recognize queer studies as a "proper" object of university study but is outright hostile to the idea: neither Michael nor Noreen have permanent posts within any university [indeed, Michael is a postal worker! Noreen has a teaching post at University College Dublin but it is not a secure or permanent one], and yet, since 2005, when they founded The(e)ories: Advanced Seminars for Queer Research, they have organized interdisciplinary seminars that have brought speakers such as Judith Butler, Eve Kofosky Sedgwick, Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam, David M. Halperin, Nicholas Royle, Nikki Sullivan, Tim Dean, most recently Sara Ahmed, and a host of other luminary queer theorists into engaged "conversations" with faculty and students from a wide variety of colleges and universities in Ireland, Europe, Australia, Canada, and the States. In addition, they have published so many books between the two of them it boggles the mind. And all this without regular institutional support! [Although, it must be noted that University College Dublin has lent some support to the seminars.] Their collaborative work can only be called heroic, and I would say, too, important. To say that they have "ferreted" away queer studies, not just in Ireland, but I would argue, in a sense, from everywhere, is to also say, following Edmund in "King Lear,"<BR/><BR/>"Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-51870640381153638222008-05-31T09:07:00.000-04:002008-05-31T09:07:00.000-04:00Hi Richard, Michael O'Rourke and I have received s...Hi Richard, Michael O'Rourke and I have received so many queries about this that we wrote an article about it! It's 'The "E(ve)" in The(e)ories: Dreamreading Sedgwick in Retrospective Time', Irish Feminist Review, 3 (2007), 6-18. Let me know if you'd like a copy and I'll send it to you as a pdf file via email: noreen.giffney@gmail.com<BR/>NoreenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71052153258822281622008-05-30T23:08:00.000-04:002008-05-30T23:08:00.000-04:00Side question here: What function do the parenthes...Side question here: What function do the parentheses serve in "The(e)ories?" Am I missing an obvious pun?Dr. Richard Scott Nokeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01348275071082514870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-61024313099319210912008-05-30T18:34:00.000-04:002008-05-30T18:34:00.000-04:00Beautiful post Eileen. No time for a real comment,...Beautiful post Eileen. No time for a real comment, too "to comes" at this point. This stands out to me:<BR/><BR/><I>For me [and I am still trying to flesh this out more fully], happiness has something to do with always leaving everything open as a possibility, with not expecting or demanding certain promises to be fulfilled [while at the same time believing in the promise of what has not been promised but wished for], with existing within [or “making happen”] various “fields” within which everything is always about “to-come.” Nothing is “gotten” but everything is always coming, and coming undone, at various “points” of arrival.</I><BR/><BR/>and reminds me of:<BR/><BR/>I never make plans, never change plans. It is all one endless plan of making people know that there is no plan. -- Meher BabaNicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-17238214466480674382008-05-30T17:00:00.000-04:002008-05-30T17:00:00.000-04:00Noreen: it was wonderful to finally meet you as we...Noreen: it was wonderful to finally meet you as well, and I'm glad you think my remarks captured something of the seminar's atmosphere.<BR/><BR/>hd: I love the fact that you write that you have been obsessing for "the last ten minutes" on notions of common sense--are you still obsessing about that or have you moved on to something else? In any case, I'm glad you brought up "common sense" as I do think certain notions of "common sense" definitely have something to do with what Ahmed was detailing regarding the coerciveness of happiness, which is often rooted in communal/common norms and expectations. Families, or communities, as Ahmed put it, share certain horizons, or occupy a shared horizon, that orient its members a certain way even before so-called [pre-determined] "happy objects" arrive over those horizons. Ahmed also raised the provocative point that pleasure, in the context of such a family, can be idiosyncratic as a function of that family's "shared horizon."<BR/><BR/>I *do* think [and hope] that Ahmed's work on "being directed" and happiness [as well as her work on how bodies dwell and extend, or don't extend, in certain spaces] can and should productively intersect with the conversations that have been unfolding her in relation to medieval disability studies and to Margery Kempe and her "booke." It raises the interesting question, too, of the ways in which Kempe functioned as a killjoy within her communal context, and also, quite obviously, as a figure of excessive "noise," as Jeffrey has written about in his book "Medieval Identity Machines."Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49865889043954509682008-05-30T13:51:00.000-04:002008-05-30T13:51:00.000-04:00Thanks for this rad summary, Eileen. i love that y...Thanks for this rad summary, Eileen. i love that you started with JLo's glow[ing perfume!] Smells, jlo's perfumes included, don't follow such spatial and temporal lines, which is partly why I'm drawn to thinking and writing about smell. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps Ahmed's new work on the directionality of happiness can intersect with our previous discussion of mental disability, particularly Holly's point about students' desire to diagnose, and then empathize, with MK. That seems like a reading practice that reinforces such directional norms.<BR/><BR/>It also made me think more about Greg's archive on deaf murderer's trials. Were they jury trials, Greg? i can't recall when jury trials emerged. But the notion that the court couldn't empathize or understand the defendants, and thus had to acquit them, is striking, in that it reveals those affective "lines" of understanding that must have extended to other bodies and actions in other trials. For the last ten minutes, i've been obsessed with the notion of "common" sense, which, according to the OED, describes a thread of perception that links all the senses, first thought to be a sixth sense, the "center" of the senses, and then, later, applied to cultural norms, i.e. whether another would react in a similar, or "sensible" way. Could this idea of a common sensibility, rooted in the senses, tie into the coerciveness of being "happy" for someone? What if some material environments occlude or heighten such directional lines? (here i'm thinking not only about Ahmed's argument in QP, but also about the work done on the electronic "drone" of appliances, that tune our modern bodies to minor (or sad) keys, or even of JLo's stardom smell.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-18605265444461257952008-05-30T13:13:00.000-04:002008-05-30T13:13:00.000-04:00Excellent! Seems she's restoring the power to trav...Excellent! Seems she's restoring the power to travel to the word, which is really great to hear. <EM>Happ</EM> is Old Norse for fortune or good luck, isn't it?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6888978662817451402008-05-30T12:30:00.000-04:002008-05-30T12:30:00.000-04:00Oh man, I can't believe I forgot to mention this, ...Oh man, I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but in relation to Jeffrey's pointing to the multi-valent ways of defining happiness, Ahmed actually *began* her talk with the medieval definition of "hap"/luck/chance as something that has been "lost" in our contemporary understanding of happiness, so I think you would have liked that, Jeffrey.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-27667571948025430652008-05-30T12:21:00.000-04:002008-05-30T12:21:00.000-04:00Hello Eileen, thanks for your generous remarks abo...Hello Eileen, thanks for your generous remarks about the seminar which also gave a sense of the flavour of the relaxed atmosphere--the seminar was intense but not tense and everyone tried not to take themselves too seriously. It was fantastic to have you there and to meet you in person and informally at lunch. I'm going to send Sara the url now so that she can see what you have written. NoreenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-27560379804031032192008-05-30T11:04:00.000-04:002008-05-30T11:04:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: I didn't think you were being too cranky ...Jeffrey: I didn't think you were being too cranky at all. You know, Ahmed *may* be making a transhistorical statement about the coerciveness of happiness, although I wish we could ask *her* that and see what she might say in response, but there's definitely an attempt in the new project [from what little I know of it/heard about it from her] to "depart," let's say from the ways in which happiness has been inscribed/coerced along genealogical lines [familial, social, communal, national, etc.], and to also make room for the killjoy who calls our happiness into questions and refuses to be "quieted" on the subject, let's say. Her textual-literary references ranged from Virginia Woolf to Rousseau to "The L Word" to Rita Mae Brown to Ama Ata Aidoo to Audre Lorde to bell hooks and beyond.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30090266123257001482008-05-30T10:58:00.000-04:002008-05-30T10:58:00.000-04:00Croman: I forgot to say in my last comment, "thank...Croman: I forgot to say in my last comment, "thanks for your comments!" I, too, often struggle in my own life with always tying my supposed happiness to "how things *will* or *might* turn out" and to the completion of projects, getting it "over with," "being done," etc. It's always struck me, though, that living in these lines of thought almost always produce unhappiness. I've discovered this is also true with relationships, in which I no longer *expect* anything specific to happen [seriously], and I'm much happier as a result. I would love to read that book on Rolle you are daring yourself to write.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66924546235665550912008-05-30T10:54:00.000-04:002008-05-30T10:54:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: thanks for noting the affinity between Ah...Jeffrey: thanks for noting the affinity between Ahmed's recent work on happiness and "being directed" and Edelman's critique of reproductive futurity; it's an affinity that Ahmed herself recognizes, but I know you have also read "Queer Phenomenology," where she directly cites Edelman in her conclusion [which conclusion, I might add, takes a marvelous historical turn that has such important significance for those working in QueerMedievalFutures, I think] and says that, unlike Edelman, she would not argue<BR/><BR/>"that queer has no future . . . through I understand and appreciate the impulse to 'give' the future to those who demand to inherit the earth, rather than aim for a share in this inheritance. Instead,a queer politics would have hope, not even by having hope in the future (under the sentimental sign of 'not yet'), but because the lines that accumulate through the repetition of gestures, the lines that gather on skin, already take surprising forms." [pp. 178-79]<BR/><BR/>And I would be willing to admit that, for myself, my current thinking about the possibilities inherent in lingering in spaces of in-between-ity and in cultivating intermediate relations that don't necessarily "go" anywhere [or, let's say, have a specifically delineated "(re)production" or "union" as their final aim], brings me into closer sympathy with Edelman's thought than I would previously allow, while at the same time, I see these zones of intermediacy as possessing their own temporalities and horizons that are not necessarily static and that do allow different, more hopeful futures to unfold.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6136158641718438852008-05-30T10:47:00.000-04:002008-05-30T10:47:00.000-04:00Rereading that comment makes me seem cranky -- whi...Rereading that comment makes me seem cranky -- which I am not! I truly admire Ahmed's work, which has lately become essential for me in thinking about the relations between architectures and identities. I guess what I'm looking for is affirmation that she isn't making a transhistorical pronouncement about the coerciveness of happiness, because from what I glean from her use of the word it seems to me that happiness is used in a very contemporary American sense (and contra another important strand within US literature: that of being unhappy, of being nomadic, of hitting the road and wandering away from historically or familially predetermined identities: is Ahmed the lesbian Kerouac?)Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21965153284702857622008-05-30T10:40:00.000-04:002008-05-30T10:40:00.000-04:00What a fun, thoughtful, and filled to overflowing ...What a fun, thoughtful, and filled to overflowing post -- so full in fact that I am going to botch it as I wrap my small mind around its dilations.<BR/><BR/>The lines I fixated upon are these:<BR/><EM>In relation to love, we can see the ways in which certain notions of happiness, as Ahmed brilliantly illustrated to us, can be ultimately deforming and destructively oppressive</EM><BR/><BR/>If you substituted "future" for "happiness," isn't this <A HREF="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2007/04/no-future-terminus.html" REL="nofollow">Lee Edelman's argument</A> in a different form? certain notions of anything -- futurity, happiness, sanity, ablebodiedness, purity -- can exert their tyranny when they become enforced goals.<BR/><BR/>Also, happiness is a lot more complicated than it is given credit for. <A HREF="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2006/08/time-is-but-stream-i-go-fishing-in.html" REL="nofollow">I've mentioned Daniel Gilbert's work here before</A>. And happiness changes meaning over time: hap in Middle English is luck, not an entitlement; and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" meant something closer to freedom to assume an identity that wasn't historically predetermined than to be in a state of bliss, I think.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49497920935835815352008-05-30T09:59:00.000-04:002008-05-30T09:59:00.000-04:00Eileen,What a great post to read this morning. Int...Eileen,<BR/><BR/>What a great post to read this morning. Inter-between-ity is one of the most difficult states to exist with (in). I think of it in terms of my own life (how much I want something to be done, finished, but I am supposed to enjoy the journey) and also how much we want people to be not be "in between"--we want them finished, so if they are having some sort of emotional/physical non-normative state! then we want them to be better (no angry black women, no sad queers). I am doing work right now with medieval hermits and his interbetweenity makes me think of them, as well. Especially, Richard Rolle (who I want to write a book about--I say boldy). Rolle is wearing his sister's clothes to be a hermit, wandering around...thinking about living a life that is all transitions...to permanently purposefully upset stability is both exhilarating and frightening. Thank you for the post.Cromanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04289504116317418032noreply@blogger.com