The selfishness of the subject and liberal (in)tolerance

The following is a response to John Sloop's Disciplining Gender written for Dana Cloud's Feminist Theory and Rhetorical Criticism class.

I think Sloop’s book highlights an important problematic to the idea of gender performativity as a means of resistance: transgression of norms invites disciplining, and in many of these cases the subjects paid for their “gender trouble” with their lives. Of course it is unacceptable that human beings were the objects of violence when their subjectivity came into conflict with external norms, but I think that Sloop’s examination of the discourses surrounding these cases shows that the ideal of ‘self-determination’ is problematic in that (re)presentations of subjectivity will always be structured within existing discourses. In other words, part of reclaiming marginalized subject positions is recognizing the role ideology plays in constituting those subject positions, or, recognizing the colonization inherent in the structuring of subjectivity in the position of the other. You can’t just celebrate oppression and claim to be empowered.

I have to situate my response within some observations of Slavoj Zizek regarding the neoliberal ideal of “tolerance.” Zizek argues that the ideal of tolerance hides within it an inherent disregard for the “other” in that we tolerate things that disgust us. As Zizek says, Martin Luther King never talked about tolerance because the idea of white people “tolerating” black people is repugnant. So the neoliberal idea of moral relativism or as Zizek says the celebration of the suspension of all rules is at heart an unethical system that betrays a disregard for the other and instead reinforces selfishness. Ie: No one is wrong except those who believe in something. How dare you question me? And the idea that if someone tells you that you are wrong you must be right because they are only reifying oppressive norms. That is no basis for an ethical system that respects difference and engages with others as equals. What is really going on here, according to Zizek, is a rebellion against the “Law of the Father” (norms) that hides a desire for disciplining. It’s really an adolescent subjectivity transferred into adulthood as if it’s a revolutionary positioning. As Lacan told the protestors in 1968 “What you want is a Master. You’ll get it.” To complicate things further, Zizek argues that this ideal of tolerance implies an elitist positioning in which those of us who are enlightened are somehow seen as beyond culture (or in a postmodern logic, we can choose our culture) and those who seen as barbaric are those who identify with their culture: for example, Muslims. In other words, the ideal of tolerance promotes a disidentification with culture that commodifies our subjectivity and inherently shows disdain for those who identify with the markers of culture. Respecting everyone's choices equally reifies capitalist hegemony.

Where this comes into play is in the problematic homophobia displayed by the cases in Sloop’s study. What is interesting to me that seems to be relegated to the background is that Brandon Teena’s biological sex was only discovered after he was arrested for what amounts to identity theft: check and credit card fraud. It is strange to me that this seems to not come into play in Sloop’s discussion of the perception that Brandon Teena was deceptive. Instead, we are supposed to accept Brandon Teena’s portrayal of himself as masculine without engaging the possibility that perhaps he really was being deceptive towards his relational partners as a way of negating his/her lesbianism. Because of the idolization of the enlightenment subject and respect for assumed agency (free will) in which the idea of personal responsibility is ignored as oppressive (because, you know, Republicans talk about it so it must be wrong). In the name of tolerance, we’re not supposed to interrogate the assumptions that caused Brandon Teena to perform masculinity in order to engage in relationships with women, while he was biologically a woman himself. In short, I wonder if his disidentification as a lesbian acts to make lesbians and gays invisible yet again. The same goes for the argument that k.d. lang’s ambiguity was somehow better than her identification as a lesbian, or Barry Winchell and Calpernia Addams’s disidentification as homosexuals, etc.

So while my theoretical positioning marks me as postmodern in that I draw primarily on the theories of Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, I also recognize the need for an ethical system (as they did, incidentally) that moves beyond simplistic relativism and perhaps reengages with psychoanalytic theory in recognizing that there are, in fact, dysfunctional subject positions. In other words, even though truth is always already situated within discourses of power/knowledge, that doesn’t mean we are supposed to accept everything as equally viable. Those subject positions that act to reinforce the oppression of homosexuals, women, people of color or the workers should be recognized as problematic rather than simply celebrated as “subversive = good.” Questioning the received wisdom of prior ethical systems does not imply that their reversal is the correct way to be.