The Figuring of Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

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Lori Lightfoot is, according Gregory Pratt, a political failure.

“Some of Chicago’s problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor. . . ,” Pratt contends in his recent book, The City Is Up For Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led And Lost A City In Crisis, “[b]ut some are the result of [Mayor Lightfoot’s] poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn’t been told in full until now. . . ” (xii). Pratt continues, “In some ways, the past four years of Lightfoot’s tenure as mayor are a model for how not to lead a big city. Her failures weakened the office . . . ” (xv).

I was born and raised in Idaho, but I consider Chicago to be my birthplace. In 2002, a twentysomething, I moved to the city with a bar on every corner and bridges that (until weed was legalized in 2020) smelled like chocolate.1 I grew up in Chicago during the Daley regime. I moved to the East Coast during the first few years of the Emanuel regime. I entirely missed Lightfoot’s surprising rise to power, her 4 year reign, and her just as surprising fall from grace.

Why do I care about Lightfoot?

I care about women in politics. More specifically, I am interested in how women in politics get figured, how they (actual women politicians) get defined/portrayed in art (literature, film, etc.). What I care about is Pratt’s artistic rendering of the former Chicago mayor.

Pratt would likely reject the idea that his book is an artistic rendering of Lightfoot. Yet, the real Lightfoot refused to participate in his project (xv). So, whatever Pratt’s book is about, it is not about the real her. Nonetheless, and this is important to grasp, Pratt’s rendering of Lightfoot does tell us something true and accurate about how she is perceived as a political figure, a figure of what Chicagoans want and what they can do about it.

How is Lightfoot figured by Pratt? What is true about it? Why does it matter? 

**

What follows is a description of Pratt’s picture of Lightfoot. The quotes below are numbered to indicate groupings of interrelated texts that, when taken together, constitute Pratt’s figuring of the mayor. In the ensuing analysis of these texts, I refer to each grouping as a set (e.g., Set 1 = quotes 1[a-d]).

1(a): “Noticing a couple of ornate chess sets hand carved by members of a church in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, I asked Lightfoot if she played. She chuckled and responded that she’s more of a checkers player. Her brother tried to teach her, Lightfoot said, but she wasn’t able to get into the game. It showed over the next four years of chaos” (ix-x).

1(b): “[Mayor] Emanuel came out of the meeting boasting to staffers that [Lightfoot] said [she would not run against him for mayor]. Weeks later, she bought campaign websites . . . . It’s one of the top points Emanuel’s people make when they say she isn’t trustworthy. For her part, Lightfoot says she wasn’t running for mayor but wanted to keep her options open. It’s a level of hairsplitting that makes someone hard to trust” (28).

1(c): Jeanette Taylor, “heart and soul of Chicago’s left-wing City Council slate,” describing Lightfoot: “The difference is, Toni [Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners] will say, ‘Bend over, I’m about to fuck you.’ With Lori, you look up, and your ass is sore’” (86).

1(d): “Though the conversation [with Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union] was amicable, the aftermath worsened the dynamic between the mercurial mayor and street-fighting union” (108).

2(a): “Originally from small town Massillon, Ohio, Lori Lightfoot grew up working class” (4).

2(b): “But she made a big splash at the University of Chicago when she wrote an article about a Baker McKenzie law firm partner asking racist questions to prospective hires” (4).

2(c): “Contemporaries recall Lightfoot as a hard-charging prosecutor with a mean streak, in the courtroom and at the office. Everyone respected her intellect, but she was considered controversial for how she treated people” (5).

2(d): More aptly, she’s a corporate lawyer who appreciates the status quo for what it is while trying to change things around the margins. She appreciates order” (32).

3(a): “In one interview, Lightfoot promised not to be ‘window dressing,’ according to a Chicago Defender profile that praised her as ‘petite, apparently feisty and scheduled to take the reins [of the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards]” (7).

3(b): “In truth, Lightfoot ran the agency in a way geared at protecting the system’s legitimacy and promoting the bad-apple theory of policing that most problems are isolated” (8).

4(a): “Like her denunciation of the Baker McKenzie racist interview, Lightfoot’s handling of the reform efforts after being appointed to the task force [publicly criticizing Emanuel’s ‘memorandum of agreement’ with the Department of Justice] was arguably her at her best (23).

4(b): “But it also highlighted a certain opportunism from Lightfoot, who was angry with Emanuel and lashed out. Channeled effectively, that sense of grievance and clarity of purpose could do a lot of good for the city” (23).

4(c): “Nothing really came from Lightfoot’s [negative] public comments [about the Chicago Police Superintendent], which meant the incident didn’t do anything other than piss people off and illustrate that her tough talk is often just bluster” (96).

5(a): “Years later, she gleefully recalled her relationship with Emanuel in a New York Times interview. ‘He supposedly once said to somebody about me, “I gave her a platform and a microphone, and she took it and shoved it up my ass” (31).

5(b): “While she attempted to portray herself as a progressive alternative to Emanuel, she didn’t embrace particularly left-wing policies . . . (32).

5(c): “Lightfoot spoke a big game about equity and underdogs, but it never jibed with her conservative views on spending and taxes, or her history as a corporate lawyer. ‘Frankly, you take the rhetoric about equity and racial justice out of what Lori Lightfoot says, and she’s a pretty neoliberal politician,’ Sharkey [a leader of the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU)] told me” (43).

6(a): “Depending on perspective, the story [a situation when Lightfoot was a prosecutor, being confronted by a bank robber in court] highlights Lightfoot’s loyalty to a friend [a fellow prosecutor, harassed by the bank robber for being a Jew] and her decency in the face of nastiness—or her tendency to suddenly wind up in a fight [Lightfoot responded to the robber, “That’s about enough, Mr. White]” (8).

6(b): “The confrontation [a press conference interruption by state representative Robert Martwick] has taken legendary status. . . . [I]t helped show people the best of her, standing up for herself and diagnosing a problem . . . .The only downside was the lesson it internalized for the candidate: that slapping rivals works. . . . [T]he occasional beatdown is fine, particularly when someone else starts it, but nobody wants to be around someone who’s in a daily brawl with a new opponent” (56).

6(c): Critics weren’t able to get anything to stick against Lightfoot, who kept the worst elements of her personality under control, though she showed flashes of it off camera” (61).  

7(a): “[After she won the election] [h]er treatment of people started to change. There was a growing sense among some in her circle that she didn’t think she needed anyone. . . . The victory went to her head” (69).

7(b): Describing an incident with the aforementioned Alderperson Taylor at a City Council meeting: “To me, the scene highlighted how Lightfoot didn’t fully understand her power. The mayor presides over City Council from an elevated dais. To speak with her, alderpersons must get permission to walk past security. It is, simply, a throne. And the king [Lightfoot reportedly claimed ‘to have the biggest dick in Chicago’] or queen never vacates the throne for a fight, particularly not one they then lose” (164).

8(a): “Lightfoot staff would tell [Gilbert] Villegas [floor leader of Chicago’s City Council], ‘She isn’t a politician.’ [Villegas] would respond, ‘When you become mayor of the third largest city, you’d better become a politician.’ It was a common refrain for Lightfoot and a recurring theme worsened by staffers who indulged her feelings rather than explaining that she was, in fact, a politician the moment she put her name on the ballot and won” (78).

8(b): “[Inspector General Joe] Ferguson had been optimistic about her potential to be a great mayor but was worried she had ‘completed the transformation’ into ‘politician who cares about things politicians care about” (100).

9(a): “Lightfoot felt like she was on higher ground due to her popularity and landslide victory. Lightfoot’s team would defend her to people who didn’t like her approach, saying she won the election by being demanding and prosecutorial. It fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the election win and the elusiveness of political popularity” (109).

9(b): “He [Lightfoot aide Michael Fassnacht] took a lesson from the memes [of Lightfoot during the Covid pandemic]: people liked Lightfoot and wanted to see her in authentic situations” (125).

9(c): Heading into more forums, Lightfoot faced a tough balance: Be tough, but not off-putting” (198).

10(a): “She made a decision [to shut down the lakefront] and stuck with it, even after it became clear that the [COVID] virus was less likely spread outdoors. Leadership requires resolution, but unwillingness to adapt to new facts is death” (125).

10(b): “Her early waffling about shutdowns and false threats to close businesses if cases spread in the fall highlight the indecision and lack of vision that plagued her administration” (129).

11(a): “Lightfoot can’t acknowledge fault” (155).

11(b): “Lightfoot addressed her broken promise to reopen Chicago’s mental health clinics shuttered by Emanuel in a rare example of successfully taking a change of mind head-on” (197).  

There we have it: Pratt’s portrayal of Lightfoot.

The quotes above don’t require extensive analysis in order to be accurately understood by the viewer of Pratt’s art. Moreover, we will soon see that the fact that one quote may contradict other quotes does not present a special difficulty for us. Furthermore, not all of the quotes represent Pratt’s brushstrokes. Nonetheless, they do his bidding; they contribute to his overall portrayal of Lightfoot.

***

We now stand before Pratt’s figure of Lightfoot, but what are we to make of it?

Set 1 defines Lightfoot as lacking any interest in a game that requires strategy to win. At the same time, she is portrayed as a very strategic person: Taylor didn’t know she was being fucked by Lightfoot until it was too late. Lightfoot is not always blunt, but “mercurial,” assessing her opponent’s strategy. Like all political operatives, she does not wear her plans on her sleeve, refusing to give her opponents an opportunity to move against her objectives. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)strategic.

Set 2 situates Lightfoot in an unremarkable social position. She is from small town Ohio, and she grew up working class. Her hard work also earns her a spot at the University of Chicago Law School where she is said to make a “big splash,” calling out racism at a prestigious law firm. She is also a status-quo loving, wealthy corporate lawyer who doesn’t give a damn about people or meaningful change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (anti-)elitist.

Set 3 paints Lightfoot as a true reformer. She is not “window dressing.” She is also, “in truth”, just that: a facade, another Chicago politician that gives cover to corruption. According Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)authentic.

Set 4 gives us a Lightfoot who speaks truth to power. At the very same time her words are self-serving. Her truth is also just “bluster.” According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)trustworthy.

Set 5 describes Lightfoot as the progressive alternative to moderate Democratic mayor, Emanuel. She is also a moderate politician in sheep’s clothing. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (im)moderate

Set 6 defines Lightfoot as either friendly or prone to picking fights. It is always unclear which Lightfoot one will meet: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)predictable.

Set 7 presents Lightfoot as a loner, above the need for help. She is also criticized for not acting like a king or queen, for not understanding her power, improperly leaving her throne to seek help from Alderperson Taylor. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)democratic.

Set 8 offers us a Lightfoot who unwisely rejects the governing style of a politician. Lightfoot is also a politician, a politician who cares only about what politicians care about. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (a)political.

Set 9 reveals a Lightfoot liked for being herself: tough and demanding, a (grand)mom-like figure for the city. At the very same time, she is disliked for those very same qualities. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)likeable.

Set 10 is a Lightfoot who is decisive and unyielding. She is also “waffling” and without resolve. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)decisive.

Set 11 leaves us with a Lightfoot who is unable/unwilling to adapt to change or to admit the need to change. She is also someone capable of changing course and of explaining the need for such a change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (mal)adaptive.

To be fair, Pratt likely intended to portray Lightfoot in a singular way, as a political failure. In his figuring of Lightfoot, he places the emphasis on her negative qualities. In fact, he calls out what he believes are her good qualities only a few times, namely Lightfoot’s toughness, her champion spirit, and her sometimes willingness to take “a change of mind head on.”

Yet, as the final chapter of Pratt’s book, “Breaking Up With The Mayor,” suggests, he was once into Mayor Lightfoot. So, it is not surprising that his portrayal of her exceeds, like Lightfoot’s suits, his intended framing. In fact, I think Pratt’s (un)intended portrayal of Lightfoot as perfectly (ill-)suited to be Chicago’s mayor is compelling, comprehensive, and coherent, all of the qualities that make a body of art pleasing to a viewer.

****

Pratt figures Lightfoot as ill-suited for Chicago politics. But he makes little of her ill-fitting suits.

The City Is Up For Grabs begins with a cute story about four-year-old Idris Lockett dressing up as Mayor Lightfoot for Halloween: “[Idris’s] mother, Catherine, had picked Idris up from her cousin’s home and found him in a jacket that was way too large for his little frame. This visual reminded Catherine of the city’s new mayor, who often wore suits that exceeded the limits of her arms and legs” (vii).2

Pratt uses Lockett’s story to bookend Lightfoot’s single term as mayor, one that begins with her celebrating a cute kid who went viral for dressing like her and ends with her refusing to meet with him after he sat for hours at her last City Council meeting. But he makes nothing of Lightfoot’s fashion style. I don’t fault him for that, as many of us think style is trivial, unimportant, meaningless. But there is a reason Lockett went viral: Lightfoot’s style has social meaning.

And so the question arises: What is the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits?

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits are what set her apart from another female politician who wears a kind of suit and is (in)famous for it: Hillary Clinton. Sketching the meaning of Hillary’s pantsuits (a decades long topic of popular conversation) will hone our sense of what is relevant in our interpretation of Lightfoot’s suits.

I do not know if the real Lightfoot has shared why she wears ill-fitting suits, but we do know Hillary’s reasoning for wearing pantsuits. Hillary switched out skirts (the typical style of the First Lady) for pantsuits in the 1990s when photographers started taking (or attempting to take) up-the-skirt shots of her. Hillary started wearing suits to prevent these sexist violations of her bodily integrity.

But Hillary’s clothing style(s) did nothing to protect her from the normative male gaze. One cover of Spy Magazine, for example, reveals the gendered politics that framed Hillary as First Lady. According to the cover of Spy Magazine, what Hillary’s dress failed to hide from public view was her dick.

Throughout the 1990s Hillary was portrayed as “the man.” And when you are a woman, being framed as “the man” is not a compliment. A masculine woman is a man-hating woman, an emasculating woman, a kind of dominatrix eager to stuff a man’s asshole with her cock. She is a monstrosity, at least from a normative male perspective.

Whatever the intentions of the real Hillary Clinton, the pantsuits actually called attention to her masculinity, to her dick. Suits are a fashion staple of professional males. Yet, the way she wears them (they are well fitting) and the way they are styled (usually elegant in their own way and/or colorful) help to feminize her masculinity.

Discerning the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits requires attention to the same kinds of details we identified to make some gendered sense of Hillary’s suits, but those details must always be understood in their own right, in their own context.

To start, Lightfoot is a Black lesbian, and so she is (like Hillary but for different reasons) masculinized from the start, and (unlike Hillary) doubly so. Black women are gendered masculine. Ditto lesbian women. They are women who, according to a racist, homophobic, and sexist logic, depart from the norms of “proper” (i.e., white and straight) women.3

On the one hand, Lightfoot’s suits do not serve to feminize her. They don’t fit well, and they are not flashy. Lightfoot’s suits more closely resemble working-class(?) male fashion. Moreover, Lightfoot seems to enjoy publicly displaying her BIG dick. She reportedly claimed to have the biggest dick in Chicago. Lightfoot does not seem to care about downplaying her phallic prowess. Lightfoot’s suits, quite unlike Hillary’s, seem to masculinize her masculinity. Lightfoot seems to take pride in being “the man.”

On the other hand, Lightfoot’s suits exceed her masculinist presentation, highlighting the petite figure wearing the big suit. Her suits may invite us not to take her big dick too seriously. Lightfoot’s suits may (like Hillary’s but in a different way) ironize her masculinity.

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits correspond perfectly well to Pratt’s portrayal of her as ill-suited to lead the City of Chicago. Her suits speak the social truth about her. And the reason for that is a whole host of social terms are, like Lightfoot’s suit, gendered.

Terms like (in)authenticity, (anti-)elitist, (a)political, and so forth are other ways of getting at what is masculine (and so legitimate) and what is feminine (and so trivial). Authenticity, elitism, and politics are all socially gendered as masculine, as they speak to what is taken socially as real and powerful. And so they speak to what “we” should desire.

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot, like the figuring of Hillary, confounds straightforward, normative political desiring. That is what Pratt’s book, perhaps unintentionally, helps us to grasp as the social meaning of Mayor Lightfoot.

*****

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot is but one instance of such cultural manufacturing. Each figure of Lightfoot should be understood on its own terms and in its own right. Although, I imagine there will be common themes across the different portrayals of Lightfoot.

But why does Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matter?

I think it matters not for what it teaches us about the real Lightfoot. “Feminine” political figures are obviously related to the real women who inspire them, but we should always mind the gap between social perceptions of such women and the women themselves. I think Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matters for what it may reveal about the distinctive subjectivity of Chicagoans, their specific way of feeling about the City of Chicago and what is possible in it.

Chicagoans once felt like the figure of Mayor Lightfoot, and might they feel it again?

And what does Pratt’s figure of Lori Lightfoot have to offer the real Mayor Lori Lightfoot? What do feminine political figures offer, if anything, to the women they are based upon?

I don’t have answers to those questions. But I think that if Chicagoans want Chicago to be(come) a uniquely great American city, then it is worth their time and the effort it takes to grasp the social meaning(s) of their first Black lesbian mayor.

END NOTES:

  1. See here, Act 3. ↩︎
  2. The story is cute, but the gendered dynamics of it could be read in less cute ways. For example, Pratt likely does not intend to define Lightfoot as a petulant little boy (especially during her last days in office), as that would be homophobic, sexist, and racist–but as we have already noticed, one’s writing often exceeds one’s conscious intentions. ↩︎
  3. e.g., see https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Spillers_Mamas_Baby.pdf ↩︎

The N*ew* in the Un*Holy*

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In a recent dream, I was surprised by the appearance of the Greek word for S/spirit, πνεῦμα. It was a well-planned move, coming just after what was a disturbing scene.

Another surprise: the ν and εῦ of πνεῦμα reversed places.

A third surprise: the meaning of the new word, πεῦνμα, was explicitly spelled out in the dream. In the lexicon of the dream, πεῦνμα means companionship.

**

In dreams, unconscious thoughts are translated into consciously recognizable/acceptable forms. The goal of the dream is not to disturb consciousness (because the purpose of dreams is to keep us asleep). If consciousness is disturbed, the results are wakefulness and the end of unconscious communication.

Πνεῦμα is a positive, upbeat word, and its appearance in the dream, just after a bloody moment, was an attempt to soothe consciousness. Consciousness was getting ready to hit the wake up(!) button—and at just that moment, it was reminded to breathe. The strategy worked. A win-win. Consciousness was spared catastrophic disturbance and the unconscious received more time to makes its next move.

***

One way to make sense of the moving ν (nu) is to attend to how it sounds. When ν takes a back seat to εῦ, it makes πνεῦμα sound differently. Εῦ is a diphthong in Greek; it sounds like the eu in feud. The sound is subtle, so here is another way to get at it: when ν moves, we no longer hear newma (the pi is silent) but ewnma. The bloody scene prior to this wordplay was, indeed, ew.

We may also understand the moving ν more literally.

****

The dream is clearly emphasizing what is happening internally to, or in the context of,  πνεῦμα. So, we are right to focus there, on what is new about πεῦνμα.

I am an academically trained, Christian biblical theologian and ordained minister, so I was naturally curious about what the Greek of the Christian mythos may have to do with the new word, πεῦνμα, and with the dream’s translation of it as companionship.

Interestingly, there are only six words in the relevant Greek that begin with eun (allowing for a variously accented epsilon [for the sake of easy writing, I’ll be omitting accents throughout]; in any case, the unconscious makes meaning via chains of seemingly random associations). They are:

  1. Eunike: a female name
  2. eunoeo: to be well-disposed to make friends
  3. eunoia: a positive attitude in a relationship
  4. eunouchia: a state of being unmarried
  5. eunouchikso: to cause someone to emasculate another
  6. eunouchos: a castrated person

Again, I am surprised: these six words make perfect sense of all the yet undisclosed aspects of my dream. They are:

One figure in my dream was ambiguous, in terms of both sex and gender. It was this ambiguous figure that was being anally penetrated by a more typically masculine figure. This happens as a third person watches the scene unfold.

Each of those elements of the dream are related to the above string of words: a feminine male (combining words 1 and 6) being anally penetrated, roughly in fact, by another male (word 5), in a situation ménage à trois (words 2 and 4 if we allow both to mean something other than monogamy).

Yet, what are we to make of word 3? What is positive about the relationship(s) in the dream, especially between the ambitious [I meant to write ambiguous] bottom and the rough top?

What was disturbing about the sex scene was the aforementioned blood . . . gushing out of the ambiguous figure’s anus as they were being anally penetrated rather roughly (the cock was coming out fully, allowing for blood to gush out, before being thrust back in). It was the presence of blood itself that was disturbing and not all the rest. It was immediately following this scene that S/spirit appeared.

Interestingly, the gushing blood had the quality of gushing water from a fountain of water (rather than out of a traumatic wound). In the Christian mythos, S/spirit is associated with both blood and water (e.g., 1 John 5:6; John 19:34), each in turn is associated with redemption and baptism. The blood/water may have been a way of signifying redemption/baptism. But of what?

It would seem that the ambiguous figure was baptizing the top, or more specifically, the cock, as the blood was gushing from them as if from a baptismal font. The top is the object of baptism.

According to Paul of Tarsus, baptism is associated with a change of style, and one that results in the nullification of significant social distinctions, like male and female (Gal 3:27-28). The Trans* figure may be teaching the cock to be less aggressive, defensive, fearful (perhaps that is also the point of the nu’s detachment or fluidity–along with it’s moving to the “backside”). And herein is the positivity of the relationship: it is a scene of redemption, the nullification of immobile (hardened) masculinity.

*****

Πεῦνμα seems to signify something new, a new kind of relationship with masculinity. The dream, however, makes its own sense out of πεῦνμα: companionship.

There is a word in the Greek of the Christian mythos that gets at what we may think of as companionship: συγκοινωνός (see Phil 1:7; Rev 1:9). Sugkoinonos means “participant, partner.” Significantly, sugkoinonos is also one of three words that shares a similar “core.” The other two are:

  1. sugkoimaomai: to sleep with (also as in to have sex with)
  2. sugkoinoneo: to be associated with someone in an activity

Yet again, the chain of words makes sense of the described elements of the dream—but this time, these words add something that was not explicitly in the dream.

My dream manifestly includes a sex scene (word 1 above, but that mu makes it somewhat less significant at this point than the other two words, both hanging onto a nu as part of their “cores.” Yet, when the nu moves to the “backside,” it does link itself to a mu). It would seem that the dream’s translation of the new word πεῦνμα as companionship is also an invitation to participation.

The dream is calling out to the observer, to the voyeur (and maybe even calling into question the notion of voyeurism as participation) to join in the act . . . to join in as the object of baptism (?) or the subject of it (?) or both (?). This association is only strengthened if we follow the Greek to words beginning with koin.

******

What the dream wants to make common (see koinoo) is what is taken as defiled or impure: a gay masculinity. It is calling one to move, to transform, to become more fluid in one’s masculine comportment.

It is a S/spiritual calling. It is a calling born out of πνεῦμα.

Internal to S/spirit, to newma, is something new, what is often considered or taken as ewnma. The (un)holy work of the (un)conscious is to provoke a recognition of the new in the ew, of the holy in the unholy.

Serious Reading

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In her recent book, Who Is Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler asks us to think critically about gender. Thinking critically about gender entails actually reading texts that seriously investigate and explore the (dis-)contents of gender. Butler explicitly defines what is at stake in the practice of reading, namely “democratic life”:

Reading is not just a pastime or a luxury, but a precondition of democratic life, one of the practices that keep debate and disagreement grounded, focused, and productive.

Judith Butler, Who Is Afraid of Gender? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), 18-19.

The specific point Butler is making is that when there is disagreement about a subject, like gender, reading the same texts enables community; reading the same texts enables a conversation about a shared set of terms or details. It is in that way that reading grounds and focuses conversation. Reading the same texts may not ultimately produce agreement or consensus, but the practice will likely produce space for further conversation and collaboration. Or so Butler seems to think.

**

Butler argues that reading common texts makes democratic life possible, is a “precondition of democratic life.” Sharing a text, much like sharing a meal, opens us to the experiences and insights of others. Reading gets us out of ourselves and into the world. Mark Jordan, in his book, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault, describes how reading a text, the words on a page, opens the reader to the experience of the O/other:

Some scholars, like some fans, end by substituting relics of a fetishized life for the work. Perhaps they were first impassioned by the work or by rumors of it. Then it slipped out of reach. So they began slighting the work to seize tokens of its maker. For old-school Hollywood fans, these were autographs and photo spreads. Scholarly fans of this species prefer journalistic interviews, dedicated blogs, tales of conferences sightings . . . . I skimmed the biographies [of Foucault], examined some photographs, heard or watched a few recordings, but I got little satisfaction from them . . . My pleasure in Foucault’s bodily life comes from reading what he wrote. I am lured not by his bodily life but by whatever lured him to write endlessly about the bodily production of our words for bodies.

Mark Jordan, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 2.

Jordan contrasts two kinds of “reading” habits, two kinds of “fandoms.” The first is a fandom that values the life of/body of the author more than the author’s text. The second kind of fandom is one that values the life of/body of the author for their text. And notice: the author’s words are of immense value not because they are the words of that particular author, in Jordan’s case, the word’s of Foucault. No, they are valuable because they incarnate what is Other than the author, namely the “whatever” that “lured” Foucault to “write endlessly about the bodily production of our words for bodies.”

Jordan’s devotion to Foucault is not about Foucault at all. “[Jordan] needs [Foucault’s body] only for what it writes. If [Jordan] mourns [the loss of Foucault], [he] regret[s] especially that there will be no more of his books . . . .” (4).

***

Jordan defines reading as an encounter with the “whatever” that lures an author to write. The “whatever” is related to the author; it is something the author expresses in their writing, but it is not reducible to the author. For Jordan, the shuffling between author (other) and “whatever” (Other) seems to entail another, related shuffling: shuffling between an author’s words, between, perhaps, their meaning, and the aesthetics of the “whatever” the words on the page incarnate or express:

Imagine authorship that forswears fame in order to attend only to the transient effects of it its textual surfaces. That strives only to register ripples on a skittish surface. That strives to be ripples, undoing its own propensity to become a closed object. Imagine writing that is only interested in the play of its light and shadow than in plots and personages . . . . Imagine above all writing that doesn’t secure its unity or its relations to bodies by appealing to the personage of the author.

Mark Jordan, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 6, emphasis is Jordan’s.

Jordan asks the reader to imagine the author’s writing as a piece of art (worth collecting?). He asks us to imagine authorship that gets lost on the surface of a moving, watery cavas/text. Jordan asks us to imagine writing as a sketch or photograph, “only interested in the play of its light and shadow.” He asks us to imagine writing that doesn’t need the ordinary artist/author to have an impact on the viewer/reader. Jordan further invites us to imagine the reader “as an event yet to arrive. From that meeting, surprising effects may follow–so long as they are not precluded by discounting in advance what a text may say or do” (Convulsing, 7).

The author’s writing, an expression of the “whatever” that also lures a reader to the watery surface(s) of the text, works on the reader. The effects of that working on the reader are not (necessarily) predictable. One possibility is that the reader will write. It is possible that reading is preparation for the event of writing (Convulsing, 7).

****

Reading, the encounter with the O/other, with the lure of the “whatever” the author’s writing expresses, may be the reader’s preparation for the practice of writing. Reading may harbor the event of writing. In other words, reading may disclose the connection between the reader and the author by provoking the reader to write.

Leo Bersani, in his reading of Proust, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art, describes what is at stake in the practice of writing:

The pressures of daily life necessarily reduce a personality to a more or less simplified expression; but the particular privilege of literary activity is the leisure it offers to give play to a range of feeling, of being that would never be tolerated in ordinary life. It is, then, useless to look to the writer’s life for an explanation of what is in [their] books, for the conditions in which [they write] those books allows [them] the freedom to express desires, fears, and interests that are either not at all or feebly and confusedly expressed elsewhere in [their] life. . . . [T]he writer’s work is so deeply [their] life that it is foolish to expect [their] life to illuminate it.

Leo Bersani, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 15.

We are by now familiar with the distinction between the author in “ordinary life” and the author’s work. We have already explored the idea that reading is practice in encountering the “whatever” that lures an author to write, that something at once related to and other than the extra-textual author. But now we can understand that insight from a different standpoint.

It is now possible to see that writing is preparation for reading. Writing harbors the event of reading. Writing discloses the connection between the writer and the reader, namely the “whatever” that lures the writer to create textual surfaces, the same “whatever” that lures the reader to those same surfaces. The “whatever,” the O/other, is the precondition for this textual relationship.

*****

We began with Judith Butler’s observation that “reading . . . .is a precondition of democratic life.” Butler does not draw out exactly what that means in practice. But it is possible to read between the blinds, to discern the light and shadow of her textual surfaces.

If we refuse to read (and reading about gender is, Butler contends, what anti-gender folks refuse to do), we are refusing to encounter a mysterious (maybe disturbing) sense of complexity and difference in the world. Likewise, and moving beyond Butler’s point, when we refuse to write (perhaps about gender), we are refusing an encounter with that same mysterious (maybe disturbing) sense of complexity and difference in ourselves.

Reading is certainly a precondition of democratic life. But we cannot live on reading texts alone. We have to write them, too.

What do you think write?

Advocates of Grace

A Gay Sermon based on Exodus 32:1-14 and Matthew 22:1-14

***

I started preaching when I was 17 years old. I preached with some regularity at a small church, in a small town, in Oregon, close to the Idaho border.

There was a retired pastor in that church, and by that time he had lost his eyesight entirely. One Sunday he approached me after worship. He had brought his robe, his Geneva gown, to church. He had brought it with him that Sunday because he wanted to give it to me. He knew that one day I would become a pastor, and I would need his robe.

His robe is the robe I wear every Sunday, and his initials are embroidered on it.

Have you ever wondered why some clergy or preachers wear robes, some with stripes and stoles?

The stripes on my robe signify blood, sweat and tears; what they tell you is that I have worked very hard, and at great cost to myself and to my family, to learn how to be a servant of Christ. These stripes don’t say I am smarter or better than you; what they say is that I take serving you as a pastor very seriously.

The stole is also a symbol of service; it is a symbol of the towel Jesus Christ used to dry the feet of his disciples.

And the robe is itself meant to equalize us; it is meant to erase whatever wealth my clothing may signify, and it is meant to reduce attention to anything like my own status—because I am not the point; the point is not my personality; the point is not loyalty to me.

The robe is meant to remind me, and it is meant to remind you, that my singular calling is to serve you, the church, and—by way of God’s grace—to use the gifts given to me by the Holy Spirit to direct us to what is not me or you, namely the good and gracious God, the God of Jesus Christ, and the giver of the Holy Spirit.

I am sure you heard, in the parable Jesus told the religious and the religious leaders (Matt 22:1-4), the folks we learned a few weeks ago who make God unbelievable—you heard about that guy who did not wear a robe, the guy who wanted to enter the feast of grace even though he was not loyal to grace, even though he was not changed by grace?

You heard about what happened to him, right? He was cast out.

Grace has a dress code.

And while the robe I wear literalizes it, we are all supposed to wear the right gown to church, to this feast of grace.

And we talked about that clothing-style, that Christ-style, when we celebrated two baptisms a few weeks ago: “As many of you as were baptized in Christ have clothed yourself in Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female” (Gal 3:27-29).

When we clothe ourselves in grace, social distinctions become worthless, harmful idols, ideologies that serve only to make us feel better in the face of total uncertainty about what we are to do now that all the normal categories, all the idols, all the ideologies we relied on have been rendered and are even now powerless in Jesus Christ. . . .

We create idols when we are uncertain, when we find ourselves away from home, away from the normal, away from what is familiar.

That seems to be why Aaron made his bad choice (Ex 32:1-14). He was unprepared for the new world he was in, for the freedom made possible by Moses’ civil rights movement.

Yet, shouldn’t we blame Moses for not preparing Aaron and the Israelites for the uncertainly caused by his prolonged absence, by their leader being away from them for a long time? He was up on that mountain in God’s presence for 40 days and 40 nights . . . . Surely, Moses could have done more to make sure Aaron had the right theological education, the right kind of spirit before letting him step into the pulpit?

But that didn’t happen—and Aaron gave in to the demands and imperatives of fear, of certainty, and he created the golden calf. He attempts to make his choice, his answer to the people’s fear and anxiety, God.

Aaron made a bad choice.

And we get it; it happens—but the problem is: Aaron refused to take responsibility for his bad choice.

Later in the story, Moses comes down the mountain and confronts Aaron about his ungodly sermon, his ungodly leadership—and how does Aaron respond?

Well, he says, I just threw the golden rings in the fire and out popped an idol, out popped the golden calf. I didn’t have anything to do with its creation. It just is what it is, Aaron says; I was just reading what the text says. It’s just the Word of God (but the story tells us that Aaron formed it, and it ends by explicitly telling us Aaron made it).

Maybe if Moses had just given Aaron more theological training, then he would have made a different choice. But that is the least important thing about a good theological education. The best theological education, whether you have a degree of some kind or not, the best theological education teaches you to do at least one thing well: to take responsibility for your all your choices, especially your bad choices. 

Theology, preaching, pastoral leadership: all of that is an entirely human enterprise. Congregations and pastors all make choices, the best choices they can make, especially in the face of uncertainty.

We pray about them.

We read Scripture.

We talk together, and at the end of the day, we make a choice to act in one way and not in another, to be a home for some things and not for other things.

And if we are honest, and if we are faithful—if are loyal to the God of grace—we take responsibility for our choices, especially for our bad choices.

Because we know grace is not cheap.

God’s grace is actually supposed to change us, to remind us that our choices cannot save or damn us because our choices are not God or God’s choices.

God’s grace is actually supposed to change our lives; that is why Paul, for example, teaches us to hold each other accountable for our choices, especially our bad choices. “Is it not those who are inside [the community of faith],” Paul writes, “that you should judge? God will judge those outside” (1 Cor 5:11-12)

Consider Paul’s judgments in First Corinthians 6:9.

Here is how it reads:

“Do you not know that wrongdoers [in the church] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Those who are sexually immoral, like idolaters and adulterers and the self-indulgent [malakoi], like males who sexually exploit other males for the purpose of personal gain [arsenokitai], and thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers. None of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now, I’ll be clear about my choices.

What I translate as “males who sexually exploit other males for the purpose of personal gain,” the underlying Greek word there is arsenokoitai. Fun fact: no one living today knows what that word really means.

No one.

No one.

And if someone tells you that they do know what that word really means, and if they say it is just so obvious, that is just what the text says—well, what that tells you is that person is making a bad choice, that person is giving into the clamor for certainty, that person is under the spell of an idol.

In the late 1940s, and for the first time ever in the history of the world, the RSV made the choice to translate the words arsenokoitai and malakos (which I get to in a moment) as homosexual, itself a word made up in the late 1800s. The RSV has since changed that translation, collapsing the meaning of those two words into one, charming noun: “sexual perverts.”

The NRSV makes a different choice, choosing to translate arsenokoitai as “sodomites,” an 11th-century Christian invention.

Again, no one knows what the word arsenokoitai means, really—but we do know that words like “homosexual” and “sodomite” are choices, and, as I my translation makes clear, they are not the only choices available to a reasonable translator of ancient Greek terminology.

I have made a second choice, too.

What I translated as “self-indulgent,” behold!, we know what the underlying Greek word actually means, the word malakos literally means “soft.”

Second fun fact: the idea that a man should actually love his wife is a modern invention. That, actually loving your wife, would have made you soft in the ancient world.

You would be soft for wearing deodorant.

Ok, so what is Paul’s message for us, living all these thousands of years later? I think Paul is referring broadly to a way of life we have already talked about, the kind of life that Paul really gets cranky about, the kind of lifestyle that is about doing whatever you want, to whomever you want, for the purpose of getting what you want and without any consequences. Paul really doesn’t think that kind of life meets the demands and imperatives of grace because it is a lifestyle that refuses taking responsibility for our choices.

Now, that’s my interpretation; it’s a choice. It is an educated, informed choice—and a choice that meets the demands and imperatives of grace: it does not give into the clamor for certainty, the demands for an idol, for something that distracts us from the hard work of spiritual discernment.

As Aaron learned, our spiritual choices matter. And we should be clear about the choices we make, and we should take responsibility for all of our choices, even our very bad ones.

Why? Because we are loyal to grace. We heard both Jesus and Paul define the alternative, right?

When we are invited to the feast of grace and are not changed by it, are not compelled to be honest with ourselves and with God, and especially about the difference between our ways and God’s ways, well, we are refusing grace for an idol; we are asserting that our will is the divine will; we are testifying that whatever we think or do is justified, is of ultimate significance.

It is an all too common thing, especially these days, to reject divine grace for human merit or wisdom. As Jesus teaches us, “many are called, few are chosen.” It is a warning to us all.

But what are we to do with that . . . ? That doesn’t sit well with us, right? So let’s ask, What would Moses do?

When he is close to God, when he is in the presence of God, when he is in God’s rest, Moses makes the choice to be an advocate of grace.

When God is ready to annihilate the people for creating an idol, for confusing their thoughts with God’s thoughts, for refusing to take responsibility for their choices, when God is mad as a hornet at the people for making a bad choice, Moses chooses to speak up: “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.”

Moses reminds God of who God is, of what God promised: blessing and freedom and goodness and a future for God’s people.

And Moses wins the argument; Moses changes God’s mind: “And the Lord changed [their] mind about the disaster [they] planned to bring on [their] people.”

When Moses is close to God, in the presence of God, he makes the choices to do one thing: he argues for grace.

When Moses is close to God, he is an advocate of grace.

And how can we not be the same?

When I put on this robe on Sunday mornings, I am reminded of God’s grace and mercy. I am reminded to make the choice of grace.

I am reminded of Paul’s teaching in Romans, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

While we were still making bad choices and refusing to take responsibility for them, while we were refusing to apologize, when confession and repentance were the farthest from our minds, Christ still chose us; Christ argued for us.

When we put on God’s grace, when we put on the robes of Christ, we acknowledge that grace is not cheap.

We acknowledge that grace requires our total loyalty.

We acknowledge that grace demands that we take responsibility for our lives because we know our choices are not God; they can’t save or damn us.

Yes, we so often fail to live up to the demands and imperatives of grace. We fail to take responsibility for our choices, choosing instead to confuse our judgements with God’s judgments.

But Christ does not fail to argue for us. And so God does not fail to choose us, again and again and again. . .and again, God invites us to come to the banquet of grace.

Don’t forget your robes y’all.

Amen.

Kent Brintnall & Queer Narrative

*

“Once upon a queer theory” is Brintnall’s contribution to the turbulent tradition of queer narration. In this essay, he highlights a pervasive fantasy underlying that tradition, the fantasy that queer narration is merely narration. Brintnall performs his argument both by 1) telling a story that centers the work of Teresa de Lauretis (she coined the term “queer theory” in the 1990s), and by 2) consistently and explicitly problematizing his narrative. In “Once upon a queer theory,” Brintnall, faithful to his subject, offers a queer narrative of queer theory.  

In what follows, I summarize Brintnall’s queer narrative. I conclude by describing what I think is queer about it. Troubling the easy pathway leading from the beginning to the end of my reading of Brintnall’s essay is a question, What are we to make of the absence of any serious engagement with Halperin’s work on gay subjectivity in Brintall’s queer story? After outlining what I think is Brintnall’s reasoning for such an exclusion, I contend that Halperin’s approach to gay subjectivity, one that is manifestly linked to de Lauretis’ project, serves both 1) to clarify the main character of Brintnall’s queer narrative (what is, for Brintnall, the “somewhat” clear meaning of de Lauretis’ invention of/ intervention in queer lesbian and gay studies), and, relatedly; 2) to clarify what is queer about Brintnall’s queer narrative.

**

Brintnall notes that, for de Lauretis, queer theory signifies the ways in which “gay and lesbian sexualities could be seen [now citing de Lauretis] ‘as social and cultural forms in their own right . . .interactive and yet resistant, both participatory and yet distinct’” (emphasis added). At this nascent stage of queer theorization the goal is, in de Lauretis’ words, to “articulate the terms in which lesbian and gay sexualities may be understood and imaged as forms of resistance to cultural homogenization, counteracting dominant discourses with other constructions of the subject in culture” (emphasis added). In other words, the queer goal is the construction of, again, in the words of de Lauretis, “another discursive horizon, another way of thinking sexuality,” one that makes “other constructions of the subject in culture” possible.

Brintnall observes that de Lauretis’ understanding of queer theory anticipates what are by now well-known definitions of queer method/praxis. Take, for example, David M. Halperin’s contention that “queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” (emphasis original). Yet, de Lauretis’ initial understanding of queer theory takes her some “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies. Sexuality, even homosexuality, is not, not necessarily, the same thing as “at odds with the normal. . . the dominant.” As Brintnall points out, the work of scholars like Duggan and Puar demonstrate that lesbian and gay sexualities can “conform quite comfortably to dominant relational, kinship, economic, political, and citizenship norms, thus highlighting their participatory interaction with the reigning system of power rather than resistant queerness.” In that case, Brintnall asserts, “the heterosexual single black mother may have, in many contexts, a much stronger claim to queerness than does the white gay urban professional. . . .”

While de Lauretis takes “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies, her “assumption that sexuality should be approached as a discursive construction” links her work to what are now the canonical sources of queer theory (even though, Brintnall observes, none of the authors of those sources thought they were doing “queer theory”). What follows is Brintnall’s remarkably concise and mercifully clear unfolding of the central terms/ideas in Foucault (power), Butler (performativity), and Sedgwick (unbearable secret/closet).

Significantly, in drawing close to the canonical sources of queer theory, de Lauretis ends up taking “distance” from her earlier commitment to “another discursive horizon, another way of thinking sexuality,” one that makes  “other constructions of the subject in culture” possible. For de Lauretis, that commitment is explicitly related to a concern for “the ways gender and race are (not) incorporated” in the “discursive construction of lesbian and gay sexualities.” To draw out the distance between her early commitment and her actual work, Brintnall highlights ethnic studies professor Hames-Garcia’s critique of de Lauretis and of queer theory.

Hames-Garcia points out the “the whiteness of most narratives of queer theory’s development.” For example, Foucault, Butler, and Sedgwick “do not make race central to their analysis.” Summarizing Hames-Garcia, Brintnall writes, “If we consider instead, as the forebears of queer theory, lesbians and gay men of color, ‘we’ find sophisticated resources for thinking intersectionally.” And really considering people of color would mean doing more than scholars like de Lauretis, presenting scholars of color “later in the exposition, fold[ing] them in as additional and secondary, includ[ing] them as supplements to theory that does not foreground race or discuss it explicitly—as if silence about race does not broadcast an unnamed whiteness.”

Brintnall goes on to really consider scholars of color. Again, he offers a miraculously concise and clear summary of the central ideas of, citing Ferguson, “queer of color critique.” Brintnall’s overview includes Ferguson (critique of classical sociology); Muñoz (disidentification), and Eng, Halberstam, and Muñoz, in a special issue of Social Text, (subjectless critique). Both Ferguson and Muñoz, Brintnall observes, center women of color feminists in their respective texts.

We learned earlier that de Lauretis took “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies, and now Brintnall reminds us that she also took some “distance” from emerging queer theory, and “just a few years after she coined the term.” “In The Practice of Love,” Brintnall writes, “de Lauretis dismissed what queer theory had become, characterizing it as [citing de Lauretis] ‘a conceptually vacuous creature of the publishing industry.’” Taking distance from emerging (i.e., subjectless) queer theory, de Lauretis  aligns herself with Bersani’s project, especially Homos, a “psychoanalytically inspired” exploration “of the political potential of gay male desire in its specificity” (emphasis original).

In aligning herself with Bersani, particularly Homos, “de Lauretis clarified, somewhat, the nature of the (unfulfilled) promise of her initial in(ter)vention,” one that defined the exploration of lesbian and gay specificity as queer theory. Brintnall now introduces trans theory critique, focused on the work of Stone (posttranssexual movement) and Stryker (transgender rage), of efforts to articulate lesbian and gay specificity. Such efforts “can be seen,” according to Brintnall, “as containing an unexamined commitment to fairly stable conceptions of sex (male, female) and gender (masculine, feminine).”

The final development in de Lauretis’ thought that Brintnall explores is “a turning away . . . from commitments to [now citing de Lauretis] ‘feminist theory, gender theory, and queer theory.’” This turning away is related to her turning to “the importance of the drive [as understood by Laplanche] in queer theory.” This turn is also related to de Lauretis’ “skepticism about the compatibility of theory and politics.”

For de Lauretis, a “bearable life” is the goal of politics. Drawing close to Lee Edelman (“queerness  [as] that which must be excluded, overcome, or annihilated so that the subject or the social order can experience peace, healing or completion”), she nonetheless argues that Edelman’s “demand is unbearable.” De Lauretis’ “rejection of Edelman’s queer critique of politics tout court” reveals the character of her suspicion of the compatibility of theory and politics. Theory cannot, perhaps, citing de Lauretis, “map out a program of political action,” but it must be translatable; it must be able to inform political action.

Brintnall now makes explicit connections between the various distances and turns manifested in de Lauretis’ work and the texts of queer scholars of religion. He introduces the reader to the texts of Melissa Wilcox, Linn Marie Tonstad, and Joseph A. Marchal. The reader may consult Brintnall’s essay for those connections. At this point, what I am most interested in is 1) the character of Brintnall’s narrative as queer narrative, and; 2) the exclusion of David M. Halperin’s work on gay specificity from Brintnall’s queer narrative (Halperin’s most recent work on gay specificity, How To Be Gay, is at least alluded to, in the final footnote, of Brintnall’s story). 

***

Brintnall anticipates objections to his queer story, and he address them by straightforwardly acknowledging the inherent limitations of (his) storytelling:

[E]mphases and exclusions are necessary to an essay like this one: they are what make a collection of details and an agglomeration of information a story. In the final analysis, queer theory is a long tutorial in learning to find traces of what has been hidden, marginalized, and distorted in service of fabricating a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good, as well as assessing the damage wrought by telling certain stories rather than others (emphasis original).

More specifically, Brintnall anticipates objections/reservations like my own, questioning the lack of any serious engagement with Halperin’s work on gay specificity in his narrative. He explicitly states that he did not feel it “appropriate” to explore various strands within queer theory in this essay, an essay exploring the introductory features of the encounter between queer theory and religion. In addition, Brintnall may respond to my reservation by pointing out that it is de Lauretis who associates herself with the psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity. Thus, it makes perfect narrative sense to focus on that perspective—even at the expense of excluding the non-psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity represented by Halperin.

Yet, it is Brintnall who makes connections between scholars of queer theory, religion, and de Lauretis’ work that are extra-textual, that are not, in Brintnall’s telling of it, made by de Lauretis. Moreover, including the non-psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity represented by Halperin would allow Brintnall to highlight, as he has consistently done before, both a significant strand of queer theory that is directly related to various developments in de Lauretis project and queer voices of color that, in this case, take issue with “abstract notions of queerness” (and are otherwise given a relatively brief mention as critiques of Edelman, only to be dispatched as unwilling to “succumb to the intractable violence to which queer negativity points”). But the main reason to engage Halperin on gay difference is that doing so would only help Brintnall better define the main character of his queer story, namely de Lauretis’ “in(ter)vention” of /in queer lesbian and gay studies, and the queerness of his narrative. Or so I think.

****

Halperin connects his work on gay male specificity to de Lauretis’ project in his essay, “Small Town Boy Neil Bartlett Learns How To Be Gay.” In this essay, Halperin explores what history has to do with gay subjectivity/difference. In the context of unfolding the potential new meaning(s) we may attach to the social practice of an older man buying his younger boyfriend a drink, Halperin, in a footnote, tells us that a “similar argument” has been made “along feminist lines”—namely by de Lauretis in “The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain.” The practice of an older man buying his younger boyfriend a drink, specifically its potential to re-negotiate the terms of social inequality among gay men, is similar in kind to the social practice of “entrustment” (affidamento), a practice de Lauretis describes in her essay.

Entrustment, according to de Lauretis, is a way feminist women in Italy began to address “the power and disparity—the social and personal inequality—inherent in [female relationships], as well as . . . the erotic dimension of all relationships between women and its relation to power . . . ” (emphasis original). Entrustment, as de Lauretis understands it, is “a term proposed to designate a relationship between two women which . . . had not yet been named or formally addressed in feminist theory. [T]he relationship . . . is one in which one woman gives her trust or entrusts herself symbolically to another woman, who thus becomes her guide, mentor, or point of reference . . . both women engage in the relationship—and here is the novelty . . .—not in spite, but rather because and in full recognition of the disparity that may exist between them in class or social position, age, level of education, professional status, income, etc.  . . . .” 

In “Small Town Boy,” Halperin highlights similar power inequalities, but this time between men, specifically between gay men. As noted above, the social practice proposed as a means of negotiating power disparities between gay men is, now citing Bartlett, “that man buying his younger boyfriend (slightly embarrassed, but happily drunk) another drink.” Halperin observes that Bartlett cannot think this practice without remembering “that man,” Oscar Wilde: “I remember the bizarre twisting of mythologies Wilde used to justify his adoration of young men” Bartlett writes, “the mixing of a pastiche of Classical pederasty with a missionary zeal for the ‘criminal classes,’ the sense that they, not the boys he left sleeping in [his home in] Chelsea, were his true sons . . . .”  What the social practice of an older man buying a younger man a drink figures is, perhaps, gay difference or gay history.

“Historically,” Halperin argues, “the problem of gay male self-constitution has been posed by history. We have looked to history to answer some of our most pressing questions about gay male identity.” Far from being static, history is, to cite Bartlett, a “source of doubt and hopes,” a source that allows us to determine who “we” were then and who “we” are now, to determine how we are both the same as and different from gay men/gay culture of the past. Significantly, “by looking to history for a definition of gay male existence, Bartlett was relying not on theoretical propositions but on social processes.” As Bartlett’s reflections on the significance of an older man buying a younger man a drink suggests, “it is possible to write a gay history [citing Bartlett] ‘in our own language,’ . . . ” History, “[o]ur history,” according to Bartlett, “now becomes a way of understanding and exploring the change in our culture [of writing a history of the present], not simply of reading it as an ‘end.’”

From this perspective, an older man buying a younger man a drink “is not necessarily a mere recapitulation of archaic and unchanging forms of social hierarchy, upper-class sexual privilege and working-class sexual prostitution.” It is, at least potentially, citing Bartlett, “a new kind of relationship, an affair of the heart somehow appropriate to the meeting of two different men[.]” As Halperin observes, “[d]ifferences in age and wealth may actually be serving new, dynamic social functions, creating possibilities . . . among men who are asymmetrically situated according to conventional class hierarchies but are brought into approximate equality by the reciprocal exchanges of contemporary gay male life.”

Halperin’s emphasis on gay history and the ever changing meaning of social processes is consistent with de Lauretis’ method of challenging anti-essentialist tendencies (“theoretical propositions”) in feminist theory. Like Halperin, de Lauretis does not propose some kind of natural or “real essence” that, in her work, all women across every time and place share, but rather she tells a story, offers a history, of the Italian women’s feminist movement. It is in and through engaging the history of feminist social practices, like entrustment, that, now citing Locke’s definition of “nominal essence” deployed by de Lauretis, “the indispensable and necessary attributes of a thing,” in this case, women’s difference, is constructed or discerned or invented.

Entrustment, a social practice with an extensive history (e.g., the relationship between the biblical figures of Ruth and Namoi is cited as an example of “entrustment”), may also be read as a figure of women’s history or of women’s difference in “The Essence of the Triangle.” Its meaning is not fixed. It, too, is likely a “source of doubts and hopes.” Entrustment, that is, is not, not necessarily, mere recapitulation of patriarchal power. According to de Lauretis, entrustment “brings to light the hidden or unconscious conflicts and emotions of the ancient (patriarchal) relationship with the mother[;] it opens up the possibility and the critical elaboration of new symbolic forms of female authority that can effectively legitimate a woman’s subjecthood and thus render unto her not emancipation (under the law of the Father) but full social agency and responsibly as a woman.”

*****

In “The Essence of the Triangle,” an essence de Lauretis defines in terms of Locke’s “nominal essence” as, citing Locke, “three Lines meeting at Three Angles,” there is some awareness of the role race and racism play relative to discerning women’s difference in and through specific feminist social practices, but de Lauretis does not make race or racism central to her analysis. And when Halperin encourages us to “examine our actual practices” so that “we will see that we keep adapting our traditions so as to make them do a different kind of social and cultural work from the work they did in the past,” we are not wrong to wonder about who and what is included (and not) in the  “we,” “our,” “our traditions” in Halperin’s writing. To whose history and traditions is Halperin referring? By taking race and racism seriously, “our” attention will likely shift to a broader array of (interrelated) power disparities and to a more extensive history of (perhaps subtle) queer lesbian and gay social practices that may be performing new social functions in the present.

Significantly, in turning now to that broader array of power disparities, I do not mean to segregate what are, in fact, queerly related issues. That is, by turning to C. Winter Han, his most recent book, Racial Erotics: Gay Men of Color, Sexual Racism, and the Politics of Desire, in order focus on a gay male of color social practice that resists racialized power disparities, I do not mean to imply that class, race, and racism are not interrelated social logics, as if classism is a white issue, while race and racism are, for example, Black issues.

In Racial Erotics, Han defines sexual racism as the erotic “exclusion or fetishization” of gay men of color. Sexual racism, Han points out, is connected to (and, in fact, fuels) the broader racial hierarchy that values whiteness at the expense of everything else. Sexual racism de-forms gay male social life, and that is why Han argues that it requires a social response.

Han identifies the redeployment of racial stereotypes in the intimate lives of some gay males of color as one social response to sexual racism. This practice is meant to “de-center whiteness as the target of sexual desires while simultaneously marking the love of ‘sameness’ legitimate.” In and through the strategic use of racialized stereotypes, gay men of color invent “racialized ways of being [that] have value outside of . . . the service of whiteness.” Han explores this practice in the broader context of taking intraracial relationships seriously, but its history extends beyond intraracial contexts.

Han, Halperin, and de Lauretis, each in their own way, alert us to a collective social identity, one that is not found in “nature,” but rather in history, in the history of specific social practices, that, to re-turn to de Lauretis’ definition of queer theory, “articulate the terms in which lesbian and gay sexualities may be understood and imaged as forms of resistance to cultural homogenization, counteracting dominant discourses with other constructions of the subject in culture” (emphasis added). And these various, to use Han’s term, “strategic essentialism[s]” are not just academic exercises. Han, Halperin and de Lauretis are all contesting a certain strand of queer theory, an “abstract queerness”—and for a good reason.  

Han asserts that “queer theory has not only ignored race but has actively attempted to erase race analysis in an effort to present a universalized queer experience focused on the experiences of white, Western, upper-class gay men.” Halperin asserts that “[m]ost gay men nowadays, especially younger gay men, along with women and members of other minority groups, are forced to live in a state of denial about the social meaning of their difference . . . . When it comes to sexuality in particular, [anyone] can claim a queer identity, so long as such a claim does not challenge the protocols of American social life, disrupt heterosexual privilege, or lead to a rejection of the norms of mainstream culture (love, family, social belonging).” De Lauretis contends that feminist post-structuralism’s obsession with essentialism is not innocent. De Lauretis suggests “that what motivates the suspicion or the outright construction, on the part of Anglo-American feminists, of a fantom feminist essentialism, may be less the risk of essentialism itself than the further risk of which that entails: the risk of challenging directly the social-symbolic institution of heterosexuality.” In other words, what gets left out, hidden, etc. by this poststructuralist obsession with essentialism is the specific form of desire that challenges heterosexuality and that is made manifest in and through specific feminist practices—namely, a specific form of love, love between women, what we may call lesbianism. The erasure of specificity is also the erasure of certain (queer) desires.

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Brintnall’s contention that “emphases and exclusions are necessary to an essay like this one: they are what make a collection of details and an agglomeration of information a story” indicates that narration, any narration, requires making choices that make it a specific narration, a story. However, Brintnall’s second contention, that “queer theory is a long tutorial in learning to find traces of what has been hidden, marginalized, and distorted in service of fabricating a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good, as well as assessing the damage wrought by telling certain stories rather than others,” indicates that it is precisely specificity that must be queered.

What is difficult to discern on the surface of Brintall’s narrative is the exact relationship he intends between specificity and queerness. As it is framed above, there is, on one the hand, specificity, and then, on the other hand, there is queerness. This way of framing the relationship between specificity and queerness is supported by other moments of his storytelling. For example, in his summary of the work of Duggan and Puar, Brintnall suggests that “participatory interaction with the reigning system of power” is at odds with “resistant queerness.”

Reading de Lauretis with Halperin on queer specificity clarifies, what is to Brintnall, the “somewhat” clear character of de Lauretis’ in(ter)vention.” It points to a form of queerness that is more subtle and supple and compromised than Brintnall may desire. In their textual relationship, in the relationship between unequals, de Lauretis (founder?) and Halperin (inheritor?) create/discern the possibility of a queerness that is at once participatory and resistant, a queerness made manifest in and through lesbian and gay social histories.

While the exact character of queerness in “Once upon a queer theory” is, at least to me, not entirely clear, it seems likely that Brintnall understands queerness as resistant queerness, queerness in opposition to “participatory interaction.” Even if Brintnall intends to define queerness in strictly oppositional terms, his narrative may be read otherwise, and in a way that makes more sense of his story’s main character:

As a story, Brintnall’s narrative is participatory—and no more than its “emphases and exclusions.” Yet, his story is also, and at the same time, resistant. Brintnall resists normalizing what is a queer story by consistently disrupting his narrative, by refusing to, and in the same moment he is also not refusing to, “[fabricate] a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good.” In “Once upon a queer theory,” the practice of queer storytelling “may actually be serving new, dynamic social functions, creating possibilities” (emphasis added).

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