6 - Identity and politics in a “postmodern” gay culture

Summary

Contemporary lesbian and gay male cultures evidence a heightened sensitivity to issues of difference and the social formation of desire, sexuality, and identity. As individuals “we” know what it means to be treated as different, to be rendered as a deviant other by folk and expert cultures, and to approach our bodies, desires, and identities with a deliberateness often lacking in mainstream straight society. Nevertheless, this existential awareness of the cultural politics of otherness has not necessarily been reflected in our dominant theories. For example, the new sociology and history of same-sex intimacies has been narrowly focused on the social origin and development of lesbian and gay male identities and communities among almost exclusively white, middle-class Europeans or Americans.

The theoretical and political limits of the post-Stonewall culture have become apparent. Scholars seem to be rehearsing a monotone history of gay identity to the point of pointlessness. The arcane polemics between constructionists and essentialists has evolved into a sterile metatheoretical debate increasingly devoid of moral and political import. Much of current lesbian and gay studies remains wedded to a standard Enlightenment scientistic self-understanding that, in my view, is inconsistent with its social constructionist premises. Gay identity politics moves back and forth between a narrow single-interest-group politic and a view of coalition politics as the sum of separate identity communities, each locked into its own sexual, gender, class, or racial politic.