In Visibilities: Some Gambits
Catalogue Essay by Mick Wilson
The Preliminary Bit: Long-winded but well-intentioned ?
Never before have gay men and women been so visible. If, as the citizens
of Queer Nation have proclaimed, "we are everywhere," this
should be
understood as more than a defiant response to those who would sequester
or, better, eradicate us; indeed, homophobic America itself appears
to have
an insatiable appetite for our presence. As a result, the social project
inherent
in the nineteenth-century invention of "the homosexual" can
perhaps now be
realised: visibility is a precondition of surveillance, disciplinary
intervention,
and, at the limit, gender-cleansing. [1]
Thus Leo Bersani introduces a discussion of "The Gay Presence"
in
contemporary America. Calling attention to the apparent successes of
numerous bids for visibility in recent decades, Bersani also introduces
a note of caution. He suggests that being straight-forwardly visible
is
to be available for supervision, for the attentions of the overseer.
Lesbian and feminist activists and theorists have long known the
ambivalences of visibility. The imaging of sexual exchanges between
women has often been an active pursuit for certain heterosexually
motivated voyeurisms. Yet the absenting of lesbianism from several
bodies of sex-conduct legislation has equally attempted to render
invisible and unthinkable same-sex desire among or between women.
Bersani goes on to discuss how:
Gays and lesbians have certainly been working to make themselves
visible -- but how they have been doing it is at least as ambiguous
as straight America's motives in tolerating, even encouraging, this
unprecedented visibility. If we are indeed everywhere, it is by no
means clear who the "we" is. As the battle for gay rights
is engaged [...]
what it means just to be gay has become surprisingly problematic.
Never before in the history of minority groups struggling for recognition
and equal treatment has there been an analogous attempt, on the part
of
any such group, to make itself unidentifiable even as it demands to
be
recognised. [2]
What Bersani refers to as the attempt to make the group, the lesbian
and
gay community, unidentifiable is the ongoing efforts of gay, lesbian,
and
queer citizens and writers, activists and artists to destabilise any
fixed or
essentialising characterisation of same-sex desire. That is to say
a significant
amount of the work done by gays and lesbians in trying to achieve improved
conditions for themselves has been to point to the contingent nature
of these
identities. [3] Thus even as demands are
made, "we want our rights, our
liberty etc." the question as to "who WE are?" is also
posed.
The uneasy and unstable alliances between lesbians, gay men, bisexuals,
transgendered people and those who do not subscribe (to any existing
taxonomy of desire) typify the problem of "us": who is the
"we" that
seeks the right to be who we are? Recently, Dr. Lydia Foy during a
court
case where she attempted to persuade the state to acknowledge her
gender-reassigned status by allowing that the stipulation of her sex
as "male" be changed to "female" on her birth-certificate,
seemed to
demand (while speaking on a national television news broadcast) that
she should not be grouped outside of heterosexual norms. [4]
Thus she
appeared to be seeking to distance herself from the gay and lesbian
communities in order to fully realise what would presumably be for
her a properly feminine gender. Thus she invoked an analogy with
handicap, more readily identifying with those who have congenital
health problems or medical conditions than with sexual "deviants".
[5]
When in the Pride initiatives (such as this exhibition) the long-winded
inclusive list is invoked (lesbian, gay, queer, bi-sexual and transgendered)
it is inevitable that suspicions must arise. Is this an alliance that
we are
supposed to believe already exists? Is this someone or some sectional
interest group expressing its agenda as the necessary or obvious strategy?
In what ways can this configuration be seen as arising out of a consultative
or inclusive politics and organisational practice? It may be worth
noting
here that some lesbian and feminist initiatives have encountered difficult
internal conflicts (often devisive) around the questions of the involvement
or non-involvement of lesbian / feminist identified male-to-female
transexuals. [6] On the otherhand certain
queer theorists have valorised
the trangendered person as the figure most worth celebrating, epitomising
as she / he does the disarray of the heterosexist sex-gender system.
[7]
There are difficulties in fixing who we are, both in the sense of "who
is included?"
and in the sense of "exactly what is it we are, and what are we
included in?"
Considering the friction that often exists between men and women within
the
parameters of gay and lesbian social life it is clear that the positing
of a gay
and lesbian alliance is not an inevitable or necessarily grassroots
initiative.
Many gay men identify much more readily with straight women or straight
men.
Many lesbians express dismay at the antics of drag queens, and others
are often
more ready to identify with straight men and women than with gay men.
There
are of course the many lesbians active in and around the recent homosexual
law
reform here who clearly identify gay and lesbian political interests.
There are also
many bisexuals who can testify to a rather closed and exclusive dimension
to gay
and lesbian social arenas where bisexuality is not accorded recognition
as an
honest or integral identification. [8]
Even where these differences are integrated under one banner as it
were, there
remains a question as to what that banner might say, would it be "Paedophiles
Out"? [9]
Would it be "We Are Not Straight"? Would it be "We're
not sure who we are,
but we are Proud"?
In the 1996 Exhibition "Pride in Diversity" the strategy
of display was
a show of differences; different works by different artists who shared
no
positive collectivity but rather a negative one, they all were presumably
NOT straight. This was not something that the artists' works necessarily
evidenced. The presumption that they were not straight proceeded from
the
identification of the show as a Pride event. The frame of the exhibition
marked
(the work and) the artists as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered
or
non-subscribing. That some or most of the artworks on display did not
have
a specifically gay or queer dimension often prompted the question:
"why show
this work in this way at all?" At one point it was mooted that
the show might
be subtitled "a show of artworks by people who happen to be gay."
The simple framing of an exhibition as in some way "gay",
having to do
with "non-straightness" is in practice a very complex affair.
It goes some way
toward temporarily interrupting the presumption of heterosexuality,
that is to say,
it cuts into a dialogue between social actors who by and large presume
each
other's heterosexuality. Cutting into this ongoing conversation it
says "presume
for the moment that some of the social actors engaged in this larger
exchange are
not straight." It then proceeds to propose that while some of
the participants in the
conversation are not straight they are not all equivalent in their
non-straightness.
It further suggests that while non-straightness is of some general
significance and
consequence in its own right it is not necessary to reduce a person
who is not
straight to that dimension of their being and erase their other particularities.
Having made the interruption and forwarded the proposition, it may
be advisable
to consider what responses these call forth, if any. Of course, responses
often
indicate that what one believes one has proposed, and what one has
been heard to
propose are very different. So while one imagined that one was interrupting
heterosexual presumption, and that one was also in a conversation about
the
diversity of non-straightness, one can come to feel that this conversation
continues
to be fundamentally defined and structured around straightness.
Then there is the notion of "Pride in Diversity". Perhaps
taking pride in our
difference and our differences is as redundant a strategy for negotiating
these
differences as feeling shame. [10] Perhaps
it is dishonest to claim pride where
in fact there is social awkwardness and a lack of dialogue between
and across
differences. Difference makes a demand of us that perhaps we (we who
are beside
each other but not like each other) are still unable to meet just yet.
I should like to signal one of the most troubling aspects of our difficult
negotiation
of difference. In his problematic account of the struggle for homosexual
law reform
Kieran Rose (a key figure in achieving that law reform) has argued
that the recent
legislative changes in respect of homosexuality "stem from positive
traditional Irish
values arising from the anti-colonial struggle reinvigorated and amplified
by the new
social, cultural and economic influences of the 1960s onwards."
[11] This is of course
a clever rhetorical reversal seeking to appropriate the language of
traditional values
from rightwing bigotry and identify the concerns of lesbians and gays
with the various
elements of nationalist and anti-colonialist ideologies [12]
But, it is also a questionable
if strategic fiction.
It may serve to indicate the questionable nature of this fiction if
it is placed in
relation to the recent controversy around the British activist Peter
Thatchell's
engagement with a debate on outing in the Irish context. Thatchell
participated
in several debates and discussions with Irish activists in respect
of the outing
of homophobes with specific reference to Irish Catholic Church personnel
allegedly active as homosexuals and as agents of homophobia. The controversy
centered around several issues including the success of a specifically
non-confrontational and assimilationist Irish politics and the possibility
of "neo-colonialist" or "xenophobic" responses
being manifest in these exchanges.
Chris Robson, another member of GLEN, responding in a letter to GCN
declared:
GLEN issued a strong press release condemning [...] Peter Thatchell's
intervention. This we described as 'neo-colonialist', not as a term
of abuse,
but as a description of the process. He is not the first person from
London
who thinks he knows best what to do for the Irish people.
The neo-colonialist mentality is, to put it mildly, not restricted
to one
campaigner. It is the neo-colonialist attitude in Ireland that is behind
the lack
of interest in Irish politics and achievements, and the preoccupation
instead
with the facile attractions of 'punitive outing [...] (When no TD of
any party
has ever voted against any of the new protecting laws whom do you start
outing?) [13]
What Robson describes as a disinterest in Irish politics might also
be described
as a profound suspicion of it. Suzy Byrne another key figure in law
reform,
also a member of GLEN, is described as having said in response to Thatchell:
"Irish politicians have not had the chance to be hypocritical
because all the
legislation had passed through the Dail without a vote". [14] If there is a
neo-colonialism in all this it is surely the uncritical celebration
of a
governmental and political system susceptible to discrete and finely
honed interested manipulation. [15]
Whatever the case in regard of Thatchell's proposals and their reception,
the larger point I should like to raise is that we do a disservice
to the
possibilities of difference, specifically differences in the field
of desire
and sexuality, if these are reduced to or contained within the rhetoric
of
national identity, anti-colonialism or neo-colonialism. [16]
Yes, issues of
sexual identity intersect with issues of ethnicity, race, nationality
etc.
But, it is precisely the latent possibility that sexual allegiances
and alliances
may disrupt these other axes that makes them important. The language
of the
nation allows the well placed few to speak for the many. What is then
required is a way to disrupt the ease with which one or two or a few
speak
for the many while at the same time retaining the possibility of a
collective
if somewhat provisional voice. Consider another response to this debate.
Some people and organisations here believe they can speak on behalf
of us all. This is certainly not the case. Mr. Thatchell's views on
the current
Equality Bill and the Catholic Church's devious manoeuvres to discriminate
against homosexual people are correct [...] I have taken the stance
of
representing my own views as a gay man or those of my organisation
when at conferences [...] and never presume to talk on behalf of all
Irish lesbians and gays. [17]
What gay, lesbian and queer initiatives internationally and supra-nationally
hold out as their possible emancipatory potential is a model of
community-of-those-who-have-nothing-in-common. We are the "we"
that
must always be spoken in hesitation, provisionally, we are never quite
what
we seem and therein lies one of the greatest potentials for social
renewal.
[18] But in order for this possibility
to be realised we probably need to
acknowledge the operation of class privilege, gender privilege and
political
ambition within our constituencies. In this respect GLEN may perhaps
be
taken as demonstrating some possibilities in their attempt to relate
the
marginalisation of gays and lesbians to the social exclusion of the
travelling
community and the economically marginalised in contemporary Irish society.
Such relationships cannot obscure the relationships between economic
and
cultural privilege, and sexual autonomy and the self-determination
necessary
for "coming-out" and inventing gay, lesbian or queer lifestyles.
The Middle Bit: What has any of this got to do
with an art exhibition ?
How may these foregoing and admittedly partisan considerations be related
to the question of the visible and the invisible? How indeed do these
concerns
relate to the visual arts, if indeed they do at all? [19]
Firstly, let me dispose of any suggestion that the works in this exhibition
in
someway serve to illustrate these concerns. Indeed these concerns may
be very
far removed from the specific motivations and interests of some of
these artists.
However, it is clear that in these works there is a series of intersections
between
the terms visible / invisible and sexuality / desire, and self-presentation.
Secondly, let me disparage any sentimental or simple equation of the
queer with
the artistic. One of the old and perhaps still common euphemisms for
sexual
deviancy was "artistic", particularly though not exclusively
as applied to men.
As Alan Sinfield has written, "Aestheticism became a component
in the image
of the queer as it emerged". [20]
J.E.Rivers has also written that "the association
of homosexuality with creativity" arose partly from the belief
that an interest in the
"finer things of life -- art, music, poetry, fashion, and so on
-- is a feminine
characteristic, and from the corresponding belief that "homosexuals"
(men) are
more feminine than "heterosexuals" (men). Both beliefs are
relatively recent in
Western societies." [21] Although
it should be noted that some have attempted to
relate aestheticism to the lack of productive value and to relate this
in turn to the
non-productive pleasure of gay sex
(as in non-reproductive and non-social-reproductive). [22]
It is perhaps in relation
to this approach that the work of McDermott & McGough might be
viewed. It might
also be noted that some claims have been made for a subversive dimension
to the
aesthetic strategies of that old cliched cypher:
Oscar Wilde. [23] On this question
also attention must be directed to the cultural response from gay,
lesbian and queer
communities to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. In part the equation of art
and queerness
has been reinforced by the incredibly diverse and imaginative response
of artists
to the crisis but this phenomenon is also not without its ambivalences.
[24]
Thirdly, and more positively, the consistent ambiguity of the visible
in the work
of these artists might be related to the generalised ambiguity that
being visibly
gay, lesbian, or queer generates. Not only as Bersani has noted in
the American
context but also as Irish authors and critics have recorded. Consider
the following
from Eibhear Walshe's introduction to the recent anthology Sex, Nation
and
Dissent in Irish Writing:
For Irish lesbians, the issue of identity was more complicated because
of the lack
of a public identity, even a criminalised one. There was more than
one attempt
(1895 and 1922) to make lesbianism a crime, but this never reached
the statute
books, and so Irish lesbians were both outside the law and at the same
time rendered
invisible by lack of official recognition or even condemnation...This
lack of an official
identity for Irish lesbians can be seen as something of a mixed blessing,
with very
little cultural visibility but a greater freedom from persecution and
a consequent
imaginative freedom and openess. [25]
Visibility, is at issue also in these works in the sense of the desire
to see and
to be seen; the wanna'be-glamour of the drag beach-party in Paul Rowley's
Pacific;
the glassey eye/mirror of the lens and alternating presence and absence
of the seen
and the seer in Mo White's slide projections; the peeping eyes through
holes in a wall
bearing taunting names proposed by McDermott & McGough; the cheesey-poster
style
and the hyper-real visibility of the sex-detritus in James Dunbar's
reworking of a
cinematic trope; the literal translucency of Michael Beirne's tailored
body fragments;
the bizarre ideographs traced on the surfaces of Christa Zauner's body
fragment images
seeming to promise a visible sign of difference and the exotic; Veronica
Slater's
sumptuous meditations on the dress and the self-presentations of another
woman;
Andrew Fox's manipulation of the drawing conventions of the figure.
The management
of appearance is thus a theme across many of these works.
Finally, this exhibition is in a very modest way informed by an internationalism
(integral to the whole possibility of modern gay, lesbian and queer
identities) as we
have the opportunity to view works produced outside of the immediate
Irish context.
Zauner, Slater, McDermott & McGough, White and Rowley either work
or originate
outside of Ireland. It is an exhibition such as this and the ongoing
project of the
OutArt Committee which represents one of several possible alternative
arenas in which
questions of gay, lesbian and queer experience can be interrogated.
Thus community-building can proceed without inevitably reducing this
emergent
community to a single voice or a single image or constraining it to
coincide with the
contours of the nation-state.
The End Bit: What about art?
There are many issues which need to be addressed which have not been
broached here. One of these pertains to the question of art and its
value(s).
[26] By framing a gay exhibition or a Pride
exhibition is one merely
instrumentalising the artworks and thus enacting some form of advertising
strategy? (Symptomatic of this might be my decision here to focus on
the
general politics of visibility at the expense of a detailed discussion
of the
art works, however, this is hopefully a moot point.) The question is
perhaps
too crude in this form but it is necessary to signal that this will
inevitably be
one of the many questions on the table (as it has been in the past)
for
deliberation in respect of any future OutArt projects.
Clearly, there is a larger argument to be explored here about the relationships
between sexuality, community and art practice. [27]
While this discussion has
been initiated precisely by the Pride exhibitions (Divine Virtue, IFC,
1995 and
Pride In Diversity, CAC, 1996) it will be necessary for that discussion
to be
elaborated further among artists, activists and audiences. Hopefully,
the responses
to this year's show will be one way in which this debate is furthered.
One aspect
of this discussion which has perhaps not properly emerged is the tendency
of these
initiatives (Pride Exhibitions, Gay & Lesbian Studies, Historical
Reconstructions etc.)
to privilege the domains of high-art, literature and the academy and
neglect the
perhaps more inclusive domains of the dance-floor, the bar, pornography,
sexual
experimentation, dressing-up and so on.
Mick Wilson
1997
Footnotes
[1] Leo Bersani, HOMOS, Cambridge Mass., Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.
p.11. return
[2] Bersani, 1995, p.31. return
[3] See Edward Stein (ed.) Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and
the Social Constructionist Controversy, NY, Routledge, 1992.; Diana Fuss
(ed.) Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, NY, Routledge, 1991.;
Michael Warner (ed.) Fear Of A Queer Planet, Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota
Press, 1993.; David M. Halperin, Saint=Foucault: Towards A Gay Hagiography,
Oxford Univ. Press, 1995.; John P. DeCecco & John P. Elia (eds.) If
You Seduce A Straight Person, Can You Make Them Gay?, London, Harrington
Park Press, 1993.; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter,
London, Routledge, 1990 and 1993. return
[4] For summary details on this case see GCN, [Gay Community News,
Dublin] May 1997, p.3. return
[5] This proposed analogy between the pre-op. or mid-op. transexual
and certain forms of "handicap" is of course problematic, reinforcing
the medicalisation of sexual difference and so forth as it does, however,
it is worth noting that a similar strategy has been suggested around the
attempt to locate a biological substrate to gay identity. See Alan Sinfield,
The Wilde Century, London, Cassell, 1994. p.178. return
[6] For an interesting discussion of this topic (with specific reference
to digital culture) see Theresa M. Senft & Kaley davis, "Modem
Butterfly, Reconsidered", Sexuality and Cyberspace, Women & Performance:
A Journal of Feminist Theory, V.9, No.1, NYU, 1996. pp.69-104. return
[7] Judith Butler's work (Gender Trouble, 1990: Bodies That Matter,
1993) has often been read as a valorising of the transexual, however, this
reading appears somewhat reductive and simplistic. return
[8] See the recent article by Fiona Llyod, "Crossing the Borders:
Self-expression or betrayal -- are bisexual women ostracised by the lesbian
community?", in GCN, [Gay Community News, Dublin] April 1997. p.8
return
[9] The ILGA lost consultancy status with the UN because of their affiliation
with groups advocating paedophile. Stephen O'Connell reviewing the work
"I Feel Like Chicken Tonight" by Australian artist Matthew Jones,
remarks that "the link between gay culture and pederasty has threatened
the dream of a socially integrated homosexuality for some time." See
ART & TEXT , No. 50, 1995. p.63. return
[10] For an interesting consideration of shame as a sexual-political
theme see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick & Adam Frank, Shame in the Cybernetic
Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins", in Critical Inquiry, No. 21, Winter,
1995. return
[11] Kieran Rose, Diverse Communities: The Evolution of Lesbian and
Gay Politics in Ireland, Cork University Press, 1994. p.3 return
[12] An example of the mobilisation of this rhetoric by conservative
lobbies is in Family Solidarity, The Homosexual Challenge: Analysis and
Response, Dublin, 1990. return
[13] Chris Robson, Letter to GCN, [Gay Community News, Dublin] April
1997, p.37 return
[14] Suzy Byrne quoted in Michael Cronin's article "Outing Debate
Continues", GCN, [Gay Community News, Dublin] April 1997, p.3 return
[15] It is of course notable that discussions of lesbian and gay politics
in the UK often neglect consideration of the Irish experience despite the
obvious historical relationships between the two systems of legislation,
as in Angela R. Wilson (ed.) A Simple Matter of Justice?, London, Cassell,
1995. return
[16] The writers Alan Sinfield, Jonathan Dollimore, Kobena Mercer and
Isaac Julien (film-maker) have entered into debates on precisely the intersection
of colonialism and early modrn homosexual identity construction. See Sinfield,
1994. return
[17] Anthony Newsome, Letter to GCN, [Gay Community News, Dublin] April
1997, p.37. return
[18]This term "community-of-those-who-have-nothing-in-common"
is in part suggested by Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community, (Trans.
Michael Hardt) Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993. (Orig. La comunita
che viene, 1990.) return
[19] For a general introduction to issues in the intersection of sexual
identities and visual arts see Peter Horne & Reina Lewis (eds.) Outlooks:
Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures, London, Routledge, 1996.;
Emmanuel Cooper, The Sexual Perspective, London, Routledge, 1994. For more
generalised discussions of sexuality and visual culture see Bad Object-Choices
(eds.) How Do I Look: Queer Film and Video, Seattle, Bay Press, 1991; C.K.
Creekmur & A. Doty (eds.) Out In Culture, Duke University Press, 1995.
; see also Earl Jackson Jr., Strategies of Deviance, Indiana Univ. Press,
1995. Chapt. 4 "Graphic Specularity", pp.126-178. return
[20] Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century, London, Cassell, 1994. p.84.
See also Sinfield, Cultural Politics-Queer Reading, London, Routledge,
1994, Chapt. 2. return
[21] Rivers, J.E., Proust and the Art of Love, NY, Columbia Univ. Press,
1980. p.182. return
[22] For an introduction to the notion of "non-productive pleasure"
in the context of gay visual culture see John Champagne, "Gay Pornography
and Nonproductive Expenditure", in The Ethics of Marginality, Minneapolis,
Univ. of Minnesota, 1995. pp.28-57. return
[23] Oscar Wilde has been a central figure mobilised in the discussion
of modern gay identities and in relation to a politically subversive reading
of variously aestheticism and the related cultural practices of camp. The
subversive claims made for Wilde's literary practices often hinge on a
rather uninterrogated and privileged notion of "subversion".
This is an instance where again the appropriation of a generally used political
terminology to what is (in its manner of distribution and consumption)
a specifically art-critical or literary discourse, can serve to generate
an ambiguous "cultural-politics"; ambiguous as to the exact political
constituency at issue. See Alan Sinfield 1994 and Walshe (ed.) 1997. return
[24] For an introduction to issues in the visual culture of, and artistic
response to the AIDS Crisis see the exhibition catalogue "Don't Leave
Me This Way", and the many writings of authors such as Douglas Crimp,
Simon Watney, and Cindy Patton. See also the work of art collectives such
as Gran Fury and Boy With Arms Akimbo. return
[25] Eibhear Walshe (ed.) Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing,
Cork University Press, 1997. p.6. In a related manner and in the same volume,
Emma Donaghue argues that another author (Eva Gore-Booth) "quietly
subverted her whole heritage" and did so "without ever casting
herself as a political or sexual dissident". The implication being
that invisibility or discretion was perhaps in someway enabling or empowering.
Emma Donaghue, "'How could I fear and hold thee by the hand': The
Poetry of Eva Gore Booth", pp. 16-43. (See pp.17-18.) For a brief
introductory discussion of lesbianism and visual representation see "Lianna
and the lesbians of art cinema", in Mandy Merck Perversions: Deviant
Readings, London, Virago, 1993. pp.162-176. For a general discussion of
the politics of representation and lesbianism see Teresa DeLauretis, "Sexual
Indifference and Lesbian Representation", in Abelove et al. (eds.)
The Lesbian & Gay Studies Reader , London, Routledge, 1993. pp.141-158.
For a discussion of lesbianism and its occlusions in Irish feminism see
Kathryn Conrad, "Occupied Territories: The Negotiation of Lesbianism
in Irish Feminist Narrative, in Eire-Ireland, XXXI, Nos. 1&2, pp.123-136.
return
[26] The expression "art and its value(s)" is somewhat unfortunate
since it implies the self-sufficiency and autonomy of art and artistic
categories. This is an appropriate construction here however, in as much
as it serves to underline the possible points of contention in the discussion
of exhibition strategies and questions of artistic value. return
[27] "Sexuality, Community and Art Practice" was the title
of a public discussion held to co-incide with the "Pride In Diversity"
exhibition at the City Arts Centre, Dublin, July 1996 return