Queer Theory: Interacting between Realities and Fantasies （酷儿理论 : 现实与想象的相互作用） Yuan Honggeng

1. Queer Theory: Interacting between Realities and Fantasies • （酷儿理论: 现实与想象的相互作用） Yuan Honggeng July 24，2009

2. 报告人学术背景 • 袁洪庚，博士（香港大学），现任外国语学院三级教授；主要研究方向为英语文学；在《文艺研究》、 《外国文学评论》、 《外国文学研究》、 《外语教学与研究》、《外国文学》、《文艺报》、《国外文学》、《当代外国文学》、《外国语》、《译林》、China Today、等文学界、外语界的权威、核心刊物（CSSCI）上发表《转折与流变：中国当代玄学侦探小说发生论》等论文几十篇，其中有多篇收入中国人大书报资料中心《外国文学研究》集刊；译有《北回归线》等英语文学作品8部，另在《世界文学》等刊物上发表译文几十篇，共约160万字；近年来主要从事后现代主义文学研究，是中国大陆系统研究玄学侦探小说第一人。 • 通信地址：730000 兰州天水南路222号兰州大学外国语学院　 • 电话：0931-8912274 • 电子邮件：yuanhg@lzu.edu.cn

3. Main Contents • 1. Queer theory • 2. Marching towards democracy? • 3. Sociological realities vs. literary fantasies4. Where are we and where are we heading to?

4. Introduction: Queer theory grew out of homosexual [gay/lesbian] studies • Queer theory is a branch of study or theoretical speculation. • Teresa de Lauretis the feminist first used the term in 1990. Gay/lesbian studies, in turn, grew out of feminist studies and feminist theory.

5. The word "queer“ is originally a derogatory term, now used by gays and lesbians to refer to themselves. • The word "queer" is originally an offensive term for an openly homosexual person, odd,unconventional, or eccentric, as in behavior and speech, hence its alignment with ideas about homosexuality.

6. How the term “queer” came into being • The term queer eventually came into being because both gays, who preferred regarding themselves as males, and lesbians, who, aligning themselves with the feminist movement, condemned the gay movement as sharing the anti-female attitudes of reigning patriarchal culture agreed upon the notion of queer.

7. To describe oneself as a queer is to resist all that are considered “straight” .

8. 1. Queer theory • Queer theory is basically deconstructive and a trend with the broader conception of postmodernism, as shown in its dismantling of the key binary oppositions of Western culture, such as, in the aspect of human sexuality, sex/gender, male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, natural/unnatural, etc. • As a new subculture, queer theory is a new way of expressing one’s desire. It subverts not only the hegemony of heterosexual, but also bygone homosexual theories.

9. Queer theory is meant to reexamine human sexuality and to enlightenthose who are still ignorant 巴西圣保罗，四十万人参加同性恋大游行

10. an interdisciplinary and combined trend • Queer theory is not a particular or concrete theory like feminist theory or some –isms like Romanticism; it is an interdisciplinary and combined trend or hypothesis, relating to sociology, history, anthropology, fine arts and literature.

11. Homosexuals are born or made? • Debates between biological essentialists [本质论者] and social constructivists 【建构论者】 • Either “I am homosexual because of my genes.” • Or “I am homosexual because of my brain.” • Foucault, as one of the first constructivists, claiming that sexuality and sexual conduct is not a natural category, having a foundation in reality. Instead, it is a question of social constructions, categories only having an existence in a society, and that probably are not applicable to other societies than our own.

12. Feminist theory insists that gender is not something "essential" to an individual's identity. • Feminist theory separates the social from the biological, and the constructed and the innate, insisting that we see a difference between what is the product of human ideas, hence something mutable and changeable, and what is the product of biology, hence something (relatively) stable and unchangeable.

13. 2. Marching towards democracy?

14. Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) and his History of Sexuality • Has impact on areas such as -- • Sociology, Historiography, • Gay and Lesbian Studies, • Marxism, Cultural Studies • and Literary Studies (& New Historicism) • Two Major Claims: • -- Man is a product of modernity; • -- Knowledge is not Truth, but power.

15. Foucault’s views on sexuality and human body • Sexuality – not something hidden but “a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of knowledge, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another.

16. Foucault’s views on sexuality and human body 2. [Modified] body as an interface between internal forces (psychic, physiological) and the external social forces.

17. Foucault’s tolerance • He argues that human relations are in fact monotonously boring and so-called “varieties of abnormal sex” should be permitted, such as homosexual, bisexual, S&M （Sadism and Masochism）, orgy, • He advocates taboos, divisions and restrains on sexuality should be abolished. • He regards homosexual as a stance of being and an art of life, instead of a sexual identity or a sexual orientation

18. 3. Sociological realities vs. literary reflections • “Territory” • The story: Mrs. Campbell brought her only son Neil up, only to find he is a queer. She hides her disappointment and tries to help him and pretends self-deceptively that as long as her son is happy she will be contented. But she finds it hard sometimes to bear her son, his lover, and the lifestyle of homosexuals. David Leavitt, 1961-

19. One episode from “Territory” • Neil holds his lover Wayne’s hand while seeing a movie, his mother is annoyed. • “I know what you were doing.” • … • “I remember when you were a little boy, and I have to stop remembering. I wanted you to grow up happy. And I’m very tolerant, very understanding. But I can only take so much.”

20. Oedipus complex: the undercurrent • The boy was on guard of being affected by Oedipus complex. That is one more example of life mimicking art.

21. Queer theory and literature: Interrelations • 1. Literature, as a mock reference frame of human life, illustrates queer theory, as in “Territory” • 2. Queer theory anticipates or brings about related literature, as in “A Place I’ve Never Been”

22. 4. Where are we and where are we heading to? • Power as Foucault understands, is closely-related to sex in any regime and in any age. Sex is a means, through which power is ruthlessly exercised.

23. It is often that sex is described as a sexual desire for the procession of power confrontation with a stubborn impulse. Although the power makes every effort to conquer sexual desire, but sexual desire cannot be fully controlled. • Foucault believes that the situation was exactly the opposite， i. e. sex betrays its nature through power。

24. Taboos in sex are anthropologically, ethnographically [民族学地】, economically, politically, demographically【人口统计学地】or otherwise oriented • Some modern myths about homosexuals: • Incest ethnographically degenerates a nation • Homosexuals do not give birth to babies, henceforth they help to reduce the population of a nation; • Bisexuals transfer horrible diseases like AIDS (never proved); • …

25. Sex: serving what purposes? • From time immemorial to the present day, sex has been serving three purposes, i.e. • to reproduce [biological instinct of all animals, as Mencius expressed “There are three things that are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them” [不孝有三, 无后为大”],

26. Sex: serving what purposes? • to establish or maintain interpersonal relations [as in the case of Wang Zhaojun and countless marriages at all levels of society], • And, lastly, for sensual pleasure, which is indeed the fundamental or ontological purpose. Christianity also insists that sex should serve the sole purpose of reproduction, not for sensual pleasure

27. Radicals like Foucault and the Chinese sexpert Li Yinhe argue that various forms of sexual behavior should be allowed, as 200 years ago in Europe, then sex was not regarded as anything else or as an attachment to politics, religion, economy…nor was it a reflection of man’s nature, nor character.

28. Recent scientific research shows human beings can have as many as 17 different sexual types

29. Bibliography [English] • Freud, Sigmund 1920, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18, ed. James Strachey, London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-A. • Freud, Sigmund 1924 (1961), "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIX, ed. James Strachey, London: Hagarth. • Leavitt, David, Collected Stories, Bloomsbury, 2003。 • Peckham, Morse, Art and Pornography, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971. • Sex Dictionary: http://www.thesexdictionary.com/alphabet/c.shtml.

30. Bibliography [Chinese] • 埃利斯，（亨利）哈夫洛克：《性心理学》，潘光旦译，北京：三联书店，1987。 • 巴塔耶，乔治：《色情史》，刘 晖 译，北京：商务印书馆，2004。 • 福柯，米歇尔：《性经验史》， 上海世纪出版集团，2005。 • 高燕宁：《同性恋健康干预》，复旦大学出版社，2006。 • 李殿元：《中国性学报告》，青海人民出版社，1996。 • 李银河：《女性主义》，山东人民出版社，2005。 • 李银河：《性的问题·福柯与性》，文化艺术出版社，2003。 • 王小波：“摆脱童稚状态”，北京：《读书》，一九九三年第六期。

31. Thank you!