From Republic to Empire: the Loss of Gay Studies

I am always struck by the artificial separation between queer studies and racial or ethnic studies. Even the question, as it is posed here, presumes a neutral ground in spite of its intent—a queer studies that originates at some particular point ("in the 1990s"—why not before?) and that then develops in some way or another, ultimately trying to (or trying not to) incorporate other approaches that contest its universalist assumptions, based as they are on false demarcations and distinctions.

The narrative is, of course, simple for the sake of expediency. At no point do we ask why the Anglo-American academy came up with the notion of "gay and lesbian" studies, which was then superseded by "queer" studies. Was that all due to the Latino and African American fags who risked police harassment in the streets of New York? Maybe a better way of putting it would be that at a certain moment in history some working-class minority queens decided they had had enough, and then some middle-class white fags and dykes took over the project by learning very carefully what had happened in the civil rights movement. And if we are talking about academe here, a still better way of putting it would be to talk about how those white gays and lesbians came into contact with other middle-class gays and lesbians who had no recourse but to come to this country because of subtle and not-so-subtle U.S. political fiascos in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Here they coined the term diasporic queers (or did someone else coin it for them?) while they decided, with the backing of the immense machinery of U.S. capital and prestige, to export new missionary undertakings as ideological certainties, anthropological dictates, and sociological facts.

Not that I mean to play the cynic, but I think that the first item that needs to be addressed here is precisely this complacent history (i.e., "Gay and lesbian studies happened at such a date, in these conditions," etc.), which underlies the very framework of this discussion. Perhaps once we question this framework, a suitable point of entry—a suitable discussion—can ensue: one that asks what is it that gives Anglo-Americans this penchant for a history that is always written within a structure that places them at the center even as it wonders if the center still holds. This form of inquiry has been successful thus far, and in spite of the best intentions of many of us, many can still only posit fields of knowledge while wondering if those fields of knowledge are valid. This mechanism is the norm whenever a field enters a period of discomfort—which is the case at present with lesbian and gay studies.

The question posed at this panel—or at least the question as I would like to pose it—is not unlike the question that has haunted us (me) in recent months: What is left of the Republic when it becomes an empire? Supposing that civil liberties, inclusion, dissent, and some semblance of freedom are the projects of the Republic, what becomes of these ideas and ideals when the Republic is no more? As we see the erosion of our vaunted civil liberties, instrumentalized as reasons of state at a time of war, and as we see no end in sight to the suspicion and paranoia in the contested peace that will follow this contested war in Iraq, we may wonder what our role is and what purpose this chronology or narrative presupposes.

Let me put it a different way: Queer studies was a project born and bred in the Republic, but it soon became linked to a broad imperial project that sought to impose norms, statutes, and identities on other regions of the world. The way that Latin Americans contested this project...