Queering Freedom

Introduction: The Seduction of Freedom

1 Introduction The Seduction of Freedom Changing from the perspectives of restrictive economy to those of general economy actually accomplishes a Copernican transformation: a reversal of thinking—and of ethics. Woe to those who, to the very end, insist on regulating the movement that exceeds them with the narrow mind of the mechanic who changes a tire. —GEORGES BATAILLE, The Accursed Share, volume 1 The founding of nation-states across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, the Americas, and South and East Asia corresponded to a heightened rhetoric of freedom. The concept of the nation grounded its moral authority in the fundamental claim to liberation— from autocratic regimes, from clerical hierarchies , from nature’s savagery. Offering unmatched stability, the nation-state guaranteed greater freedom for the lives of its citizens and promised greater freedom to those who should aspire toward civility. Consequently, as the nation-state gradually consolidated itself into the most effective vehicle of power, that wide sweep of bodies who were not directly enfranchised by its socio-economic might became the primary targets of this rhetoric of seduction, taken up through the voices of imperialism and colonialism. If bodies and regions not yet ‘civilized’ could become deeply invested in the benevolent powers of the nation-state, the complicated politics of freedom could gain its necessary foothold in the globalized politics of domination. 2 Queering Freedom In the early twenty-first century of the modern western calendar, the struggles and violence of much of the world can still be read through this narrative . While the work of imperialism and colonialism, the twin politics of nationalism ’s promises to freedom, has been forced underground, these slippery dynamics of domination have assumed the guise of liberation. The United States, for example, speaks under the banners of “democracy” and “liberation” as it legitimates its invasions of other nations and then initiates the bizarre process of ‘nation-building’ in the conquered lands, once again enacting the colonialist narrative of bringing civilization to savage, virgin, or empty soil. The designation of what constitutes a legitimate or illegitimate nation still rests in the imperialist hands of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even if that power has largely migrated across the Atlantic Ocean. And the politics and rhetoric of freedom have wholly displaced the politics and rhetoric of imperialism, granting them newfound vigor through the very erasure enacted in the displacement. Who, after all, dares to argue against freedom? The language of freedom thereby continues to frame one of the fundamental discursive sites of modern western cultures. It functions as the ethical value and space that no one can disavow: our political fealties seem to fall away in the face of freedom. We can dispute the nuances of its various meanings or disagree over the best ways to enact, ensure, protect, and cultivate it, but no one can articulate a politics or ethics without an appeal to this sacred value of modernity. Joining us together in the lasting project of modernizing humanity, these unassailable appeals to freedom place us all in the same discursive field and, ultimately, flatten any differences between political convictions. In the end, we are all freedom fighters. While the languages of nationalism and imperialism are not the explicit subjects of this text, freedom is one of its constant refrains, even if lurking often in the background. In this way, this remains a modern text with very modern problematics—and, as I will develop across these pages, it thereby also remains a white text with very white problematics. Writing out of the theoretical frameworks of Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault, I am attempting to excavate the political and philosophical assumptions of our shared historical present of late modernity—namely, a historical present increasingly obsessed by the politics and rhetorics of freedom and its attendant modes of expression, the categories of identity. Attempting to think through the expression of freedom in the specific identity categories of our historical present (race, gender, religion, class, and sexuality) has led me to a very particular play of erotic politics: when we desire freedom, we may be seduced by systems of domination. 3 Introduction To excavate the contours of both domination and resistance in the shared discursive fields of freedom and whiteness, I bring together Bataille’s efforts to think in general economies and Foucault’s efforts to think from one’s historical present. That is, I have attempted to think generally from and...