COMP 421 Lecture 5: COMS 491 Week 5
27 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Homos
● should homosexuality be good/normative behavior?
● Immoralist - pederasty
○ narcissistic expression
○ rejects ownership, loss of property relations
● Funeral Rites - homosexual betrayal
● New erotics (128) - Gide
○ Not really about pederasty
○ Intimacy without relations
○ Removing sex from sexuality
○ Eroticism that is not bound up in other relations
○ What does he see in these boys? Himself
● (122-123) create an ethics that is not grounded on difference
○ Trying to get rid of the self
○ The moment an identity is positioned, there is an outside
■ Identity is the foundation of all violence
○ Colonizing impulses could be a precondition for a potentially revolutionary
eroticism
○ It doesn’t matter that they are different, he loves them because he sees himself in
him
● Homoness becomes a synonym of sameness
● How is this different from color blindness?
○ Calls for us to not be capable of recognizing difference
○ Bersani’s project is more of an ethics than pretending that race doesn’t exist
● Self-annihilation and narcissism
○ Movement is from ego-annihilation to ego-dissemination
○ Self is not abolished but it is dispersed - we see it everywhere
○ Getting rid of attachment to preserving the boundaries of the ego
● (124-125)
○ Works against the secure ego
○ Impersonal sameness
○ Other model is cruising
● Genet - (167)
● Scene on the rooftop when they are fucking and facing the world (165/6)
○ Point about position - facing the same way, sameness
○ Normal model of intimacy - facing each other creates a closed circle
● (172) rejection of relationality
○ Without the rejection, the social conditions will never change
Intimacies
● Ego tries to hyperbolize itself and can only be dealt with by acts of mass aggression
○ Not subversive, this is how violence works in general for him
● Love and impersonality in Phaedrus
● (84/5) impersonal narcissism - not individualistic
Document Summary
Eroticism that is not bound up in other relations. (122-123) create an ethics that is not grounded on difference. Trying to get rid of the self. The moment an identity is positioned, there is an outside. Identity is the foundation of all violence. Colonizing impulses could be a precondition for a potentially revolutionary eroticism. It doesn"t matter that they are different, he loves them because he sees himself in him. Calls for us to not be capable of recognizing difference. Bersani"s project is more of an ethics than pretending that race doesn"t exist. Self is not abolished but it is dispersed - we see it everywhere. Getting rid of attachment to preserving the boundaries of the ego. Scene on the rooftop when they are fucking and facing the world (165/6) Point about position - facing the same way, sameness. Normal model of intimacy - facing each other creates a closed circle. Without the rejection, the social conditions will never change.
