COMP 421 Lecture 14: COMS 491 Week 14
27 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Idea of finding meaning and establishing identity through division
Stanley
● Using language in order to discard it
● Is he using the language of humanism (which in warren queer is)
● Or is queer not part of the language of humanism?
● Structural denial of queer rights
● Violence is allowed to continue because the marginalized people face structural as well
as physical violence
● Racism is black vs everyone else (not just white)
● Queer figure does not bear any markers/physical cues
○ (2) “It is argued, and rightfully so, that the instability of queerness obscures it from the
epidermalization that anchors (most) bodies of color in the fields of the visual. When thinking about
the difference between anti-Semitism and racism, which for Fanon was a question of the visuality of
oppression, he similarly suggests, “the Jew can be unknown in his JewIshness.” Here it may be
useful to reread Fanon through an understanding of passing and the visual that reminds us that
Jews can sometimes not be unknown in their Jewishness. Similarly I ask why antiqueer violence,
more often than not, is correctly levied against queers. In other words, the productive discourse that
wishes to suggest that queer bodies are no different might miss moments of signification where
queer bodies do in fact signify differently. This is not to suggest that there is an always locatable,
transhistorical queer body, but the fiercely flexible semiotics of queerness might help us build a way
of knowing antiqueer violence that can provisionally withstand the weight of generality.”
● Lack of formal acknowledgement/documentation of these cases of violence
● Fbi data doesn’t account for a lot of this
● A large issue is privatization of the crimes
● Violence is portrayed as individual cases but this ignores the structural problem
● (7-8) the system in place doesn’t work because there is an assumption of equality that
doesn't exist and it prioritizes some groups over others
● Trans-gay panic - perpetrators are granted leniency because it is considered an act of
self-defense
● Why do we have these cases where this is an excess in the killing - the overkill
○ If the subject is already socially dead you can’t kill it so you keep trying to kill it
○ Evidence of what the queer body represents
○ The very idea of rights depends on the idea of humanness which depends on the
existence of the non-human
○ Something needs to bare the burden of non-humanness
○ Goes back to the articles on slavery
● (14-15) non-human is not just an opposition
○ Language of dehumanization - assumption that humanity should be universal
■ Implication would be to expand the category of the human
○ Saying that the category of human requires a figure that is not human
○ The problem is not that we are dehumanizing certain groups but that our sense of
humanity is based on the idea of the non-human
○ Even when you expand it the structure does not change
Document Summary
Idea of finding meaning and establishing identity through division. Using language in order to discard it. Is he using the language of humanism (which in warren queer is) Violence is allowed to continue because the marginalized people face structural as well as physical violence. Racism is black vs everyone else (not just white) Queer figure does not bear any markers/physical cues (2) it is argued, and rightfully so, that the instability of queerness obscures it from the epidermalization that anchors (most) bodies of color in the fields of the visual. Jews can sometimes not be unknown in their jewishness. Similarly i ask why antiqueer violence, more often than not, is correctly levied against queers. In other words, the productive discourse that wishes to suggest that queer bodies are no different might miss moments of signification where queer bodies do in fact signify differently.
