Queer/Trans K’s

A2: Perm

Homonationalism DA – the perm is a thinly veiled attempt to include queer theorizing in IR when in reality it recreates Homonationalism

Nayak 14 – PhD in Political Science at University of Minnesota and an Associate Professor at Pace University [Meghana, December 2014, Thinking About Queer International Relations’ Allies. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1111/misr.12188, Wiley] AMarb

What does it mean to be an ally to not only communities mobilizing for justice but also to a field of study/scholars? I contend that this question is vital and pivotal as we try to grapple with Queer International Relations (IR)/Global Queer Studies’ relationship with the IR discipline. In the context of academic institutions and practices, I see “allies” as those who may not regularly cite, rely upon, study, teach, or participate in a particular field of studies but are interested and invested in the development and endurance of that scholarship. But what is done to and with Queer IR by allies? Are ally politics aiming to deconstruct, dismantle, and radically transform the very systems of which they are beneficiaries? Or are allies leaving power relationships intact because they are actually uneasy with, dismissive of, or unclear about Queer IR theorizing? Scholars working in queer studies, critical race studies, or on allegedly “peripheral” topics have increasingly questioned the politics of their so-called allies, among students, faculty, administration, and the profession as a whole (Carver 2009; Ahmed 2012; Gutierrez y Muhs, Niemann, Gonzalez, and Harris 2012). Perhaps, for some, being an ally means establishing queer-friendly credentials, so they might support the work of a scholar who does Queer IR or devote a week of attention in their IR class to Global Queer Studies to illustrate the “diversity” of IR theories. Or, they might enfold Queer IR insights within slightly “safer” research agendas, such as “human rights.” But how far are they willing to go in creating space for Queer IR to challenge how IR is performed, or how marginalized scholars are treated as different, anomalies, and incompetent? Anecdotal evidence reveals that scholars doing Queer IR, like other marginalized academics, face troubling encounters on blogs and Facebook pages, in conferences, job search committees, tenure and promotion committees, and reviews of journal articles and manuscripts. These interactions include thinly veiled homophobia or transphobia, scornful dismissal of queer studies as “not rigorous enough” or “not legitimate,” and attempts to make deviant and intolerable those doing Queer IR (Weber 2014b). But “well meaning” self-proclaimed allies in fields such as Feminist IR, Global Politics, or Postcolonial IR may also participate in acts of exclusion and dismissal, even as these very scholars may find their allies, including in queer studies, “don’t get it.” In interrogating resistance by not only those adamantly opposed to but also alleged/potential allies of Queer IR, I have been contemplating Queer IR’s promise (and threat) of revealing the instability of IR as a discipline. I contend that it is not just in the mainstream-alternative approaches debate but also in the acts of alleged solidarity and support that we see how tenuously IR operates. My hope is that we do a better job in interrogating ally politics among and between various communities of scholars. In my classes, I have unsurprisingly discovered that many of my students hold a perception that there is a difference between international LGBTQ activism and Queer IR theory. The latter, they claim, is “elitist” and inaccessible. Many queer or allied students see themselves and their struggles as intimately connected with queerness, circumscribed as identity politics or the implementation of rights for “sexual minorities.” When we discuss examples of gay rights movements or trans-rights movements around the world, they respond favorably, understanding such attempts for social justice within a human-rights framework of perpetrator/victim. But when I assign readings that I think of as Queer IR/ Global Studies, regarding homonationalism (Puar 2005, 2007), postcolonial and global antiracist engagement with queerness (Hawley 2001), and heteronormative and cis-normative ontologies underlying global politics and statecraft (Cohn 1987; Weber 1994a,b, 1998a,b, 1999, 2002, 2014a; Richter-Montpetit 2007; Agathangelou et al. 2008; Canaday 2011; Rao 2012; Sjoberg, this forum), many (not all) students see the work, or at least parts of it, as divisive, inaccessible, and even “dangerous” for the “real struggles” of queer communities. It is not uncommon that students may cling to a perceived praxis/theory divide. I see it when I teach feminist theory and try to push past discussions on sexual violence prevention or reproductive rights to also include postcolonial or black feminist theory. I see it when I teach human rights and try to move the conversation beyond successful international criminal legal cases to questioning the very premises of human rights discourses. A significant number of students are indeed willing to sit with the discomfort of acting toward justice while simultaneously questioning and challenging what motivates and counts as “action” and “justice.” However, the students who show resistance want to see IR as a field with terminology, jargon, and “skills” to master so that they can “do something” in the real world to protect people from persecution and harm. Anything else seems too negative, too threatening to their relationship to the IR discipline, which to them holds the promise of allowing them to “understand” global politics and to become career professionals in changing the world. The same students who might excitedly read Feminist IR scholarship or human rights work on sexual minorities, balk or seem taken aback when I mention Queer IR or Queer Global Studies, thinking that this scholarship belongs in some strange, otherworldly “theory” universe. Yet, they would call themselves allies, or part of the “movement” for LGBTQ rights.

Gridlock DA – the perm stabilizes queerness in IR’s colonial household but queerness must scream its defiance

Nayak 14 – PhD in Political Science at University of Minnesota and an Associate Professor at Pace University [Meghana, December 2014, Thinking About Queer International Relations’ Allies. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1111/misr.12188, Wiley] AMarb

After semester-long encouragement of students to recognize their precarious relationship with Queer IR, they start to see as political rather than as mere preference their simultaneous disengagement with Queer IR and excitement about international LGBTQ activism. What, indeed, my students’ trouble with Queer IR reveals is the presumption that IR as a discipline holds the key to understanding the world (singular), “out there.” Thus, students start to understand that to engage with theory is to challenge the problematic premise that a college education will equip students with a set of tools and skills to identify and solve problems in the world. So, queer theory’s critical perspectives create space to ask how and why we name and identify with issues of justice. Accordingly, being an ally is a complex political project, as what might look like solidarity is actually tenuous, problematic, or incomplete because of the kinds of power relationships we uncover through a critical, queer theory lens. The students learn furthermore to unravel IR as an objective field of study and to see it as a discipline. And thus, the struggles they experience are instructive for articulating what professional academics might be experiencing as well. One of the most useful pedagogical tools at my disposal is Agathangelou and Ling’s “House of IR” metaphor (2004; see also Nayak and Selbin 2010). Agathangelou and Ling describe IR as a “colonial household” (2004:21), in which exists a heteronormative family maintaining control and order, with “bad” children living upstairs, perhaps punished for their naughty ways, “servants” living downstairs providing labor, and barbarians and the like living outside. The “family” includes “father realism,” “mother liberalism,” and the “caretaking” daughters, neoliberalism, liberal feminism, and standpoint feminism. The “rebel sons” (such as Marxism, postmodern IR, and pragmatic/liberal constructivism) and the “fallen daughters” (postmodern feminism and queer studies) plan their devious disruptions of mother and father’s rule from upstairs. Downstairs (in what I imagine are the “servants’ quarters”), area studies and comparative politics experts, Asian capitalist countries, and peripheral and transitional economies provide the “knowledge” that confirms and legitimizes the family’s rule. Finally, “outside” of the house are Orientalism, al-Qaeda, postcolonial IR, and worldism. While it is beyond the scope of this article to examine and engage with this house metaphor, I find it useful in the classroom, conversations with my peers, and my scholarship to consider that some subfields of IR can unsettle the entire “household.” The house itself is a construction, an edifice that seems sturdy, unquestionable, hetero- and cis-normative, with clear boundaries (different floors and inside/outside) but is actually on shaky ground. We see the “shakiness” when studying global politics. What we learn from the other pieces in this forum and Queer IR studies is that states attempt to act “queer-friendly” but do so without recognizing that the state itself is queer. By this I mean that the state has no settled, “natural” gendered and sexualized identity (straight, cis-gender, masculine) precisely because the state must constantly shift, anticipate, and revise how its gender and sexuality appears. Just as, per Judith Butler, sex, sexuality, and gender are in a “traumatic deadlock [such that] every performative formation is nothing but an endeavor to patch up this trauma” (Zizek 1993:265; quoted in Weber 1998a:93), so is foreign-policymaking an attempt to deal with the “trauma” of not being able to decide and settle the representation/recognition/identity of states (Weber 1998a:93). So, what we see is states acting in simultaneously “homophobic” and “homopositive”/“homoprotectionist” ways, because “protection” of and extension of rights to LGBTQ communities is meant to be an indicator of being “civilized,” where countries can move toward “neoliberal modernity” if they treat queers right (Lind, this forum). When countries “pinkwash” or promote homonationalism, they “act” as straight allies, to distinguish themselves from straight persecutors. With this understanding of IR (understood as political practices and decisions), as unsteady, frantically trying to normalize distinctions and categories between “us” and “them,” “good” and “bad,” “strong” and “weak,” let us return to the question of being an ally to a discipline. IR, not just in terms of what political actors do, but also as a discipline, is in a traumatic deadlock. When Weber (2014a,b, this forum) asks what Queer IR means for the discipline, I am curious not only about the possibilities of erasure and gentrification of Queer IR but about what Queer IR reveals about the IR discipline’s incoherence, instability, inability to be “straight.” If queer, as Sjoberg notes in this forum, can complicate the idea of stable borders in the context of states and territories, then so can queer complicate the idea of borders around and within disciplines. By looking closer at queer studies within this “household,” we remember that some feminist theories are “allied” because they intersect with queer theory, while other feminist theories might be more skeptical allies or dismissive. Further, queer theory troubles the binaries of sex/gender, straight/gay, male/ female, queer/not-queer, thus serving as a critical theory that reveals that power works by investing in these rigid distinctions and categories. So, we can ask which theories (feminist and otherwise) are wedded to or challenge these categorizations and thus what they miss or contribute to our understandings of the IR topics we study. In addition, think of yearly declarations that IR is dead, confessions by IR scholars that they find their homes elsewhere or struggle with antiquated theories, or attempts to constantly stretch, question, and challenge IR and those who speak “in its name” as policymakers or consultants. What is IR doing if not “patching up” the trauma of not knowing its place or its boundaries, constantly troubled by feminists, queers, undocumented migrants, stateless communities, indigenous politics (and the list goes on)? Asking about Queer IR’s allies is meant to prompt the realization that just as states act as allies in order to cover up their queerness or to act as “straight” saviors, so too may academics act as allies in ways that distract from the discipline’s queerness.

Legibility DA – the aff places gendered subjects on the grid of intelligibility through legal gatekeeping

Elliot 10 – Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology and graduate faculty member in the interdisciplinary program Cultural Analysis and Social Theory at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada [Patricia Elliot, 2010, Chapter 3: Desire and the “(Un)Becoming Other”1 : The Question of Intelligibility in Debates in Transgender, Queer, and Feminist Theory Contested Sites, Ashgate] AMarb

As Shildrick demonstrates, the dominant process by which intelligible gendered subjects are distinguished from unintelligible subjects is based on securing the stable, bounded, typically white, masculine, coherent self by projecting what is unstable, ambiguously gendered, or incoherent onto non-normative “others” who are considered unintelligible. For those who despair of transforming this process and the dichotomy it produces, an obvious solution is to embrace the incoherent and the illegible as an integral part of one’s identity. In a recent lecture, Halberstam (2006) criticized Butler’s (2004) proposal to revamp the category human to include those identities that are currently considered unintelligible. In Halberstam’s view, this return to the human constitutes “a heroic and liberal narrative” that is naive in its politics and that departs from Butler’s previous, more radical critique of the idea that becoming “intelligible” can be liberating. Halberstam’s view may be rooted in the fear that becoming “legible” requires conformity to the normatively human, to a conformity demanded, for example, by medical or legal gatekeepers at gender clinics. Becoming legible is believed to require stabilization or fixing of identities which otherwise have managed to escape the normalizing discourses of a gender order that regulates not only gender identities but sexual, racial, ethnic, and class identities as well. Halberstam worries, with some justification, that rendering trans a more coherent and legible category risks undermining the capacity of transpersons to oppose the normative. She also fears that making trans legible leads to the imposition of a monolithic concept of trans in non-Western contexts where gender variance may have a completely different set of meanings and functions than in the Western world.3 Instead of this legibility, Halberstam claims we need “to look at the unintelligible for inspiration.” She is not alone. Following Halberstam’s lead, Noble (2006a) also finds inspiration in the unintelligible and in the cultural landscape described as “post-queer.” Exemplifying the promise adhering to transpersons in general, and transmen in particular, Noble (15) advocates the “permanent incoherence” they (and he) represent as key to resisting personal and structural constraints of the sex/ gender system. While he explicitly hopes to avoid “policing or prescribing or hierarchizing kinds of political embodiment” (99n1), his overall theory clearly privileges the most obvious manifestations of incoherent bodies. These are found in drag kings, who “embody new possibilities for resistance,” and queer femmes, whose rejection of “queer and feminist representational practices and political ideas [makes them] the queerest of the queer” (74, 102–3). Indeed, for Noble the promise of transgender, or at least Ftm versions of it, is the refusal to move from one sexed position to another. Instead, transgender is said to involve a kind of “grafting” of new bodies onto old, where “one materialization is haunted by the other, as opposed to crossing or exiting” (84).

The permutation is the scholar’s attempt to cling onto their futile notions of success – this lack of ambivalence toward IR scholarship guts solvency and retrenches structural violence

Barkin and Sjoberg 15

(J. Samuel Barkin is a professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Laura Sjoberg is a leading scholar of feminist international relations and international security. Her research focuses on gender and just war theory, women’s violence in global politics, and feminist interpretations of the theory and practice of security policy. “The Failures of Constructivist Theory in IR” Written for presentation at the 2015 Millennium Conference. cVs)

In this way, not only do traditional standards of knowledge make invisible their own impossibility, they make invisible their own violence. The raced, sexed, and classed impacts of that masking and the recursive enactment of the standards despite (and at the expense of the visibility) of those impacts continue. Baudrillard suggests a corrective to this break between signs (standards) and referents (the fantasy of the objective existence of ‘good scholarship) (Baudrillard, 1973). He argues that “only ambivalence, as a rupture of value… sustains a challenge to the legibility, the false transparency of the sign… questions the evidence of the use value of the sign (rational decoding) and of its exchange value (the discourse of communication)” (Baudrillard, 1981). This ambivalence, Baudrillard argues, “brings the political economy of the sign to a standstill; it dissolves the respective definitions of symbol and referent” (Baudrillard, 1981). Both endorsing assimilation and assuming its possibility may be net violent (for discussions of the violences of inclusion, see Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Posocco, 2014; Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Posocco, 2013). Moving of the signification ‘knowledge’ from any referent to which it was originally tied makes method and research performances of scholarship. If research is a performance of scholarship, ‘standards’ for research serve to disguise the fantastic nature of knowledge cumulation. While the ontological lack is not unique to democratic peace, the insistent performance of normative and methodological good might be. In this performance, there is no space for liminality, uncertainty, change, inadequacy, and failure in structural rather than passing senses. Yet looking beyond the performative discourse of certainty, those are exactly what one finds. This paradox, Baudrillard suggests, can only be cleared by ambivalence towards the research program and its truth statements. This is because condemnation or rejection of the research program and its truth statements endorses its assumptions about truth, as well as some of its assumptions about what the international arena is and how it works.