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Deleuze Connections Deleuze Connections
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Series Editor: Ian Buchanan u Deleuze and
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Deleuze and Queer Theory
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Queer Theory
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Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr
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‘Thisisabrilliantandwell-timedcollectionofstate-of-the-artsessays.Itconclusivelyproves e
thatqueernesshastodonotonlywithidentitypoliticsandperformativestances,butalso o
withmaterialandcollectiveexperimentswithradicalothernessandun-programmed r
y
intensity.’
RosiBraidottiisDistinguishedProfessorandDirectoroftheCentrefortheHumanities
atUtrechtUniversityandHonoraryProfessoratBirkbeckCollegeLondon
Thisexcitingcollectionofworkintroducesamajorshiftindebatesonsexuality:ashiftaway
fromdiscourse,identityandsignification,toaradicalnewconceptionofbodilymaterialism.
Movingawayfromtheestablishedpathknownasqueertheory,itsuggestsanalternativeto
Butler’smatter/representationbinary.Itthusdarestoaskhowtothinksexualityandsex
outsidethediscursiveandlinguisticcontextthathascometodominatecontemporary
researchinsocialsciencesandhumanities.
DeleuzeandQueerTheoryisaprovocativeandoftenmilitantcollectionthatexploresa E
diverserangeofthemesincluding:therevisitingoftheterm‘queer’;arethinkingofthe d
sex-genderdistinctionasbeingimpliedinQueerTheory;anexplorationofqueer s
temporalities;thenon/re-readingofthehomosexualbody/desireandthebecoming-queer N
oftheDeleuze/Guattariphilosophy.Itwillbeessentialreadingforanyoneinterestednotjust ig
inDeleuze’sandGuattari’sphilosophy,butalsointhefieldsofsexuality,genderandfeminist i
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theory. n
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Contributors:ClaireColebrook,VerenaA.Conley,JonathanKemp,PatriciaMacCormack, i
AnnaHickey-Moody,ChrysanthiNigianni,DorotheaOlkowski,LucianaParisi,MaryLou a
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Rasmussen,MargritShildrickandMikkoTuhkanen.
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ChrysanthiNigianniisaPhDcandidateattheUniversityofEastLondon.Shehastaughtat S
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theUniversityofEastLondonandatAngliaRuskinUniversity. o
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MerlStorrisSeniorLecturerinAnthropologyattheUniversityofEastLondon.Sheisthe
authorofLatexandLingerie:ShoppingforPleasureatAnnSummersParties(2003).
Coverdesign:RiverDesign,Edinburgh
EdinburghUniversityPress
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22GeorgeSquare,Edinburgh
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ISBN9780748634057 n Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr
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www.euppublishing.com r
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Chapter Title i
Deleuze and Queer Theory
Deleuze Connections
‘It is not the elements or the sets which define the multiplicity. What
defines it is the AND, as something which has its place between the ele-
ments or between the sets. AND, AND, AND – stammering.’
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues
General Editor
Ian Buchanan
Editorial Advisory Board
Keith Ansell-Pearson
Rosi Braidotti
Claire Colebrook
Tom Conley
Gregg Lambert
Adrian Parr
Paul Patton
Patricia Pisters
Titles Available in the Series
Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and Feminist Theory
Ian Buchanan and John Marks (eds), Deleuze and Literature
Mark Bonta and John Protevi (eds), Deleuze and Geophilosophy
Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (eds), Deleuze and Music
Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space
Martin Fuglsang and Bent Meier Sørensen (eds), Deleuze and the Social
Ian Buchanan and Adrian Parr (eds), Deleuze and the Contemporary
World
Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy
Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds), Deleuze and Politics
Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory
Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and History
Forthcoming Titles in the Series
Mark Poster and David Savat (eds), Deleuze and New Technology
Laura Cull (ed.), Deleuze and Performance
Ian Buchanan and Laura Guillaume (eds), Deleuze and the Body
Stephen Zepke and Simon O’Sullivan (eds), Deleuze and Contemporary
Art
Paul Patton and Simone Bignall (eds), Deleuze and the Postcolonial
Chapter Title iii
Deleuze and Queer Theory
Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni
and Merl Storr
Edinburgh University Press
© in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2009
© in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
MPG Books Group
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3404 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3405 7 (paperback)
The right of the contributors
to be identified as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
v
Contents
Introduction 1
1 On the Very Possibility of Queer Theory 11
Claire Colebrook
2 Thirty-six Thousand Forms of Love: The Queering of
Deleuze and Guattari 24
Verena Andermatt Conley
3 The Sexed Subject in-between Deleuze and Butler 37
Anna Hickey-Moody and Mary Lou Rasmussen
4 Every ‘One’ – a Crowd, Making Room for the Excluded
Middle 54
Dorothea Olkowski
5 The Adventures of a Sex 72
Luciana Parisi
6 Queer Hybridity 92
Mikko Tuhkanen
7 Prosthetic Performativity: Deleuzian Connections and
Queer Corporealities 115
Margrit Shildrick
8 Unnatural Alliances 134
Patricia MacCormack
9 Schreber and the Penetrated Male 150
Jonathan Kemp
10 Butterfly Kiss: The Contagious Kiss of Becoming-Lesbian 168
Chrysanthi Nigianni
Notes on Contributors 183
Index 187
Introduction
... so as to know ‘us’ better
Deleuze and Queer Theory:
two theories, one concept – one book,
many authors ...
You ask me: why bring all these texts together in this book? Why
‘Deleuze and Queer Theory’? What does this and mean? You wonder
whether it might be the expression of an opposition that will lead to a
battle, a combat; a war that will announce winners and dark horses, will
declare the past dead and will celebrate a new future. Or maybe, it is a
hope for juxtaposition and collaboration based on resonances, or differ-
ences. An attempt for reconciliation through the annihilation of the dif-
ferential parties perhaps?
And as the middle space, the borderline that separates but also brings
together; andas the transit word, a force of transition towards something
other that always entails a coming back: the becoming-DeleuzoGuattarian
of Queer Theory, the becoming-queer of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory.
Andas the invisible in-between, the mystery gap, the topos of hidden erotic
connections, of contagious exchange, of unnatural encounters based on
imperceptible micro-attractions and incompatibilities; and as the experi-
ment to think as two, to rethink through a two-fold process that amplifies
what goes on in one’s thinking, that expands one single concept (queer),
transforming it from a materialising signifier to an intrinsic quality of non-
representational thinking.
Thus, this project is primarily creative and not critical, and it is critical
precisely by being creative. Rather than dismissing queer (theory), this col-
lective work reaffirms the seductive power of the concept ‘queer’, and its
continuing force to inspire thinking nowadays. Moving beyond, or along,
lines of queer theory (in its institutionalised Anglo-American form) con-
stitutes a living proof of the vital force of the concept of queerness: the
force to affect and effect changes in the way one theorises, its capacity to
produce deviant lines along established thinking and disciplines, its ability
to queer the queer, that is, to undermine the self, to resist any normalisa-
tion. Hence, this collection emerges out of the queer’s fear of being trapped
2 Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr
in iteration, immobility, its loathing for reproduction, for repetition of
sameness. Rather than starting from negation (which would be to dimin-
ish the tremendous intellectual accomplishments set in motion by Gender
Troubleand the theory of performativity), it is born out of the positive and
affirmative thinking that departs from the belief that one paradigm cannot
carry an entire field, if that field is going to survive and thrive.
Moreover, by putting side by side the English term ‘queer’ (non-
translatable in other languages and credited as an American invention)
with a French thinking (Deleuze’s and Guattari’s thinking), it attempts to
remind us of the often neglected intervention on the part of French think-
ing(s) after ’68, in relation to non-normative sexualities and the notion of
a destabilised self (for example, Foucault’s homosexual subject, Cixous’s
bisexuality, Lacan’s homosexuelle, Hocquenghem’s homosexual desire).
Despite the significant contribution of French philosophy, psychoanalysis
and feminism to the exploration and enhancement of polymorphous, ‘per-
verse’ sexualities and of the notion of a de-n ormalised self, we neverthe-
less believe that ‘it is especially in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari that the question of homosexuality as queering, that is, as
becoming and as an ongoing differing of difference, is raised’ (Conley, this
volume).
You thus wonder what this volume brings that is new in relation to
queer theory, how its contribution differs from other theories of (sexual)
difference (for example, psychoanalysis), and even more, how it queers
queer theory in a positive and affirmative way that escapes the traditional
strategy of negation (queer as the non-, anti-, contra-) and while I am lis-
tening to you talking, another question enters my mind: ‘Is queer theory
a reflection on what it means to be queer, or does the concept of queer-
ness change the ways in which we theorise?’ (Colebrook, this volume).
Whereas the first question presupposes a ‘being’ that is queer, and hence
that theory is a mere reflection, mirroring, moulding, a grasping of what
already exists as given or produced: the queer performative ‘being’ as a
culturally given way of being queer, or better, a way of doing queer that
constructs a supposed preceding being – ‘the doer’, which has neverthe-
less always been the deed1 – the latter on the other hand signifies a
rupture in the established ways of thinking, suggesting an intrinsic queer-
ness in thinking and in theorising that breaks away from a represen-
tational thought, with the latter confusing what exists with what can
be known (a conflation of ontology with epistemology). Where the
Butlerian theory of performativity fits into the first definition, the
DeleuzoGuattarian thinking is inherently queer by distancing itself from
a representational conception of thinking; hence, a thinking, which far
Introduction 3
from being reproductive (by representing, recognising) is primarily pro-
ductive mainly by being expressive of non/extra-linguistic forces.
Hence, what strikes and troubles one in the field known as ‘Queer
Theory’ is primarily an insistence on performativity as the only adequate
way to perceive the social world and the real and the consequent refusal
to ‘see’ a positive (rather than a constitutive2) outside, a ‘beyond’ of the
signifier, discourse, language: a short-sightedness in relation to body and
materiality. I wonder if this is due to a passion for realism and pragma-
tism, or rather to a fear of accepting anything that goes beyond us, the
subject, the world as the lived cultural horizon. Is after all the hetero-
sexual matrix of imposed naturalised performances the only reality we
can imagine? Is language the only air we can breathe? Is text the only
land we can inhabit? Is parody the only resistance we can imagine?
The transvestite is a mish-mash hybrid, teeming with symbols belonging to
one or another, but not ambiguous enough to be constructed through the
spaces between the symbols. The male-as-female or female-as-male is an
established alliance at war, rather than an unnatural alliance.(MacCormack,
this volume)
Yes, you are certainly right to remind me that this is not one’s choice.
How compulsory and involuntary it is for the subject to play with the
rules and perform a gendered body and a gendered subjectivity in order
to be an ‘I’. I can’t see though why this should lead to a rigid and restrict-
ing belief that what exists is what can be known, that who we are is
limited to the culturally known and the interpretable acted-upon; to an
obsession with the textualisation of everything and the deletion of any-
thing that resists the latter; to a refusal to think outside the cause-effect
relation and a consequent inability to imagine nondependent relations
and non-unifying connections. Have you ever asked yourself ‘why are we
so hesitant to acknowledge powers that have force and precede the act,
but which cannot be known, recognised and reduced to the act?’
(Colebrook 2004: 215). Is after all the reductive mechanism of interpre-
tation that takes us back to the Subject the only way to be in the world?
And yet, why does an act always have to refer back to a constructed
subject? Why, instead of being in (constructed by) the world, can we not
become with the world away from the image of the subject? Has subjec-
tion always been the case?
Whereas Foucault turned back to ancient thought to insist that one need not
posit a subject and sexuality behind action, Butler argues that we cannot
avoid subjection. All we can do is work critically with the systems that
produce us as subjects. (Colebrook 2004: 212)
