Interview with Clare Hemmings

In her 1999 preface to Gender Trouble, Judith Butler draws a

distinction between feminism and queer theory. Do you
consider your work to be feminist or queer, or do you not
accept the difference that Butler sees between the two?

I am suspicious of any absolute distinction between feminist and queer

theories, in part because these also tend to reinforce a generational
temporality I find troubling. The common story is that feminist
thinking comes first, but is then displaced by queer theory. It’s a
distinction that produces a hierarchy of value too, where feminist
and queer theories are too easily pitted against one another, rather
than thought of together, which is a critical and political mode I
prefer. Importantly for me, separating the two out also assumes certain
theoretical approaches or objects of study are the ‘property’ of one or
the other; both feminist and queer perspectives are easily reduced in
the process.
Instead, I prefer Robyn Wiegman’s approach where ‘queer’ is used
to qualify ‘feminist’ in the designation ‘queer feminist theory’.1 It
generates an important political emphasis, but also reverses the more
usual order at the same time. In my own work, too, I’ve been revisiting
the separation between feminist and queer theorizing by intervening
in citations of Butler that cite Foucault as her antecedent, inserting
Wittig instead in order both to re-gender ‘queer theory’ and to raise
the question of feminist traces in queer studies again.2
All that said, if I had to decide on one or the other, I’d go with
feminist, for the simple reason that I don’t want to leave the terrain of
feminism to nationalists, capitalists or militarists, which is a consistent
feature of its mainstream mobilization currently.

What were the formative texts in your journey to queerdom?

I’m not sure I’ve done much more than circle queerdom at best, to
be honest, as I always feel drawn back into institutional regimes of

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 Interview with Clare Hemmings 393
recognition and narratives of gender, class, race and sexuality that are
as likely to reinforce power as they are to challenge it. But I somehow
grew up with a desire to queer, and that was reinforced by Judith
Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990), by Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands (1987),
and by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Fat Art, Thin Art (1994). And maybe
sustained by June Jordan’s fierce poems and by Joan Nestle’s mappings,
as well as by Leslie Feinberg’s poignancy.3

Feminism is to queer as X is to Y. What are X and Y?

The question of ‘proper objects’ of feminism and queer has a specific
history of course. Gayle Rubin and later Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick both
argued for the importance of a history of taking sexuality as an object
apart from gender, as a way of holding the two apart in order to
challenge heteronormative history.4 It was an important proposition,
indeed, not to assume histories of sexuality could be contained in
histories of gender, particular histories of gendered opposition and
oppression. What was ‘queer’ about that object — sexuality — was
its exploration as an object with both a diverse history (of desire, of
subjectivity and subjectivation) and also an object in the making. That
distinction has been crucial for the development of LGBT history, of
course, but also as a way of challenging the conflation of sexuality with
identity, too.
A clear danger of this important strategy, though, was the way in
which ‘gender’ became easily re-fused to feminism as a ‘proper object’
with little desire left in it: a sign of unequal gender relations with
‘woman’ as its subject and object. It’s one of the reasons why queer
theorists are seen to have all the fun, while feminist theorists miserably
tackle the business of gender-based violence. ‘Sexuality’ was somehow
opened up, while ‘gender’ was left in a binary conundrum. Again,
this might be one of the reasons why black, of colour, working-class
and disabled theorists have found queer theory more amenable (at first
glance) than feminist theory, despite the long history of black and
socialist feminisms.
As Wiegman suggests, there’s a danger that, when an object ceases
to be satisfying or stops doing the work one wants, we go on a hunt
for a better object, rather than thinking about the failure of objects
to do political work for us.5 So I’ve also been rather unconvinced by
queer theorists who argue for uncoupling queer from sex, for example
Janet Halley and Andrew Parker,6 since this seems to strip it of its
history of storytelling and authors. I’m thinking here both of the call
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to move beyond sexuality, but also of the increasing take-up of a queer
approach as a more generalized political critique of power or difference.
There’s a danger that ‘sexuality’ as a lost object starts to look a bit like
‘gender’ for feminism: a sign of anachronistic attachment that a more
sophisticated theorizing can move past. What does ‘queer’ mean if we
consign its interest in sexuality as an object to the past, I wonder? What
work are we expecting ‘queer’ to do if its intellectual and political
history becomes a displaced citation trace?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that
feminist and queer theorists occupy uncertain institutional ground in
so far as universities, presses and political organizations know (even if
we do not) that these positions are not ones of general critique. They are
ones that challenge power relations as they are embodied and lived, such
that to take them seriously affects how one occupies institutions and
where one draws ethical and political boundaries. The consequences
of that knowledge for those with those commitments to critiquing and
refusing misogyny, homophobia, racism, classism and ableism, are often
very direct, particularly when those theorists not only take identifiable
objects but are also the subjects of those displaced histories. In other
words, to be queer and to do queer, or to do decolonial theory as well
as being racially marked, provokes a specific institutional moral panic.
So perhaps I’m making a rather hesitant argument for retaining an
awareness of the vulnerability of subjects and embodiments associated
with queer feminist thinking over and above the objects of knowledge
that shapeshift as we try to catch them . . .

What is your view of the criticism that both second-

wave feminism and queer theory/politics have silenced the
voices and rendered invisible the cultural production of
feminist/queer people of colour?
That’s certainly true of some strands of feminism and queer
theory/politics. And I’d add that it has obscured more than cultural
production, but rather all forms of knowledge production from
queer black/of colour perspectives within and outside the academy,
within and outside of cultural spaces. But both feminism and queer
theory/politics are also sites with long histories of black/of colour
inauguration and participation, and it’s important not to erase those
histories as an unintended consequence of critiquing exclusion. I’d say,
rather, that there can be no history (or present, or future) of feminism
or queer studies without attention to the multiple and diverse positions
 Interview with Clare Hemmings 395
of participation in these fields, as well as attention to the higher value
given to white production across these sites. Part of the importance of
the ‘decolonizing the curriculum’ movement is that its advocates insist
that black/of colour perspectives need to be introduced into a canon
that is otherwise only partial and actively exclusionary. Importantly, it’s
a movement to decentre whiteness in the past as well as the present.

What differences do you see between the gender and sexual

politics of this generation and the one you grew up with?
I prefer not to think in terms of ‘generation’, because political spaces
are populated with people of all ages, and differences are as likely to
be those of political commitment as they are of changes over time.
I’m thinking here of the Women’s Strike rally held at Russell Square
in London on 8 March 2018 — Gail Lewis and Lynne Segal (who
have been participating in these politics for some decades) joined
activists from across the age spectrum to rail against the multiple
barriers to living whole lives that are presented by racism, class
hierarchies, misogyny and homophobia. There was more consistency
of approach in that space than differences across age, and some of the
same exclusions that have peppered such political spaces over time
(of disabled and trans speakers, for example, who were discursively
included, but not visible as producers of discourse).
That said, of course there are some shifts in preoccupations that
are necessary to keep these spaces politically vibrant and that emerge
from the ongoing reflections on power and privilege among feminist
and queer subjects. The early 1990s when I came of age as a queer
feminist political and professional subject was a time when gender
binaries were fiercely critiqued and trans and bi exclusions within
queer and feminist contexts were being highlighted. That’s not new.
But what does seem different is the range of subject positions available
to trans and non-binary subjects, the ability to transition without
surgery, and the increasing visibility of trans perspectives within queer
feminist studies curricula and the student body. There’s also a stronger
emphasis I think on the importance of understanding gender as raced,
race as sexualized, homophobia as misogynist and so forth. That was
there in the 1990s too (and the 1970s and 1980s indeed), but the
level of energy decolonial feminist and queer activists are bringing
to those debates feels really present. This might less signal a general
shift, however, and more a shift in location for me as a white, able-
bodied queer feminist who is now rather fully institutionalized. I feel
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I’d grown lazy about thinking of my own curriculum and pedagogy as
a living, breathing work in progress, and had been resting on my laurels
a bit after a couple of decades of working to open up queer feminist
spaces of knowledge production. I’ve had to think carefully about my
own exclusions and presumptions over recent years, and respond to
the new levels of energy around me.

Is ‘privilege’ a useful concept for queer theory and activism

today?
I think ‘privilege’ is always a useful concept! But less in terms of
rushing to try and divest oneself of it if one has it, and more in
terms of thinking how to inhabit and be accountable for privilege
and to what ends. I’m less interested in queer feminist epistemology
and politics that chases marginality, as I think this tends to reify and
separate identities in unhelpful ways. Standpoint, after all, was always
concerned with struggle and ‘double consciousness’ over identity, and
I think that these are powerful lessons still for us within and outside
the academy today.

What are the biggest challenges facing queer theory and

feminism today?
I think any queer feminist theory that is worth its salt needs to be
engaged with questions of violence and its impact on different groups
of people. Nationalism, racism, misogyny: these are terrifyingly present
and often function through the take-up of equality claims in ways that
should give us pause.

Does feminism have a future? Does queer theory have a future?

What are they?
Queer feminist perspectives are always what anarchists call
‘prefigurative’: living the future utopia you hope to generate now
of the everyday. From the well-known assertion of the personal as
political, to queer feminist insistence on an ethics and practice of living
differently, the utopian lost causes of queer feminist optimism are a
masterclass in both realpolitik and sci-fi.
In terms of futurity, queer feminist subjects and communities are
not offered a life-course narrative that measures its different stages
through a steady frame, or only in so far as it reflects heteronormative
 Interview with Clare Hemmings 397
narrative arcs (including reproduction and ageing gracefully). But
this can be an advantage, I think, particularly for women and non-
binary/trans subjects who are particularly subject to the judgemental
gaze of appropriate temporal demand (and who fall foul of it so easily).
It provides an opportunity to think a life not only in linear terms, but
also in terms of relationships and time spent doing things that make
it worth living. Queer feminism emphasizes the false promise of the
couple figure, for example, offering a clear challenge to assumptions
about loneliness and duration by refusing tropes such as ‘past their
best’, ‘on the shelf ’ and so on. That’s one of the lies hetero culture
likes to tell itself as we know — that homophobia is actually concern
for the likely loneliness of the young adult or adolescent who is bound
to live a hard, isolated life — when actually the dependent woman or
man who sees in the other a daily mirror of their own misery seems a
more suitable subject of pity.
So queer feminist futures will of course always be in process, and
always come to pass, because they are lived in the now of our lives
and in the embodied hope of our efforts to carve out spaces and leave
indelible traces.

NOTES
1 Robyn Wiegman, ‘The Times We’re In: Queer Feminist Criticism and the
Reparative “Turn”’, Feminist Theory 15:1 (2014), 4–25.
2 Clare Hemmings, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
3 June Jordan, Living Room: New Poems (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press,
1993); Joan Nestle, A Restricted Country (New Jersey: Cleis Press, 1987); Leslie
Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (New York: Firebrand, 1993).
4 Gayle Rubin, ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexuality’ [1984] in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, edited by Henry
Abelove and David Halperin (London and New York: Routledge, 1993),
3–44; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990).
5 Robyn Wiegman, Object Lessons (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
6 Janet Halley and Andrew Parker, ‘After Sex: On Writing Since Queer Theory’,
South Atlantic Quarterly 106:3 (2007), 421–32.