Queer Democracy Reader Winter 2010

Queer Democracy: Sexuality, Performativity, Politics Ph. D. course for 2 credits Winter 2010 Eszter Timr vistimar@ceu.hu Z508/A office hours: Thurs. 10-12

This course examines the concept of performativity, putting it in the context of the modern Western philosophy of democracy and human rights in order to demonstrate a decisive relationship between democratic citizenship and (primarily male) homosexuality. Democracy is characterized by a constitutive tension between an essential demand for self-sameness and a similarly essential principle of malleability. We will trace how modernitys discourse of revolution-based democracy affirms and is legitimized by this self-sameness in the idea of the private man and authentic public citizen. Simultaneously, we will also see malleability abjected as inauthenticity in other figures, including the citizens negative imprint, the (male) homosexual. The twin concepts of performance and performativity will be instrumental in tracing this connection as they permeate the figure of the righteous citizen claiming rights as well as his others (templated on the figure of the actor). The reading list will combine theories of performativity and theatricality, queer theory and political philosophy (classical as well as contemporary) and some texts from and on 19th century sexology. The course will be useful for students interested in the modern public/private distinction, masculinity, LGBT movements and cultures, and the discourse of human rights. Learning outcomes: By the end of the course, students will be familiar with the lexicon of performativity and performance, with the philosophical underpinnings of the discourse of human rights and its ties to the French Revolution, as well as ways in which these underpinning informed poststructuralist political thought. Students will be able to better orient themselves in the course of their subsequent studies and scholarship in the terrains of political philosophy, the cultural history of modernity and sexuality and identify ways in which these different terrains may be connected. Students will be encouraged to take from the course what is relevant and productive for their individual projects. Requirements for the course will be: Active participation in classincluding at least one occasion when you are responsible for facilitating discussion of the texts; please always read the assigned texts prior to class and bring them with you; Research papera 15-20 page paper due at the end of the course: the subject of the paper should be relevant for the class but should also be relevant and practically useful for your other current doctoral assignments outside coursework; At least one individual consultation with the professor about the ways in which this course can be useful for your doctoral work. Syllabus:

Queer Democracy Reader Winter 2010

1 Performativity Introduction, J.L. Austin: How To Do Things With Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962, lectures I and II, 1-25; James Loxley: Performativity. New York: Routledge, 2007, ch 1, 6-22. 2 Derrida, Jacques. Signature, Event, Context. In Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982., 307-330; Loxley, Performativity, ch. 4, 62-88. 3 Judith Butler: Introduction in Bodies That Matter, New York and London: Routledge, 1993, 1-24; Loxley, Performativity, ch. 112-139. 4 The Revolutionary Performative Hannah Arendt: The Meaning of Revolution and Foundation II: Novus Ordo Saeclorum in On Revolution, New York: Penguin Books, 1963, 21-59 and 179-215, respectively; B. Honig: Declarations of Independence: Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 1 (1991): 97-113. 5 Democratic Antitheatricality Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Letter to M. dAlembert on the Theatre. Trans. Allan Bloom. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968 (1960). 6 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 90-121; Maslan, Susan. Robespierres Eye: Revolutionary Surveillance and the Modern Republican Subject, in Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, 125-171. 7 The Idea of the Modern Individual Adam B. Seligman: The Modern Idea of Civil Society in The Idea of Civil Society, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, 15-59; Lefort, Claude. Politics and Human Rights, in The Political Forms of Modern Society, trans. Alan Sheridan, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986, 239-272. 8 Theatricality and Civil Society Tracy C. Davis: Theatricality and Civil Society in Theatricality, eds. Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait, 127-155, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2003; Josette Fral Theatricality: the Specificity of Theatrical Language SubStance 98-99, 2002, 94109;

9 Emergent discourses of homosexuality Fray et.al.: Homosexual Studies and Politics in the 19th Century: Karl Maria Kertbeny, Journal of Homosexuality 19.1 (1990): 23-47;

Queer Democracy Reader Winter 2010

excerpts from Havelock Ellis: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 2, Sexual Inversion, reading to be distributed (not included in this reader); Michael Kimmel: Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity in The Gender of Desire, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005, 25-43; Henry Abelove: Freud, Male Homosexuality, and the Americans, in Deep Gossip, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, 1-21. 10 The epistemology of the closet Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic in Epistemology of the Closet Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, 182-213; Nationalisms and Sexualities in Tendencies, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993, 143-153; Joan Riviere: excerpt from Womanliness as Masquerade, International Journal of PsychoAnalysis 9 (1929): 303-313. 11 Sexuality and Rights Deborah A. Chirrey. I Hereby Come Out: What Sort of Speech Act is Coming Out, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7/1, 2003: 24-37; Diane Richardson, Part 2 in Rethinking Sexuality, London: Sage Publications, 2000, 71-116. 12 Queer Democracy Plato: Imperfect Societies in The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, London: Penguin Books, 1974, 312-370; Jacques Derrida: Oath, Conjuration, Fraternization, in The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins, London: Verso, 1997, 138-171.