Deconstructing Origins:
Preliminaries For A Queer Ecological Identity Theory
This paper explores
the relationship between identity theory and environmental philosophy in order
to help conceptualize queer subjectivity in a way that would thwart an otherwise
uncritical incorporation and/or recuperation of behaviors that perpetuate
ecological peril. More specifically,
I want to subvert what appears to be our increasing complicity in certain
first-world consumerist ideologies that seem to suspiciously emulate the heterosexist,
androcentric, and anthropocentric modes of social behavior against which radical
ecologists and ecofeminists exert so much critical energy.
In my opinion, if queer theory is already progressively involved in
the deconstruction of compulsive heterosexuality embedded in western concepts
of nature, the discussion -- this current moment in the deconstructive process
-- offers the possibility of expanding the horizons of critique to include
the specifically material conditions through which new identities might emerge. In this wider context, then, some questions to consider would be:
How are material conditions affected by our identity formations? What ecologically
naive or dangerous metaphors are we using in order to reconceptualize ourselves?
And what alternative metaphors do we have or might we create as more ecologically
appropriate, emulative models? I believe these questions, among others, must
be addressed if our political interests are to move in the direction of radically
democratic cultural change. I believe
that our demands for change -- our demands for social justice -- are ultimately
about long-term survival, and that queer identity theory needs to recognize
the eco-social implications of our desire to survive. Thus, we need to impel the project well beyond
the artificial parameters of humanist interpretations of justice. That is, we need to wonder about the ways in
which our debates and inquiries are framed, and to take heed of the ecological
impossibility of a purely human or merely human realm within which discussions
about identity tend to circulate.
To begin, then, my initial
premise is that identity is historically and culturally constructed, and that
the construction of identity has material implications. Which is to say that the production of human
identities interconnect with the production of nonhuman identities, and that
these interconnections need to be understood if human identity is to be ecologically
literate and eco-socially just. Thus,
from within an ecological perspective, queer identity theory would transgress
the traditional binary opposition between the human and the nonhuman in order
to understand the relationships between the cultural production of identities
and the corporeal conditions out of which such identities emerge.
In this context, queer theory attempts to formulate a conceptual framework
that overturns, or at the very least, bypasses a longstanding tradition of
dualistic, oppositional, value hierarchical logics that impact upon both human
and nonhuman bodies. As we know, such logics have long since and
thoroughly integrated themselves into the textual narrative of what it means
to be a legitimate Western patriarchal subject.
In response, a queer ecological conceptual framework strategically
deconstructs these logics in order to secure the possibility of forging alternative,
eco-socially non-oppressed and non-oppressive personal identities and subjectivities.
For example, such a theory radically questions the modern, conceptual
antagonisms between man and animal, man and woman, soul and body, mind and
body, god and nature, being and becoming, heaven and earth, straight and queer,
etc.. It also questions the value systems associated with these archaic
ontological distinctions.
Taking this constructivist
stance, a strategic starting point for such an inquiry is to explore the West's
preoccupation with difference in order to understand how the various ontologies
of difference -- what I will call origin stories -- depend upon historically
contingent and culturally specific concepts of nature. Such an entry point is especially appropriate
for queer critique since sexual minorities are always already conceptualized,
which is to say, essentialized as "queer" by way of particular, historical configurations
of the concept of nature. But what
is "nature"? For the constructivist,
that question points directly to the symbolic systems of language, to history,
and to institutions of power. Nature, for the constructivist, is a always
a culturally constructed concept rather than a pre-discursive realm of fixed
and unchanging essences. For the constructivist,
identities are not essences fixed in nature like the patriarchal system wants
us to believe, but are instead products of a history, products of a particular
textual narrative. There is no "pure
nature" withdrawing from or transcending the cultural text.
Rather, the structures of language and the institutions of power magically
and perpetually reinscribe what we hope to find within our ontological inquiries.
Perhaps the most strategically
important aspect of the constructivist stance is that it poses the question
of authority. It asks who is in power
to define nature and according to what paradigms. From an essentialist stance, questions of authority
and authorship are always thwarted and mystified by references back to the
reigning concept of nature with its mythical origin in God. But from a constructivist perspective, the
question of authority is a basic epistemological move, one that offers the
possibility of revolutions in our understanding. Configured in the form of a set of questions, the biologist Gary
Lease describes what is at stake. He
says:
Who precisely defines "nature"--that is, who is allowed
to say what counts as nature and why? This
is, of course, the question of the "reinvention" of nature or, more
precisely, the question of power and privilege: not only do we wish to discover who reinvents
nature, but who invented it to begin with? What are the tools (language, culture, nation-state, science, academia,
and so forth) by which such inventions are sustained in power, and how does
one supplant or overthrow them? In
other words, this is the question of revolution and defense (Lease, 1995:
12).
Such constructivist questions are important
because they investigate, as Lease says, "The scope or extent of inclusion/exclusion"
in our origin stories, "that is, who belongs and why?"
He goes on to say:
This is about nature's content, it touches not only on what
is allowed to belong to nature and why, but also on who is allowed to participate
in nature and what happens to those parts and beings excluded from nature.
In other words, this is the question of survival and destruction (Lease,
1995: 12).
In this way, constructivism
forces us to investigate the extent to which various traditional rationalizations
about human privilege, human rights, natural rights, etc., are always culturally
specific and historically contingent conceptual productions that have meaning
only within a particular script or symbolic system. Traditional origin stories are developed over
centuries, authored mostly by men in the name of God, but actually forged
through insider proclamations, by self written laws and self protecting decrees,
and, of course, by colonial coercion and violent enforcement. In this way essentialism attempts to reach
beyond the text to assert a pre-discursive and ahistorical understanding of
the reality and the teleology of the world. But from a constructivist perspective, this project turns out to
be an historically conditioned social and political interpretation of a metaphysical
realm no human being can ever reach or realistically hope to know.
The problem we face,
then, is an archaic self-replicating system that captures, identifies and
positions bodies within an interpretative framework based on very old, mythically
and metaphysically generated origin stories, which were themselves based on
extremely naïve empirical descriptions of the human body and its relationship
to the elemental world. Within such
a framework, we are forced to contend with the fact that the repetitive enforcement
of this historically contingent logic is what actually secures a place of
privilege for a single identity, a singular autonomous subject, which traditionally,
we all know, is that of the straight, white, able-bodied, property owning
male. Certainly, the traditions of
feminist and ecofeminist critique have problematized this longstanding interpretation
of subjectivity by uncovering, not only the various logics of domination used
to maintain its symbolic structure, but its empirical and ecological naivete
as well. The lesson to be learned,
I believe, is that it becomes something of a personal imperative to reinterpret
the essentialist legacy, and to resist its incorporation into the project
of reconstructing ourselves.
None of this is to say
that changing the cultural narrative is easy. Of course, everything--men, women, queers, animals, plants, forests,
oceans--virtually everything has already been claimed and captured by the
reigning patriarchal symbolic system. In other words, the symbolic system
identifies and essentializes all bodies,
and those that do not satisfy the conceptual conditions for subjectivity are
marginalized. But marginalization
is not a singular, uncomplicated category.
Instead, specific divisions exist with classifications according to
the identified differences. For example,
women are defined by the patriarchal symbolic as the basic material conditions
which make the high-life of this culture possible -- the high-life being all
the so called natural rights and privileges of the straight, white masculine
master. Thus, women fall into the
category of preservable commodity,
essentialized as the mothers and maids of present and future patriarchal subjects. People of color sometimes fall into the category
of preservable commodity as well, essentialized as servants and chattel.
Most animals and plants, of course, are essentialized as consumable
commodity, that is, as essentially
raw materials, reserved especially for the master's subjective enjoyment and
bodily nourishment. Queer bodies (as
well as Witches, Gypsies, Jews, etc.,) fall under the category of disposable commodity, essentialized as
invasive threats to the purity of the system itself.
In the interests of
this paper, the category of disposability is especially important, particularly
as it pertains to sexual minorities, especially since the common term that
is either reticently insinuated or aggressively applied to queer bodies (in
differing ways according to sex, race, social status, visibility, etc.) is
the word "faggot." Of course
the word "faggot" carries with it, among other things, the notion
of a bundle of cut, disposable, burnable wood or weeds. Through this commonly reiterated term, the straight, homophobic,
masculinized mind constructs for us, a certain oppressive identity, represented
as a body in ruins, a dangerous, unruly and invasive weed-like anomaly that
intrudes itself into the otherwise integrated, systematic structure of the
real. In the homophobic imagination,
"faggots" are weeds to be eliminated because we threaten to pollute
both the physical health of the species, as well as the moral fabric of the
social order.
It is important to understand
how this symbolism works. What is
a weed? How do weeds come to be identified in nature? How is it that certain material bodies come
to be defined as unwelcome even though they exist? How do sexual minorities, even though we exist, come to be defined
as a contamination of nature? As "against
nature"?
The environmental philosopher,
Neil Evernden, analyzes the concept of pollution, where, in his text, he cites
Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger,
in which she analyzes the concept of dirt (Evernden, 1992). Douglas claims that the concept of dirt implies
a certain conceptual system of order governed by a concept of health or purity
which renders the world in such a way that certain bodies will be or might
be perceived as invasively out of place, as contaminants, or waste, defined
as threats to the integrity of the system as a whole. In Douglas' words: "Where there is dirt, there is (a) system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering
and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate
elements" (Douglas, 1966: 35). A reverse implication of this insight is that without the system
in place within which a term like "dirt" has meaning, there is no
dirt. The matter that would become
identified as "dirt" remains indefinite, undetermined, unsymbolized
where no contrast to notions of health or purity has yet occurred. But the very perception of dirt indicates that
a symbolic system is in place. As
Douglas says: "This idea of dirt
takes us straight into the field of symbolism and promises a link up with
more obviously symbolic systems of purity" (Douglas, 1966: 35). Evernden suggests that there must be an understanding
of the symbolic order, a comprehension of something like a "norm"
for matter to appear as dirt or
weed or pollution. And for both Douglas
and Evernden, this implies that ideas about the "proper order of things"
governs not only what we find within any given situation, but how we expect
bodies to act and interact within that situation. It is only according to the symbolic system
itself that anything will appear as out of place or in need of fixing or in
need of eradication. It is the ideologies
themselves that invest the situation with meaning, meanings which prepare
or appropriate the matter for a particular identity. An identity is then defined according to reasons that only exist
because the ideological system exists, dwelling in the minds of those who
have the power to enact the identification and then enforce its continual
reiteration. As long as there is only
one symbolic system functioning, and as long as no one questions or contests
the authority of that system, the normative prescriptions for what appears
within that system will be defined as proper, and the encoding process will
continue unabated.
This analysis has extremely
important political implications, for as Evernden and Douglas point out, it
is when other "exotic" symbolic systems converge upon the same situation
that change in the symbolic order becomes possible. As they say, when multiple symbolic systems
are in competition for the production of meaning, ideas become politicized
and the concept of nature is used as a tool for persuasion, coercion and control
(Evernden, 1992: 6). "At this
level," says Douglas, "the laws of nature are dragged in to sanction
the moral code" (Douglas, 1966: 3).
Now, the justification
for vilifying sexual minorities, of course, finds its source in a concept
of nature that defines sexual identity according to an ideology that reduces
all erotic expression to procreative sex. Compulsory, patriarchal heterosexuality, once universalized, in
effect, de-naturalizes and, and thereby, de-humanizes all bodies whose erotic
desire and expression does not conform to the norms of procreation. Thus, the heterosexist symbolic, in what Eve
Sedgwick calls the "hygienic Western fantasy" (Sedgwick, 1993: 163)
of a world without homosexuality, invents or reassigns the ontological status
of sexual minorities, not as primarily human, not as legitimate subjects,
but as threats to the ideological purity of normative sexuality.
Politically speaking,
there is a certain irony in this pre-defined identity of ours, which is to
say, that our identification as queer is always already subversive, always
already invested with elements of disruptive power.
The very existence of our bodies poses a challenge to the status quo.
Furthermore, the reappropriation of our identities according to an
alternative, conflicting symbolic system acts as a contestation of the reigning
authority. I believe it is imperative
that we exploit the subversive power of this position by proposing through
the construction of our own identities a different symbolic order, one that
will challenge the reigning system. Of course, this is a dangerous prospect.
Those who protect the status quo by policing the margins of the system
all too often have power to eradicate the threat of intrusion, which is to
say that there is always the possibility that our bodies, if visibly identified,
will be taken literally as invasive weeds or pollutants.
This has been the case, for example, since the advent of AIDS, where
suggestions have been made to contain us, to round us up, proposals just short
of actual genocide. Thus, to be visible
as queer is to chance arrogation at a moment in history where we have been
so ferociously blamed for the advent of terminal infections into the bloodstream
of the species. As an American fundamentalist
Christian preacher said recently, "AIDS is God's way of weeding his garden."
In light of this, it is fairly easy to understand why assimilation
strategies are popular in queer culture, although it does not explain why
first-world consumerist ideologies might be so appealing. Nevertheless, facing
the rhetoric of genocide, panic engenders scapegoating and scapegoating engenders
flight. To be sure, we face a lethal system that struggles
irrationally to secure a sense of protection against us, against what the
patriarchs believe to be poisoned and poisonous bodies, alien bodies, foreign
bodies, weeds.
But, most of us know
in our heart of hearts that we are not weeds, which is to say that even though
we are defined as such by the patriarchal symbolic, we know at the same time
that the definitions we must contend with come from elsewhere. We internalize them, to be sure, but they do
not originate from us. We are queer
and yet we are not queer, which is to say that the symbolic order that defines
our bodies as such is so rigidly intact that we must work from within the
pre-established definitions. We are
forced to live this mythical opposition between straight and queer in such
a way that we must maintain it at the same moment we abandon it. This is not to say that there is no real difference
between straight and gay. Instead,
it reveals a certain logic of domination that underlies the articulations
of difference we inherit from the tradition.
But, the progressive
implication of this analysis is that another story can be written, a difficult
task, to be sure, but not an impossible one. If the concept of the autonomous
subject is, in fact, historically contingent, and if there really is no single
word on the matter, no single story, if it's not Nature speaking through the
canon as the defenders of the canon would insist, then radically different
interpretations of human subjectivity and human identity are perhaps possible.
If this is so, then we stand at the threshold of an amazing creativity.
Faced as we are with a global environmental crisis, the question becomes whether
it is enough for us to win our rights to first-world cultural privilege.
To put it simply and emphatically:
there is no way for the earth to support the modern notion of autonomy,
especially in the way it's been incorporated into capitalist ideology. From an ecological perspective, an entirely different concept of
subjectivity is in order.
Suggestions for an Alternative
Symbolic System
As it stands, the most
popular natural metaphor for the patriarchal subject tends to be the predator-hunter,
and I'm troubled by this metaphor because I suspect it radically misrepresents
human corporeality. In fact, because
all bodies that do not fit the definition of subjectivity fall into the category
of prey, I believe the predator-hunter metaphor translates into the vampire
or the parasite. In other words, the modern antagonistic relationship between the
mind (white-human-male) and the body (animal-female), or between culture (white-human-male)
and nature (body-female) is characterized, not by mutual, beneficial alliance
between differing members, but by a tendency to waver between something more
in the order of carnivorousness on the one hand and parasitism on the other.
But, we must remember that these are only textual/conceptual metaphors. Such figurative terms only reflect in an approximate
way historically contingent symbolic arrangements. Certainly they might describe tendencies of
habit or trends in behavior, but they are not necessary or essential descriptions
of the human-animal or culture-nature relationships. Perhaps other descriptive terms could replace them. Perhaps retextualization could produce something
new, a radically different symbolic arrangement that would actually redefine
our corporeal relations.
In response to this
possibility, I imagine a queer ecological identity theory to be a theory that
refuses the disjunctive-value-hierarchical logic of the human/animal binary.
It rejects an insistence on oneness (human), sameness (straight-white-male)
and domination (animal-female). It
refuses the corresponding justification of human-straight-white-male privilege. It is an anti-essentialist, anti-patriarchal,
anti-modern theory that expands the field of identity to include what the
old tradition abhors: the relational body, the body in mutual, interactive
alliance with others, both human
and nonhuman.
In ecology, there are
terms for describing this metaphor of intersubjectivity. One such term is symbiosis. (Jones, Robertson, Forbes, Hollier: 1992: 80, 306, 402). Interestingly, symbiosis is usually contrasted with the concept of parasitism. Parasitism refers to the relationship between two bodies in which
one, the parasite, lives and feeds off the other. The effects can range from benign, unobtrusive co-presence, to a
prolonged, but minor loss of vitality, to severe loss of health, and even
to the eventual death of the host. Symbiosis,
on the other hand, defines a closely associated, mutually beneficial relationship
between members of same and of different species that promotes the satisfaction
of needs and the eventual survival of everyone involved.
Symbiotic relationships, in fact, can promote the cooperative survival
of differing species within an environment or situation that, without the
symbiotic relationship in place, would otherwise be uninhabitable.
Not only this, but a
symbiotic understanding of difference expands the very notion of body into
a relational, interactive field of concerns which transcends the boundaries
of the skin. For self-conscious creatures,
such as ourselves, we could call this field of symbiotic relations a body-self-other,
or to use the words of Neil Evernden, a "field of care," and the
phenomenal body of that field, what we are accustomed by the tradition to
see as the site of consciousness, a "concentrated core" of a larger sense of self (Evernden,
1989: 44, 47). In this way, a symbiotic understanding of difference
shatters the quick and easy defining lines traditionally used to demarcate
sites of difference. In effect, it
erases the hardened rationalized separations between one body and the next.
It shifts the location of the old divisions which allows the fluid
interactive relations between bodies to take on more importance. Unlike our traditional
notion of the masterful, autonomous subject who holds in opposition to itself
every Other as object, the symbiotic self approaches the Other in relationships
of alliance, of cooperation, and negotiation.
From this perspective,
perhaps our identity emerges not in some recovery of patriarchal privilege,
but rather, from what has never been able to emerge into consciousness, from
the relations that continually transpire and transfix the in-between-us-all.
Who are we then? Who are we
when the old distinctions between humans and nonhumans, man and woman, straight
and queer loose their authoritarian force?
What happens when we uphold the interconnectedness of body-to-body,
subject-to-subject relationships? Who
do we become when we extend this interaction between species, and between
members of species?
As Evernden describes,
there does emerge a concentrated core of identity within this field of exchange
that we come to call the self. And
it is this concentrated core that becomes a personal style of life, what we
would call an ethical orientation to the world. And because the lines between bodies are not
absolutely fixed, nor are they merely human, the questions we face about our
place on this earth as queer subjects, our fight against oppression and the
project to redefine ourselves in light of that oppression, extends beyond
a merely humanist context.
I offer these possible
reconceptualizations only as preliminaries, believing as I do that we have
a certain ethical responsibility to our contemporary planetary situation.
I also believe that an adequate response needs new, more ecologically
literate models for identity production.
In my estimation, the concept of symbiosis holds promise as a guiding
model. That is to say, it becomes increasingly dangerous
for us to afford emulating carnivores and parasites as models for the construction
of our identities, just as we can no longer afford to construct other human
beings and the rest of the corporeal world as prey and host.
I'm banking on the prospect
that changes in our concepts of nature, gender identity, subjectivity, etc.,
will not only help to end our own oppression, but can actually begin to reverse
the current apocalyptic trend of western patriarchal history. I'm taking seriously the prospect that identity
production can produce certain behavioral tendencies which, in mass, become
geological in proportion and impact. As
the situation stands right now, whole forests, rivers, mountains, species
disappear because of who we think we are. Like the ecofeminists, I believe that the experience of Otherness
can be empathetically extended into a much wider range of questions, considerations
and demands for justice. So I ask
the question: What if we were to follow
the feminist lead, and extend our experience of queer oppression as well as
our projects to end it into this wider range of concerns?
I believe this question is important because we are currently in a
mode of self-creativity with very few historical models to emulate, and my
hope is that we can, in our endeavor to forge our identities, consider how
the material conditions of the earth, and the social conditions of both human
and nonhuman beings are affected by this project.
Perhaps we can migrate away from the androcentric and anthropocentric
models offered to us by patriarchal traditions.
In other words, rather than merely imitating or mimicking the traditional
masculinized models, perhaps we can create new ones for ourselves which are
less destructive and less colonizing. In
this way, perhaps we can share in the very prospect of an ecologically sane
future.
Works Cited
Evernden, Neil. The Social
Creation Of Nature. Baltimore:
John Hopkins. 1992.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge, 1990.
Jones,
Gareth, Alan Robertson, Jean Forbes and Graham Hollier. Environmental
Science. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
Mary Douglas. Purity
And Danger. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1966.
Lease, Gary and Michael
E. Soule, eds. Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Washington:
Island Press. 1995.
Sedgwick, Eve. Tendencies. Durham: Duke
University Press. 1993.
