Sexuality and American Culture

If we are to take Foucault's concepts seriously, we must completely disregard most of Norton's essentialist notions of homosexuality as inherently political derivatives of the deployment of sexuality itself. Norton argues that, “a typology of queer personalities and relationships and the characteristic features of a queer culture arise from a core of queer desire and are not wholly configured by the regulation of that desire” (Peiss 11). He asserts that, “Beneath a (fairly limited) variety of customs that differ from culture to culture lies the phenomenon of queer desire,” and that, “homosexuality is a broad stream which continues to run despite being dammed up and channeled off by social control” (12). In short, Norton conforms to a discourse of homosexuality (not the type formulated by the the medical and psychological profession) that upholds the peculiarity of queer desire as its primary object—a universal object which naturally manifests itself coherently and continuously in limited queer identities and cultures across space and time. He validates this discourse by establishing that,

“Historical research tends to support the essentialist position that queer desire is congenital and then constituted into a meaningful queer identity during childhood. . . . Abundant evidence demonstrates that sexual orientation cannot be changed . . . The ways of being homosexual sometimes vary in different historical periods and in different cultures. But they are not infinitely different; in fact the differences are not very wide (perhaps there are not even so many as a dozen different homosexualities.” (12, 14)

These points may very well be contextually accurate; however, what Norton rejects (or fails to recognize) is that such a discourse of homosexuality and its respective objectification of an essential queer desire is embedded in a particular and variable set of notions and conceptualizations comprising a framework for thinking about sex.

I do not mean to say that desire itself does not exist; rather, I would like to suggest that the characterization of desire as being particularly queer is reflective of (and in this case necessitated by) social structure. If we could imagine an economy of desire isolated in a vacuum, there would be no need to differentiate queer desire from heterosexual desire; instead, there would be just desire, plain and simple. As such, queer desire, identity, and culture can be observed as constructs resulting from culturally specific notions of gender and sexual relations. In essence, queer desire would be but one manifestation of desire more generally, enabled by a sexualized culture. In this view, Norton's rejection of Foucault and social constructionism is more accurately described as a misinterpretation. This misinterpretation evidences the very success of the deployment of sexuality in implanting sex and the notions, identities, cultural practices that surround it as being essential.

Furthermore, Norton's notions of homosexuality and conception of an essential queer desire are more political than they are essential. Foucault's theory allows us to recognize how power mechanisms operate in terms of oppression. Recognizing and attempting to release ourselves from the oppressive forces of sexuality would be quite destructive to groups, such as homosexuals, that have defined their identity and culture in terms of sexuality. Essentialism with respect to characterization of desire, then, acts to preserve and validate the existence of a distinctly homosexual community. Norton himself writes that, “Essentialism is politically useful for empowering minority groups by a sense of solidarity grounded upon an awareness of identity” (16). What Foucault would argue is problematic about such a political approach is that it employs and conforms to the very notions and oppressive forces that it seeks to combat and liberate itself from.

This brings up one of the most important issues concerning the nature of the type of resistance that I think Foucault promotes regarding relieving ourselves of the oppressive forces of sexuality: in ridding ourselves of such forces, will we not be engaging in an entirely new set of equally oppressive forces?