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Esto
Está Pero Muy Queer!
Manolo
Guzmán
Marymount
Manhattan College
(Puerto
Rico/Estados Unidos)
At the end of the rainbow there is not always, or only,
a pot of gold. Lurking behind the democratic promise
encouraged by pluralism lie, always, the history and the
conditions that make the imagination of the plural
possible. This history and these conditions are, of course,
not universal. Thus, the need to understand the
specificities that undergird the multicultural promise
emblematized by the metaphor of the rainbow, as well as
the radical pluralism of a “queer” politic that never
materialized in the US. Which conditions give rise to
multicultural ambitions?
How do we come to fancy ourselves capable of
strategically temporary alliances that require fluid
identifications our psyches and structures of affect find
difficult to sustain? The multicultural and queer thought
and politics that characterized LGBT theory and activism
at the end of the 20th century grew out of a long history
of racial strife in the US, most immediately, out of the
politics of difference inaugurated by the struggles
lesbian feminists of color encountered as they contributed
to the many social movements comprised by the New Left in
the US. Homeless in a world of people seeking and making
political home, American lesbian feminists of color
championed an intersectional politic and analysis that
represented the beginning of the end of identity politics.
This struggle and politic was largely a racial response
to a mainstream feminist movement that mindlessly forged a
feminist subject that was white, middle class, and
heterosexual. Very similar problems plagued the
construction of a queer subject and politic, one which, in
the end, was also white and middle class. It is no
surprise then that non-white subjects in the US rejected
queer politics.
The politics of multiculturalism, of intersectionality,
and of queer, are all grounded in the history of whiteness
in the United States, the whiteness that fuels the
fantasies of multicultural fullness and the queer fluidity
mentioned above. The formation of race and racial
distinctions is central to the history of all modern
nation states. Racial formations, however, do not travel
easily, and find translation nearly impossible given their
political, economic, social, and sexual overdetermination.
A politic of race is necessarily a politic of sex. In this
presentation I will argue that similarly a politic of sex
is intimately wedded to a politic of race.
The politics of race in the US are militant in their
affirmation of distinct racial categories. In Latin
America the politics of race have diligently steered away
from the quagmire of discrete racial categorization
through a discourse and praxis that, although equally
racist, celebrate the amalgamation that Americans have
persecuted under the sign of miscegenation. In America,
the home of the rainbow and queer, there is no racial
syncretism. There is no cosmic race. Under what conditions
will queer work in a variety of Latin American contexts?
Can queer sever its ties to multicultural desires forged
in the trail blazed by whiteness? Through an engagement of
these questions, in this talk, I will explore whether or
not, and, if so, how, “queer” and “rainbow” can be
translated/imported for politically useful purposes in
Latin America.
About Manolo Guzmán
Manolo Guzmán is an Assistant Professor of Sociology
at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. His
research is cross-cultural and focuses on the relationship
between categories of race and sex. His recent book, Gay
Hegemony/Latino Homosexualities, looks at the history of
gayness in Puerto Rico and its relationship to gayness in
the United States.
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