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Queer
politics is going globalwhat? Cultural translation and
disempowerment
Marie-Hélène
Bourcier
Université
Charles-de-Gaulle - Lille 3 /
École
des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
France
As a queer activist and
theorist located in France, right in the middle of the
intellectual trafic and crossed fascination that exists
between The United States and France, I would like to
adress in this paper the effects of the cultural
translation of queer theory on queer politics. In France,
« American » Queer Theory has been used in the 90’ as
a way of repoliticizing the so called French Theory
(Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze) in order to introduce
post-identarian identity politics in a French Culture
dominated by universalism and republicanism and very
reluctant to either differences politics or
multiculturalism. With the publishing in French of Undoing
Gender in 2006 long with the neo-humanist position of
Judith Butler performed in the Euro-French public space to
obtain status recognition as both a public intellectual
and philosopher, we entered an era of flat thinking
synonymous with the flatening of the empowering effets of
the politics of the performative and sexual politics.
I will show how how with «
the second Butler » Undoing Gender is undoing Gender
Trouble diplacing the minoritarian strategies of
resignification with a néo-modernist strategy of
resignification of master words such as « universality
». How the latter complies with logics of disempowering
instead of resistance for minorities at the transnational
level. What is lost when the performatives qualities of
gender, identities or hate speech are tranfered to humain,
universel seen as performatives constructions open to
resignification ? Who is the political subject of the
resignification of universality ?
About Marie-Hélène
Bourcier
Founder of the first queer
activist group in France (Le Zoo), Marie-Hélène Bourcier
is a queer activist and theorist. She wrote extensively on
queer theory, gender and sexualities. She is the
translator into French of Monique Wittig and Teresa de
Lauretis. She’s teaching cultural studies and queer
theory at the university of Lille and Paris I. She just
open the first phd. Queer master séminar at the EHESS in
Paris : F***MyBrain. Her last published book is
Sexpolitiques, Queer Zones 2 (Paris, La Fabrique, 2005).
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