Review Author(s): Kevin Kopelson Review by: Kevin Kopelson Source: SubStance, Vol. 25, No. 1, Issue 79 (1996), pp. 120-123 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685234 Accessed: 08-05-2015 15:10 UTC
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ofinterpretation decidethequestion atissue. suchreference would,orshould, ofthecritic's servetodefusetherhetorical Itmight well,however, centrality theobjectsofherinterpretive desire.Without the "intention" bypluralizing I findmyself of benefit ofthiscontextual thesubtlety admiring pluralization, movesandherscrupulous ofalternative Beizer'scritical recognition reading ifhersenseofa "mobileirony" butI alsofindmyself wondering strategies, textdoes notgivethattexttoomuchcreditfor Rachilde's (260)inhabiting thecritic To useBeizer'sowncentral seemstohave sophistication. metaphor, in its the a narrative more ironicand text, place ventriloquized producing The the best the than to reader's doubtson complex original story. way dispel inother thisissuewouldbe toshowthatRachilde's instances writing practice a similar of demonstrates ironic and to consciousness, degree perhaps explore Rachilde'spoliticsforcluesto herpositionings. Giventheintense attention thisisa lottoask.Herworkshows thatBeizergivestoeachtextsheexamines, in thetechniques trained someofthestrainfeltbycritics ofclosereading, from the and deconstructive count especially psychoanalytic perspectives--I want embed now to their textual in amongthem--who myself analyses social Thisstrain andhistorical contexts. neednotbe debilitating. On thecontrary, thatit can serveto generatehighlyoriginaland thisbook demonstrates critical works. stimulating Charles Bernheimer of UniversityPennsylvania
Leo.Homos. Harvard Bersani, UP,1995,Pp.208.$22.95. Cambridge: Troubled ofgayandlesbianscholars tendencies to"queer" bytherelated and to desexualize homosexual tendencies (homo)sexual identity experience, he readsas symptomatic of an assimilationist politicsthatenvisionsthe erasureofhomosexuality themselves desire,Leo Bersanisughomophobes that and lesbians about ina rather themselves congests gays keepthinking ventional as to attracted identical way: peoplesexually (anatomically) people. shouldthink thiswaytoo,becauseitwillenablethem, if moreover, Nongays, take to be normative that will the erasure (a they homosexuality taking prevent ofgayandlesbiansexuality), bothtoreconceptualize--and dehierarchize--all relations(heterosexual, butinterclass, and interinterracial, interpersonal as now lines and to generationalwell) polarized alongsubject/other reconceptualizethefalse--or at leastproblematic--senses ofidentity andcommunity inthe Inherent (senses,thatis,ofwhooneis not)basedupontheserelations. ofgaydesire, Bersani is "a revolutionary for "homo-ness" writes, inaptitude heteroized "a redefinition ofsociality so radicalthatit[requires a] sociality," withdrawal fromrelationality and "a notionof difference notas a itself," trauma tobe overcome nourishes (a viewthat, amongother things, antagonisSubStance#79,1996
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ticrelationsbetweenthesexes),butratheras a nonthreatening supplementto sameness"(7). As ithappens,thesamenessofgaydesiremeansthesamenessofgaymale writershe sees as desire. Like Gide and Genet,but unlikeProust--three "drawn to the anticommunitarian impulse [of] homosexualdesire" and invested in "a process of self-extension" (7)--Bersaniisn't interestedin leswhich is typicalof Bersani's bianism per se. While this phallocentrism, high-profile essay "Is theRectuma Grave?"as well,needn'tweakenhisargument(whichit does), it may precludethe typeof popularitythe relatively "jargon"-free styleof Homosseems to solicit.("Is theRectuma Grave?"[in
ed. DouglasCrimp, AIDS:Cultural Cultural Awareness, Activism, Cambridge:
MIT Press,1988]theorizeshomophobiaas a fantasyof males participating, in what is presumedto be the terrifyprincipallythroughanal intercourse, offemalesexuality.)Feminists, academicas ing--andsuicidal--phenomenon well as nonacademic,may--andperhapsshould--distrust Bersani'sassertion thathe isn'tyetanother"privilegedwhitemale [speakingas ifhis] assertions had somenaturaluniversality" (8). Butitis thecentralthesisofHomos---sameness mattersmorethandifference--that will accountforthebook's eventual in the circlewhichnow encompasses failureto generatemuch excitement academicfeminism. Culturalstudiesis--andperhapsshouldbe--tooinvested in culturaldifference (polaras well as nonpolar)to attendto Bersani'sspecial on behalf of pleading gay male sameness,pleadingreadily(ifnot quite acas dismissable and humanist. utopian,essentialist, curately) That,and thefactthatBersanidoesn'targuehiscase verywell.Or rather, thathe arguesit too well,too zealously.Notwithstanding thegravitation of culturalstudiestowardpopularculture,mostreadersare literateenoughto realizethatat least two of thethreewritersBersanicounterbalances against as Judith MichaelWarner, and MoniqueWittigare suchqueertheorists Butler, as investedin eroticcomplementarity as theyarein eroticidentity, ifnotmore
so.(SeemyLove'sLitany: TheWriting Homoerotics Stanford [Stanford: ofModern
Press,1994],in whichI discusstheextentto which20th-century University lesbian and gay writersreconfigure the heterocentric notion"oppositesatBersanishouldhavebeenjudicious,not tract.")Giventhisfamiliar investment, adversarial.Gideanhomosexuality, Bersaniclaims,is "untroubled and unconcernedbydifference:" He seeks[inbeautiful morethantotouchinaccurate boys]nothing replications ofhimself, extensions ofhimself. of Pederasty...is thenarcissistic expansion a desiring ofa securely skin,andit... worksagainstthenarcissism mapped attuned tothemultiple between ego.Potentially everywhere, correspondences himself and theworld,theGideanhomosexual is unidentifiable and even Thereis no "homosexual unlocatable. here,forGideimagines psychology" intoanimpersonal as a gliding sameness incomhomosexuality ontologically with (124-25) egos. patible analyzable SubStance#79,1996
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and unconcerned Does he?Farfrombeing"untroubled Gideinbydifference," sistsupontherelative youthofhisownloveobjects: I callthepersonwhofallsinlovewithyoungboysa pederast, whichis what thewordsmeans.I call thepersonwhosedesireis towardgrownmena .... I callthepersonwhoinlovemaking sodomite adoptstheroleofa woman andwantstobepossessed aninvert. [Paris: Gallimard, 1960], (Journall889-1939 671) he feels,shouldbe at leastthreeyears (Gideis in factquitespecific: pederasts, olderthantheboystheylove,who shouldbe between13 and 22 [see Patrick Gide:Homosexual Moralist. NewHaven:YaleUniversity Pollard,Andr6 Press,1991, less self-consciously, in16,29].)He also insists, upon otherpowerdifferentials, is why,forexample, LordAlfred cludingcolonizer/colonized-which Douglasin Si legrainnemeurt his statusas a pederastwhenfifteen-year-old nearlyforfeits as to look as thoughhe mightbe his lordship's "Ali" is dressedso brilliantly "master"(IfIt Die,trans.Dorothy 1963,292). Bussy.New YorkVintage, In orderto discover"an authentichomo-ness"in Proust(145), Bersani to (male) invertslike Charlusand Jupien,who seem to pays close attention standforthefundamentally heterosexual basis ofgay desire: Notonlydo [Charlus] andJupien remind thenarrator ofplants; healsoseesin their the to the of two all of which leadshimto birds, cruising prelude mating defendtheanalogiesthemselves as "natural," the vast in given community natureofwhichthehumanis onlya part.... In nature, as insocialhistory, identities of spillover.We exist,in bothtimeand space,in a vastnetwork a network characterized ofinaccurate near-sameness, byrelations replication. Accurate ofterms--is an attempted human perfect identity replication--the correction ofthesecorrespondences, a fantasy ofspecularity in theplaceof To recognize universal homo-ness can allaytheterror of correspondence. whichgenerally difdifference, givesrisetoa hopelessdreamofeliminating ference (146) entirely. Thisis quitea stretch, and Bersanineedn'tmakeit.As Eve Sedgwickhas shown, theauthentic--or at leasttheblatant-"homos"in La Recherche are thelesbians, nottheinverts. WhiletheCharluswholovesmenis described as typical of'theinvert' as a who loveswomenseemsscarcely to comeundera species,theAlbertine taxonomic particular headingon thataccount.[Sheseems]to embodythe a fulfillment of evenas homo/heterosexual definition, utopian universalizing theincomparable Charlus(incomparable, thatis,to Albertine) dystopically embodies theminoritizing view.(Epistemology oftheCloset. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press,1990,232) withthiscruciallineofreasoning, butrelegates itto Bersani,ofcourse,is familiar a footnote thatdoesn'tdo itjustice:"I assumea symmetry betweenlesbianism and malehomosexuality, a symmetry thatthetextmayseemlogicallyto requirebut SubStance#79,1996
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failsto establish" thatin fact,as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwickpointsout,thenarrator (197fn).In otherwords,Bersaniseessamenesswherethereisn'tany(maleinverThisis a failure--and sion),and failstosee samenesswherethereis (lesbianism). an argumentative which,itmustbe said,bothhisphallocentrism weakness--for zeal aretoblame. and hislawyerly And yet,theargument is worthfostering. thosewho wish Unfortunately, to do so willfaceseveralproblemsBersaniignores.Theywillhave to contend withthefactthat,and thereasonswhy,interpersonal do matter. differences will have to contend with the dearth of texts as well (lesbian homoerotic They as gay,popularas well as literary) moreinvestedin interpersonal sameness thanin interpersonal difference. And theywillhave to contendwiththerelativeabundanceofheteroerotic textshomo-nessmindedhomophobescan take as theystriveto equalizeheterosexuality on theone handand tobe normative on theother.Afterall,there'snothingespeciallygayeradicatehomosexuality affirmative about Wuthering a novelfromwhichalmostanyonecan Heights, line: "Whatever our soulsare made of,hisand mineare the Catherine's quote .... am same Heathcliff." Nelly,I KevinKopelson TheUniversity ofIowa
Freud andtheNovel. Lukacs, Derwin,Susan.TheAmbivalence Baltimore: ofForm: TheJohnsHopkinsUniversity Press,1992.
In TheAmbivalence ofFormSusanDerwinarguesthatboththerealistnovel and thecriticalworkofLukacson thenovelhave beenread by reference to a of defined rather mimesis than one attentive to concept narrowly byobject, by the constitutionof the novelisticsubject.Beginningwith an analysis of Lukacs's Die Theoriedes Romans,whichregistersthe affinity Lukacs asserts betweenthenovel and the essay (and hencethestructural ironiesto which bothare subject),Derwinelaboratesthetext'srhetorical and strategic use of ancientGreeceand epic as imagesof a lost totalityin orderto counteremas a straightforward ofliterary form, piricistreadingsoftheTheorie chronology and focuseson theproblemof thelinksbetweenrepresentation and subjectivitywhich,this reading persuasivelyargues,is the crucial concernin in theworkLukacs'sinvestigations. Havingelaboratedtheroleofsubjectivity ofthe ingofmimesis,DerwinfollowsherstudyofLukacswithan examination ofthesubjectin Freud'sTotemundTabu, workingofmimesisin theformation seekingto linktheconceptofthesubjectformulated byLukacsin his discussions of literaryformto Freud's accountof identity-formation. Successive de l'Absolu,Fontane'sFrau chapterspresentreadingsofBalzac's La Recherche Charlotte Treibel, Jenny Bront~'sJaneEyre,and WalkerPercy'sTheSecondCom-
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