floyd reification

8/12/2019 Floyd Reification

1/21

t"'.,z

THE REIFICATIONOF DESIRETiward a Qacer Mdmisrn

KBVIN FLOYD

UNIVERSITY O8 MINNBSOTA PRESSMINNEAPOLIS o LONDON


2/21

introdactionON CAPITAL, SEXUALITY, AND THE

SITUATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

One evening in December 1996, Judith Buder delivered a plenary pre-sentation that would eppear te following year as en essay called *MerelyCultural."r In this essa Buder posits a certain conservative Man


3/21

INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTIONBudert critique, like her work generall proceeds om an explicidyantiheteronormative point ofview, and her conuoversid presentetion andsubsequendy published essay marked a schism between Man


4/21

TNTRODUCT\ONBut far from representing just another efforr, ar rhis late date, ro trump aqueer form of critique with a Marxian one, rhe implications of bringingMan


5/21

TNTRODUCTION

is a rrously negatiue practi.., " pr".. opposed .o .t. t irr of

way of understarding

t and Marxir* *ort shae in

TNTRODUCTION

work has indeed avoided anything that srnacks of totality

eKemrnauon

culrurd'? How else to .understend the implications of a tide like Fear of av positive imposition ofrotality ofwhich Mancism h"rrrg u..r ".*J-n imposition referring, , not ro thinking arfl but to the objective, that is capital itself.Preemptive rejections of - critical practice have too ly ta ,o,., .T*...T""u:..r. uus generel way ot Undrsta[ding Mancian effoms totfunk rordiry will soon be necessary here, but I want fisr to suggest that" rthis very practice of totaliry thinking provides, "..h. ,Jl ;;. way ofrndersarding a cemein .nn,onoonnolLn ,^^| " , -Arrt rnnrr?r.no}.aa,,oon r\/^_-:an and queer accounts " , r :ilIo. queer accounts. l:t Tt have dready begun toArmply, knowledg is_one of

horizons of social realiry, has given rise here again to parricularization'sdialecticl opposite. .A V{rrq"t it in what would become one of

c:m as rll queer have aspi an analysis


6/21

INTRODUCTION

ing es totalitiiitsintntioh 3aspiration thatt

INTRODUCTIONrefusalIts ongoing development aPPea$ here to

to totality, an DueJw theoretical

from | rvtf ,-_t

'r\--,0'

ies, in 1997 and in 2oo5, arerevealing here. They anicul"t ,*t L suonglyas t?'aner's ealier introduction this constitutive queer ,.firr"l of the ana-lpic isolation of sexuality from a broad ,ange of ,ocial and historical hori-f zons. These texa introduce the new work their respective volumes collect,that constitutes their ground, by emphasizing thewhich sexuality is understood to be, ,s th. irrtro_e put it, ointersectional, not enrareous to otherey underscore the indispensability of a dynamiccritical movement *acro&s, between, among vaious ,o.ii dom"in. "rrdolitical experiences," which is simultaieo*ty "r, e*ercise in .traversingand creative transforming conceptual boundaries," a movemen t the ry97isue called'trarso


7/21

l l,r'

separered, finall om a specific his_I rude of the totality,,, he writes, "does] ..d into the *o.r.o *-"q.* "f should be n acnirrti^- r^,,,--l -^-^ltlltt I want ro propose not just that..lhe dwelopmenr of queer for-. of .r' -cnded to ake the form of this kind of

INTRODUCTION

asPrratron. rnougn an examrnaron TEEffilin which Luldcs th-

INTRODUCTION

that bot}r frffi ciallY situated historyispecific rsocial phenom-enolory," a distincdve "group o


8/21

IINTRODUCTION

a Posron

operating at some ineviable level of analic abstrecrion, " . .il;;

first vol-a range o

very distinction between these perspectives uhimate leads that fis6rlssion

INTRODUCTION 13

Xl

rt

takes the form ofa clea 'ucdon over thatiiffiitizal\7hat we might call Capil's narrative temPoralrty cons'ts r

ital's internal differentiation only becomes *o* to*PL * it d*fi ,--'new Der- tfficourseoi". '.,.,.{i

histrical developments.Marism

I ,.\-competing intellectual lineages, undeniablbetween Maxian and Foucauldian modesever much some of us rvant to insist, asand Foucault's respective bodies of workis sometimes suggested), these intellecnralthis polarizati"il*hi"h needs instead to be understood in terms ofbroader

Itu'ofit priofltrzes. What \ile mrgnt cau wa'ltb '.r4lrv r.rvqr. '-"-** tofft-r..*ring arriculation and subsequent displacement of whatvlamrepeatedly ."llJ"o* Present sundpoinf Any pretensiott t:,". birj's-ereview is ,.rr..Ld h.r" to be the effect of a failure to account, witlin the veryeffort to tlink totality, for the speci-tc social location of t}at same effort.But Ma:


9/21

14 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTIONsocial consolidation ofan opposition betweerr two distbqcrasses-in con-::i'^:lllti1stasesi.,...pi.ai"[email protected],,i*:*:r::t_.?-"oiri ovetapf . *l, ""."."ir"0.,"i;;piiliut

to tu.rn into a socid normullIlfrom the early twentieth.*.,.ry. Th. ongoing requirements ofsocual nor-nativirycompel this newfot- "ri*.inL.i"" * "-*", or---iii"i@tqt' From the l"r. rrirr" tury, esas historians have long kind of critical

larger numbers ofpeople from ruralaeas into urban ones, a displacemen. t". op..,, ,rp .i. ielative newpossibi that l large ponio., of the nation's population can survive eco-nomically outside the family unit, a unir sra d\, becoming much morec:ntTal to consumption than to prodG;,TILThe increasingly variedentiation ae, within the confines of the united states, botl as totl andas uneven * ,h. ftr.gi*io, of opiolfrolql"bo.. H..;ffi

is a location that some unpredict-or partiall permanendy or tempo-rarily or interminendy inhabit, or through which they will Pess, a locationmediated by'entrancs' and "exits," as luen Berlant and Michael'W'anerhave put it.to If to speak of a queet vantge or aspiration is once again torisk the absuactions imposed by the term 'queer," to risk eliding dre waysin which socuality is constitutive interfered with by odier axes of social '

lence, and then begins gradually to be redirected in the service of a critiqueof the se:


10/21

T6

*1*:::: ff:y:. '::", t1 the m3re conservadve homophileTl]l1jji,lj,1.-lf-;bsayliberationandACr*,;_,*il,i;;*:T1^:T* m; i,yr," ;;i;; , ::,ilinowledge has as itsINTRODUCTION

which and is

ltt,\

ing forms of critical knowledge proa"oirr, tur/ or comPet-pulsoryhererosexuarin *h^r. ^^^-^- L- - "*P:'i^"gcritiques of com-pulsory heterosexualiw. whi" ;.-::;":'rv7 Lrruques o com-k^.r, -_^_^^ _ ,;, :hl.l nnot be s.p"r"t d,o,,, prj;;, whichboth from and feed back into ice. And the quer critiqueis agin ielf as dynamic as1,:]:,::11 these limitio.,, *. dJ.-,;;Jffi;# id ff i;T::j:::: ?l*:v.",:p out into il;d*;;;" r.offi :, ",:_::::j_1 :reai;tab{. va'abte dimens", li,"J",u.y.e::f#: :::*'1-_-,y * ,"', .r *riJ;;,#iuccrT::.:^.::j:]^:? s'"'p,. .i1f:. th1 are cond itioned, faciliated,of Man


11/21

INTRODUCTION$ INTRODUCTTON 19it, a skepticism fueled precisely by this capacity for seemingly endlessabstraction, by the way in which the concept, according to some accoun6, *proximates everhing to a single nerretive,o as Bewes puts it. eres \, 1

'bbSolescence' in light of its absuaction in general and its metaphysicalgeneralization in particular, remarking, for instance, that the concePtcould be used, given the narative of decline it so often PresuPPoses' torefer to the fall from grace, from organic wholeness, elaborated in theEden myth. Then, wirin e pe, Bewes also suggests that reicationt ref-erence to t}re objective, material isolation of broad processes-the "thing-

importance.How could such a tem contlibute to andlnis that clls itself historicaland materialist if its capacity for metaphnical andysis is so elastic t-hatthoroughous formsof orplanation unfolds, as it tuns out, in a volume that fonhdghdy en-

dorses this tendency. In the face of the term's potential obsolescence, as hesees it, for precisely this reason, Bewes's response is to advocate the termtreligious o


12/21


13/21

INTRODUCTION

f2t-3jt compels 1p1i"". .-ntemplative" subjectivityeven "" i.pr*iaotK the r-. .-. fo, th. objective e"..".iii";:;r. ,.,. ,

reeJoductior-r of reality with the acnal sucrure of reality itseL,,r

Luldcs insists oncorrecdon ofconcconceptud change

d r*?*rng or rhe objecrlve to which Hisry and clss consciousness responds,{/|remo99nt, y ed'1r" *'rL' r.uLuuafery e.. ra.uo.uy abs*a.trng the objective. Lukcson theon_e hand proposes that Maxism is, fust L roort, a criticari., -" i'- v rqu prupuqr ura. rvllfxlsm rs, lrst and toremost, a critical'- method. Hisnry and ctss consciousnessis one of the rwentieth centurytmost influential defenses ofdiarecticar method, a text that fa-oudf open,with the claim rhat Manciar 'brthodory" refers "excluri"J,;.";;il;"

r.v_.

But sim and ireali Lukcs akes issue with thefromrnsrnuates in this

INTRODUCTION

of Heeel insis-and astltthe subject is the morecrucid moment for Lukcs b.o*. he wants to underscore theimportance of class consciousness,

s con of reification cr inbecome quantitatively morc lntenseS

U^,l-

.:\,,'

01 . - -_oi e folded back into the subjec-t- I 'ffif. *.,, s"y fold back prematu':tv-?*1:bi:11:.*:1":::: - *-.f ,L"i subject "t .d.q,r.t ly registered' And in this respect' Jameson'sdefense of Hisnry and Clasi Conscioustess as an unnished project, hisconrention that it provides a way to accotnt for the internal differentia-,i." .i*pi.fist social relations into a range of irreducibly distinct waysof .rrcoorrt"ring and understanding those relations; is a reading ttrat is asgenerors as it is suggestive more drorough-.itin,,a f the text than he to be rethought

tions of it onanalysis of the rettred obrect $


14/21

4' INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION-.J-{b 'lL' ,h:dev:Ll

fers to an abstract form ofsub-more

@s that posit a narative of decline evenmore rnwaveringl perhaps, ran the narative ofreification rve encounterin Lulccs, his work also faciliates an understanding of tIre way in which

the social differentiation thisg as well as a closing of hori-

\I "oncPt-by no means onlYLulccs'rtend to recapinrlate this prioritizing of subject over object, rep-resenting t g |"*tendency is

regimes of socual knowledge have complex social effects' Re$g$ tftit,Jn.o seems ro have a raicllJ unfreezing social i^p"i66Emay not

a new to move awaywe might begin to eremlnethan takine its

to totautyrevisions of the concept


15/21

INTRODUCTION

)\v{

JI

(UFROM THE ABSTR.A.CT TO THE CONCRETE

I began this discussion by lShLSh{"g a cerain convergence beweenMarian and queer forms of criti."l k rd.dg., a convergence that itserf

forms of critique diverge. I want now to suggest the way in which thisemphasis on { iaelf beei to lead us back in the other direction,the way it can us to e different ins of how theseto specify

INTRODUCTION 27led inevitabl as I suggested, toward an examination of reifiction' an ex-amination .ir". .'d.rr-red instead the way in which these respective

This book will maintarnthis fashion is also topri-i.* *i:4" Ud *.3

racce.turnsmentally on the practice ofrequires. His work performs this method, but he rarely steps back to olreriG-n.d .labor"tins of it, more often articulating it in relative briefcomments scacered tluoughout his corpus' One of these lere excePdons'a notoriously elliptical one,-is found in the secion ofhis inuoducdon to theGranrissccellei,'Th. Metod of Potitical Fronomy." Here he frames his

The population is an absuaction if I leave out, for er


16/21

II INTRODUCTION

familiar wirh theThese lamer in ru rest. E'g. w^age labor, capial, erc.division oflabor, prices, erc. Fora^ example' capiel ut urase lahnr *,i.r,^,, ., r.-^^ nai"" pr^'I'L,,^.,^ i*,..t"' Thus, ,^ 'J cheouc concepcion ot'l 1i:':i-1:-*he imagined concrere rowads ever rhinner absnacdors undl I had arrivedat the simplesr determinations. From drere the jo*n.y wourd have ro be\ I the population again, bur dris dme nor| ", but as a rich toaliry of many derer_

In this conceprual movemenr from an abstract 'nity to an internary diferentiated one, rhe .,imagined *".r.;Ji;elf first ofall, turns out to bean absraction: a chaotic abstraction, one that requires specification. Marxdelineares a double movemen firsr, a movemenr through a series of theseincreasingly simpler absuacdons, concep .rr", ia.",if,"-i"* L*r*iIIsimulaneousditro.,,ti"ti;*:ffi :'::x3x#:*,*:ations ro which they refer_by establishing, for *._pfJ. r;; Orr_ess of capital of which social. class,_wage lor, ,rd rriu. *. all definingmomen. 'hlong the fi''t path the full orr..ptio'was waporated to yreldan abstract determinatiorr, .lorrg th. ,.-rr, the abstract deteminationslead,towads a reproductio' of jr. .orr.r... by *"y.il; h;.;:Theoretical abstractions, in this ".-*a can be moe or less chaotic"more or less concrete. In dre rwo movements Mam describes i.;a *r"._ents leading to the iblish1ent in thought "f"" i;;;;;r.rro_rated whole, theoredcd absuacdons "r. .oJr.ti".d, a chaotictrr..p.ior,/of toatiry is concretized u *v .r** ,i"Jir"* "ur**.ions, and then thesesimple abstractions ae themselves .orr.r.i".d r, *' rro'*rr rJ**uishment of their determinate interconnections, through " *r. cornprexrocess began, now rnder_and reladons." The speci_

INTRODUCTION 29Even concepts that are not chaotic, as Mar emphasizes' vary in-their levelof -*pl"*iry; they operate at different levels of absuaction. Capiul is a-or..o*plo, "bru."t concePt than price, for instance' Reification is ahighly complor abstraction referring to a broad set of socid phenomena-*r, i' Luka's ac@unt' before one approaches subsequent elaborationsand expansions of the tethe extent that it fails tothe srtent, for example, that it excluobjective moment oitlre soci"l It is chaotic toth. ot rrt tlat it accounts for s abstract termsons, for tm-

f-rfffii rurn, Manc then *nderscores the wap in which the think-ing subjectwho aspires to move 6 whole;t*dt embedied within t}re would"".o.rr,a. H. emphasizes that re co tlink-ing . . . as e p(rcess of concentratis depar-.,r., .',r.r, thotgh it is the point of departure in realiry and hence alsothe point of depamue for obremains ontoloeicllY Prior to

the tort's avoidance of directffi\,nn perqPettve on caPi to a move-nacy by identifying this thiindividual terms' bY insistin


17/21

INTRODUCTION

This objective, dererminare sociar siruadon of thought is further com_:l1:,;{-ll*: l ":.,.o.14 11l,., J.r,. ni*" ricailydynamic. rheeterminate situation 1f.the .r{nkj"s ,'b;:r';^J* il i".,'ri;nd historicall this subjecr is iaelrJp-u.. of a specific historical iunc-ture withindynami Maxdynamrc method thatitself; just rs concrere, dynamic, it has opened conditionscritical practice, for orample_thatitself always historically conditioned.

deployment, theydsotoical relocation iaelf

in this wayeq ons, adevel

INTRODUCTION

as I indicated ear-cen blind-

Efen-Fnrfr; oPPonent

social and his-

"KIfet,A ealier, for e:rample, Lukcs's privileging of reificationtsubjective moment is in part a resPonse to the privileging, in the official

,t

r'lLr.1 I

nesses imposed by its own operative categories. An effon from witinMaxism's reffns to eccounr for t-he horizons of social ruIfty drat Man


18/21

32 TNTRODUCTToN INTRODUCTIONdialectic that is dso a Man


19/21

TNTRODUCTIONefforr wically impricate, in one u/ay or anorer, capital and rabo as

rePre-socialtradictions consistendy produce, andoned strategies necessa.ry to keep cri_

.

Cenual to this discourse is thefirst is thcohesivetained over an extended period. Fo

dened social norms and habits, ane level ofeveryday practical life, to thereproducdon of the conditions ofegime o#there ,.1f-.nt of,{ myriad individual, corporare, institutional, and state decisions, many ofthem unwitting politi choices ot L".ot;.k responses to trre crisis ten-

l"^.:-Ld:l _*: rpect rhe.::rk of Gramsci is one of regulation theory,sr 'or obvious touchsrones.5o Bur mystudywill pt".. rp.J;;emergence

thewaysi"@is normalized at the

it is precsely le more

INTRODUCTION

$e)ts rnas this

as genurne anyargue th. Uttit.d States during the past;w i, *eated by Jt t. effora to- forestdl ac"ulT:o".*"t: l:,ri, *; the followingchapters contendthat reification's objecive effeca*o.tb.understoodrro.o,,lyinrcrmsofthetenaciousresilience-ofcapi; typi."lly emphasized by the discoruse of reitction..,Th1 also need"instability, in terms of

as-inerely'' cultural or suPersuctul' 's Persistent instabilitY' lY *"Y-sis highlighrc one other,tajor theme from regulatiln theor *::-which unprecedented and efforts to socialdemard-to socialize eone

tt

,)l

cfltlcll,

reP

its fundmental


20/21


21/21

floyd reification

Documents