Sexual Citizenship - Essay Example

Sexual Citizenship Discuss how the notion of sexual citizenship differs from Freudian and Foucaldian concepts of Sexual identity. Identity- whether based on race, gender, ethnicity, ability, or sexuality - has emerged during the last half-century as one of the most difficult problems for contemporary theory and politics. The concept of identity has been brought under philosophical scrutiny, as identity politics has fallen in and out of favor. Sexual identity, however, has proven especially divisive, fraught with questions and rhetoric about choice and destiny, nature and nurture, essentialism and social construction, morality and legislation. At a practical level, sexual identity is a core concern for lesbian and gay outsiders since the decision about whether, when, to whom, or with whom to identify as lesbian or gay often has far-ranging social and political implications. At the philosophical level, it is one of the major issues of the day. Luce Irigaray has this to say about the philosophical importance of sexual difference: Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our "salvation" if we thought it through. It is no surprise, then, that sexual identity has become one of the most problematic topics for those engaged in research on lesbian and gay issues. Theory and action have been brought to bear on questions of sexual identity in an almost unlimited number of ways. There are, however, sufficient substantive similarities in the approaches to follow for grouping. Difference and citizenship Feminists have long been arguing that access to citizenship is a highly gendered process (Butler 1990, 1999). The public sphere, in contrast to Habermas's idealized reconstruction is hardly a domain free from power relationships. Rather, it is a domain often dominated by men, for its requirements of independence and abilities of abstract argumentation, coupled with families' all-absorbing household duties and child-rearing activities, discourage women's participation. As citizenship has been constructed in a male image, women are treated as second-class citizens. Richardson (2000) further points out that lesbians and gays an be regarded as partial citizens as the image of the citizen is constructed not merely as male but also as heterosexual. The development of a differentiated concept of citizenship is one way of appropriating the notion of difference. It points toward a politics of difference which relies on group identity to provide for legal protection and equal rights. This way of dealing with difference is, however, criticized by postmodern thinkers and queer theorists as reducing difference to identity. While the concept of a differentiated citizenship, and its associated politics of difference, aims to redress structural injustice between men and women, and heterosexuals and homosexuals, the difference is primary located between identities. It is not so much a difference that troubles identity from within. Foucault has provided a radical account of how modern forms of normalizing power operate through the constitution of identity bearing subjects. Normalization, Foucault notes, is not exactly a force of repression or expiation, but rather a power of individualization. It brings five quite distinct operations into play: homogenization, comparison, differentiation, hierarchization and exclusion. Individuals are compared, differentiated, and hierarchized according to their differing nature and qualities. Some kinds of sexuality are as seen as more acceptable than others; some kinds of pursued pleasure are seen as more normal and acceptable than others. Individuals come to identify themselves as a subject with a specific nature and quality. While they experience individuality, identity and subjectivity, they can be at the same time subject to the power of normalization. In light of Foucault's work, resistance does not lie in consolidation of existing identities, but rather in the constant questioning of the limits of these identities and experimenting with the possibility of transgressing these limits. Psychosexual Development a. Rationales involving biological factors Discernible in Freud's (1927, 1932, 1933) writings on psychosexual development are two themes that bear on the issue of biological sources of self-regard in males and females. The first and most of these leaves little doubt as to the impact of gender on self- regard. However, Freud does not specify the degree to which feelings of inferiority/superiority operates consciously, as opposed to unconsciously. b. Rationales involving social or cultural factors The assertion that one or another biological difference provides a basis for positive (or negative) self-regard is a matter of the value imputed to that difference. The emphasis on society's interpretation is shared by C. Thompson, a psychoanalyst who sees in women's position of under privilege ample grounds for feelings of inadequacy. Sexual Difference Freud avoids Weininger's manifest Platonizing of sexual difference, but his identification of activity with masculinity and femininity with passivity risks a similar essentialism. He claims both that libido is distinctively masculine and that it is universally present in humans as the sexual drive. Effectively, in characterizing libido as male, he masculinizes sexual agency itself. This identification further problematizes the "feminine" component in universal bisexuality. As feminist critics of Freud have argued at least since Beauvoir, he reduces femininity to an opaque and undefined "otherness" seen from a decidedly masculine perspective. A full account of the active/passive dichotomy would require sustained attention not only to his account of sexual difference but also to his discussion of ambivalence in the "perversions," especially sadomasochism. Freud sees sadism as an outgrowth of the active tendencies of the sexual drive, while masochism is secondary, the effect of aggressive drives turned against their subject in the absence of a suitable object. Freud emphasizes the active/masculine character of libido, but also works to undercut that identification by insisting on the dynamic of ambivalence and on the activity of the drive even when directed towards passive aims : .. certain among the impulses to perversion occur regularly as pairs of opposites.. . We should be rather inclined to connect the simultaneous presence of these opposites with the opposing masculinity and femininity which are combined in bisexuality - a contrast which often has to be replaced in psychoanalysis with that between activity and passivity. The circle here appears complete. The ambivalent coexistence of impulses toward both sadistic aggression and masochistic submission within the individual is explained in terms of her primary bisexuality, combining masculine and feminine qualities. These qualities are redefined by psychoanalysis in terms of psychological activity and passivity, although here too there is ambiguity, since "an instinct is always active when it has a passive end in view". But Freud perpetuates the historical association of these with the sexual binary. Although he acknowledges that definitions of masculinity and femininity is cultural conventions, he insists on maintaining a "psychological link" between masculinity and activity, femininity and passivity. Despite his general tendency to separate analytically notions that has been conventionally and historically joined, Freud reinstates this pair as the key to sexual difference in the psychological domain. The multiple and pervasive ambiguities suggest a need to theorize more fully the extent to which the formula "universal bisexuality" condenses a dynamic of ambivalence. Equally important, the inconsistencies around sexual difference may rise to the level of systematic aporia that require a rethinking of the most fundamental terms. Freud's version of universal bisexuality derives from his engagement with, and transformations of, Fliess's biological speculations, "third-sex" theories of sexual inversion as form of "psychical hermaphroditism" and an emergent discourse of homosexuality conceived as same-sex object choice. Masculinity and femininity are defined by a set of specific, often complementary characteristics clustering around desire for the other as proper object. Within each theory, the explanation of sexual variation depends upon a system of sex and gender that articulates conceptions of "same" and "other" through linked concepts of biological sex, gender role, sexual identity, and heterosexual object-choice. Freud's formulation of universal bisexuality re-aligns the terms and redistributes the connections among them, but it also brings to the surface increasingly complex underlying difficulties. Judith Butler defines the trouble in these terms: The conceptualization of bisexuality in terms of dispositions, feminine and masculine, which have heterosexual aims as their intentional correlates, suggests that for Freud bisexuality is the coincidence of two heterosexual desires within a single psyche Within Freud's thesis of primary bisexuality, there is no homosexuality, and only opposites attract. By refusing to grant homosexuality the status of an identity, Freudian theory resisted the racializing perspective on sexuality - a resistance that, according to Foucault, earns psychoanalysis a unique place in the history of sexuality. Unfortunately, Foucault's crucial distinction between Freudian ideas and psychoanalytic institutions have remained obscure to his Anglophone audience. Foucault viewed psychoanalytic concepts as conflicting not only with psychiatry, psychology, and medicine, but also with its own institutions and practices. In other words, Freud's best ideas remained hard to translate into practice and to institutionalize successfully - even for Freud himself. As a concept, perversion makes sense only so long as the sexual instinct is conceived in functional terms; Freud broke that conception by divorcing the instinct from natural functions and by claiming that the sexual drive emerges independently of any particular object of satisfaction to which it might subsequently become attached. For Davidson, as for Foucault, psychoanalysis thus holds a unique position in the emergence of the modern understanding of sexuality. However, Freud's originality stems not from his treating sexuality as historical, but paradoxically from his universalizing gestures ("all human beings are capable of making a homosexual object-choice and have in fact made one in their unconscious" [Three 145n]. Despite the congruence between Foucauldian and psychoanalytic views of sexuality - and notwithstanding the potential alliance between queer theory and Freudianism - fundamental differences remain between historical and psychoanalytic perspectives on homosexuality. CONCLUSION: The notion of sexual or intimate citizenship is an attempt to remedy the limitations of earlier notions of citizenship, to make the concept more comprehensive. But it simultaneously requires every one to accommodate different analytical categories; not only class, not even just gender and race, but also the impact of the heterosexual/homosexual binarism, the institutionalization of heterosexuality, and the question of equity and justice for emergent 'sexual minorities', of whom the lesbian and gay communities are the most vocal, organized and challenging. Thus, the idea of sexual citizenship has many features in common with other claims to citizenship. It is about enfranchisement, about inclusion, about belonging, about equity and justice, about rights balanced by new responsibilities. CONCLUSION Butler, J. (1999) Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge. Jeffery Weeks, Janet Holland and Matthew Waites (2003) Sexualities and society: a reader, Oxford: Polity. Plumer,k.(2003)'Intimate citizenship and the culture of sexual story telling' in Weeks, J.Holland, J. and Waites, M.eds Sexualities and society: a reader, Cambridge: Polity, 33-42. Read More