Home and hiddenness: queer theology,domestication and institutions

ABSTRACT

This essay examines tropes of hiddenness and domestication in queer theology, particularly in light of the increasing mainstreaming of queer theologies in institutional (e.g. university, seminary, church) settings, and the inclusion of queer theologies by straight academics and teachers on their syllabi. Drawing on James C. Scott’s work on revolution as a luxury of the elite (by way of the Arab Spring, the UK riots of 2011, and the US demonstrations in 2014), and Judith Halberstam’s construction of “failure” as a strategy of queer resistance, I ask whether there will continue to be a role for “shadow queernesses” which reject institutional acceptability. However, I also suggest that the increased visibility of queer theology within mainstream institutions does not inevitably imply compromise or “toothlessness,” but may in fact testify to the pre-existing presence of queer diversity in multiple contexts and the inhabitation by queer scholars of various “homes.”     

Love, drive and desire in the works of Freud, Lacan and Proust

Both Freud and Lacan have made love the object of scientific enquiry, which is in itself remarkable, since we usually turn this subject over to literary and philosophical treatment. This article discusses Freud and Lacan's contributions to the psychology of love through dialogue with Marcel Proust's seminal novel, Remembrance of Things Past, with special emphasis on the middle sections. The point of departure is love's manifestation in the analytical situation. Freud has described transference love as both resistance and as an extreme variant of normal falling in love, to which Lacan adds the deceptive character of transference. From transference love the investigation continues to the contradictions Freud has described in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality as love's affectionate and sensual currents. Lacan contributes the concept of desire, which must be distinguished from drive and love. The differentiation between desire, drive and love introduces the perspective necessary for a psychoanalytic reading of Proust's opus. The main objective is a reading of the protagonists, Albertine and the Baron de Charlus, as representatives of the vicissitudes of love and drive, respectively.     

Sexual desire,not hypersexuality,predicts self-regulation of sexual arousal

A person's ability to control their own sexual arousal is important both to reduce the risks associated with some sexual behaviours and to respond sexually with intimate partners. A lack of control over sexual urges is a proposed feature of “hypersexual disorder”, though some evidence suggests that sexual desire predicts the self-regulation of sexual arousal better than hypersexuality. In the current study, a sample (N = 116) of men and women recruited from community ads viewed a series of 20-second neutral and sexual films. Before each sexual film, participants were instructed to increase their sexual arousal, decrease their sexual arousal or respond as usual. Higher levels of desire for sex with a partner consistently predicted failures to downregulate sexual arousal. Hypersexuality was unrelated. These findings replicate Winters et al.'s study and extend their findings by including upregulation, women, a new measure of hypersexuality and a higher-trial design.     

The analysis of experience: John Dewey and Elsie Ripley Clapp on desire and thinking, 1911

Unpublished correspondence with Elsie Ripley Clapp, along with extensive notes for a 1911 course, The Analysis of Experience, provide the context for a consideration of John Dewey's discussion of the relation between desire and thinking. Dewey's philosophic point of view is portrayed as it was developing in his own mind. The unity of thought and desire, the necessity of making objects of inquiry, the identification of thinking and acting, are themes in these materials which would appear in their published form in such works as Essays in Experimental Logic, Democracy and Education, and Human Nature and Conduct. In the unpublished materials, Dewey is seen as a naturalist at work in his laboratory, reworking his ideas and acknowledging Clapp's assistance in getting Dewey to connect practical situations in life with the philosophic distinctions under development. The 1911 materials are an excellent connection between problematics in Dewey's earlier writings on ethics, epistemology, and logic, and his later writings, on the same subjects in the 1920's and 1930's.     

The death of an analysand: transference, countertransference and desire

This paper is offered as an exploration of transference and countertransference issues when, in the process of analysis, the analysand becomes terminally ill. Written from the point of view of the analyst, eros and boundary issues are discussed. It is proposed that those who are about to die may form particularly intense erotic attachments and that this is characteristic of a speeded up individuation process. The paper is based on the case of a suicidally depressed man who formed an immediate, dependent and erotic transference. After three months, he was diagnosed as having an inoperable lung cancer. From then on the analytic frame was challenged by pressures to act out in a number of different ways. It is argued that gender difference and the heterosexual pairing facilitated the differentiation of adult, sexual and Oedipal feelings from infantile, pre-Oedipal ones. Maintenance of the analytic frame enabled the individuation process to continue to the end.     

Savoring time: desire, pleasure and wholehearted activity

There is considerable appeal to the Aristotelian idea that taking pleasure in an activity is sometimes simply a matter of attending to it in such a way as to render it wholehearted. However, the proponents of this idea have not made adequately clear what kind of attention it is that can perform the surprising feat of transforming otherwise indifferent activities into pleasurable ones. I build upon Gilbert Ryle's suggestion that taking pleasure in an activity is tantamount to engaging in the activity while fervently desiring to do it and it alone. More specifically, I draw upon insights into the sort of evaluative attention involved in having a desire to generate corollary insights into the sort of attention that makes activity pleasurable. My aim is to offer a compelling account of a certain class of pleasures, and to shed light on their relation to reasons. I argue that prospective pleasures in this class are not always reasons for action, and that even when they are reasons they have this status only derivatively, as vivid apprehensions of an independent realm of values. This does not mean that such pleasures are never good. They are good provided that they track real values, for then they constitute a proper savoring of one's activities and/or circumstances, and provide a valuable respite from the distractions and unwarranted doubts that so often leave us at odds with ourselves and alienated from our own doings.     

Making space for India in post-apartheid South Africa: Narrating diasporic subjectivities through classical song and dance

Background/purposeDiasporic associations and hometown groups fuel transnational exchanges and circulations. Their role has mostly been understood in terms of broader calculative agendas related to ethnic and national cultural politics. In South Africa, classical Indian singers, dancers and instrumentalists are an important part of these transnational landscapes. This paper focuses on the individual actors giving shape to these flows, and explores how a range of subjectivities is entangled with the materialities and forces present in classical performance spaces.Methods and resultsDrawing on fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, it explores how, and why organising actors assemble the matter of classical performance spaces. The paper also explores interconnections to Bollywood as another emergent diasporic site both in tension and accord with classical Indian performances.ConclusionDrawing from a feminist social practice approach, this paper argues that diaspora associational life is assembled through agents negotiating different gaps and discrepancies arising from the material and affective inhabitation of diasporic worlds.     

Unintended,but still blameworthy: the roles of awareness,desire, and anger in negligence,restitution, and punishment

Two experiments (Experiment 1 N?=?149, Experiment 2 N?=?141) investigated how two mental states that underlie how perceivers reason about intentional action (awareness of action and desire for an outcome) influence blame and punishment for unintended (i.e., negligent) harms, and the role of anger in this process. Specifically, this research explores how the presence of awareness (of risk in acting, or simply of acting) and/or desire in an acting agent's mental states influences perceptions of negligence, judgements that the acting agent owes restitution to a victim, and the desire to punish the agent, mediated by anger. In both experiments, awareness and desire led to increased anger at the agent and increased perception of negligence. Anger mediated the effect of awareness and desire on negligence rather than negligence mediating the effect of mental states on anger. Anger also mediated punishment, and negligence mediated the effects of anger on restitution. We discuss how perceivers consider mental states such as awareness, desire, and knowledge when reasoning about blame and punishment for unintended harms, and the role of anger in this process.     

Age moderates the link between relationship desire and life satisfaction among singles

Higher desire for a romantic partner has been shown to be associated with lower life satisfaction for singles, but research has not considered whether the strength of this association might vary across age groups. We collected data from single participants (N = 3057) across a broad age range (18 to 75 years of age, mean = 36.12, standard deviation [SD] = 12.34) to examine age as a moderator of the relationship between desire for a partner and singles' life satisfaction. Our results suggest that having greater desire for a partner is associated with lower life satisfaction for older (1 SD above the mean or 48.46 years) versus younger (1 SD below the mean or 23.78 years) individuals. We also found some evidence that this age-dependent association was stronger for women than men. Further, this interaction effect remained largely unchanged controlling for participants' attachment anxiety or avoidance. This study highlights the importance of considering how singlehood may play out differently for individuals at different life stages.     

Learning to feel at home. Governing homelessness and the politics of affect

The emotional and affective dynamics of homelessness are an established matter of concern in geographical research. Geographers have called attention to homelessness as an embodied phenomenon and to the emotional distress that affects people experiencing homelessness. What has achieved less attention though are the politics of affect that characterize spaces of care. Attempts to make homeless people ‘housing ready’ often target emotions and try to provide clients with a sense of belonging and feelings of responsibility in matters of housekeeping and homemaking. The paper takes these attempts to create emotionally stable ‘housing ready’ selves as a point of departure to open a set of broader questions concerning the nature of encounters between the welfare state and its citizens. It shows how spaces of care address ‘housing readiness’ as a personal ability and thereby abstract from the complex affective entanglements and prepersonal conditions that characterize dwelling. To highlight the paradoxical effects of therapeutic approaches to dwelling as a subjective emotional skill that can be mastered, I contrast the notion of ‘housing readiness’ with recent work in the field of affective geographies that allows for a different articulation of dwelling as a dense web of practices, atmospheres and relations between people, spaces and things.     

Parental desire and fertility preservation in assigned male at birth transgender people living in Belgium

Abstract

Introduction: Transgender people who chose to proceed with gender affirming hormonal and/or surgical therapy, may face reduced options for fulfilling their parental desire in the future. The ideas and concerns of adult transgender people regarding fertility preservation and parental desire have never been reported in a large, non-clinical sample of assigned male at birth (AMAB) transgender people.

Methods: A web-based survey on fertility and parenthood in (binary and non-binary) transgender people was conducted in Belgium. AMAB people were selected for this analysis.

Results: We included 254 AMAB persons, of which 196 (77.2%) self-identified as transgender women (TW), 14 (5.5%) as cross-dressers and 44 (17.3%) as gender non-binary (GNB) people. Fifty-five (21.6%) respondents had a current/future parental desire, parental desire was already fulfilled in 81 (31.9%) and not present in 57 people (22.4%) (other: 19.2%). TW were more likely to express a parental desire, compared to GNB people and cross-dressers (P?=?0.004). In total, 196 AMAB people previously sought medical assistance, of which 30 (15.3%) considered the loss of fertility due to the transitioning process undesirable. The majority (68.2%) did not want fertility preservation (FP). Fourteen people (9.8%) had proceeded with FP. The main reasons not to proceed with FP included not feeling the need (70; 68.0%), not desiring a genetic link with (future) child(ren) (20; 19.4%) and having to postpone hormone treatment (15; 14.6%). TW were more likely to have a parental desire and to have cryopreserved or to consider cryopreserving gametes, compared to GNB people.

Conclusion: Parental desire and FP use were lower in the current non-clinical sample than in previous research on clinical samples. This can possibly be explained by the barriers transgender people face when considering fertility options, including postponing hormone therapy. Also, GNB persons have different needs for gender affirming treatment and FP.     

Religion,Statelessness, and Belonging

Before 1948, and stretching back more than 1800 years, the Jewish people suffered all the problems of statelessness. The Zionist movement, 1897–1948, strove to end the condition of Jewish exile and statelessness. The great historical irony and tragedy is that the establishment of the State of Israel brought about the Nakba, the catastrophe, of the Palestinian people. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians see themselves as the victims of the conflict. They seem to be competitors in what I call a “suffering sweepstakes.” One of the problems with victimhood is that it prevents victims from assuming responsibility for their actions, including the victimization of others. In the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, both sides are victims and both sides are victimizers. The least helpful thing people can do – and regrettably many well‐meaning people do this – is to portray the situation in terms of a zero‐sum game, in which, if you’re pro‐Palestinian, you must be anti‐Israeli, and vice versa. We must be both pro‐Palestinian and pro‐Israeli, because we are pro‐people and, therefore, pro‐peace. The achievement of peace necessitates a two‐state solution based on some recognition of the two narratives. The best fulfilment of Zionism will come when there is a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.     

Fame and the social self: The need to belong,narcissism, and relatedness predict the appeal of fame

The present online survey study (Amazon’s MTurk; n = 371) investigated links between three different social self-concepts (the need to belong, narcissism, and relatedness) and the appeal of fame. We examined fame attitudes using a newly-devised fame appeal scale (yielding three factors: Visibility, Status and Prosocial), as well as with two items probing frequency of fame fantasizing and perceived realism of becoming famous. Results show that higher belongingness needs were associated with increased appeal of all three fame factors, as well as increased frequency of fantasizing about fame (accounting for age and gender). Narcissism was associated with increased appeal of Visibility and Status, more time spent engaged in fame fantasy, and greater perceived realism of future fame. Finally, Relatedness predicted increased appeal of the Prosocial fame factor only. Findings illuminate the socioemotional underpinnings of fame appeal and the individual differences that may render certain aspects of fame particularly alluring.     

Queer ethics and fostering positive mindsets toward non-binary gender,genderqueer, and gender ambiguity

Abstract

Background: Alongside the growth in visibility of gender identities and presentations such as genderqueer, non-binary and gender neutral, there is ridicule and backlash in wider culture, as well as more subtle invisibility and misgendering. While there exists social psychology research about negative and positive attitudes to trans people, this is restricted to those whose gender identity is at odds with their sex assigned at birth, and who identify with binary gender. Social psychology has extended to the more subtle workings of transphobia, but there is little consideration of the distinctiveness of attitudes and responses to those whose genders cannot be attributed in binary ways, and thus how these may be challenged.

Methods: In keeping with the methods of social theory, this article brings together a diverse and complementary range of conceptual fields in new ways to diagnose a novel cause and solution to these negative attitudes. Using queer theory, feminist ethics, and empirical studies in post-tolerance sociology and social psychology, it argues that negative social responses to genderqueerness stem not only from overt prejudice in the form of transphobia but from binary genderism, the conviction that there are only two genders.

Results and conclusion: This article proposes fostering greater diversity-literacy and empathy for difference as a more effective approach than minority identity-based ‘prejudice reduction’ approaches. A norm-critical approach to deconstructing gender norms is proposed, thus fostering positive attitudes to genderqueerness. It is therefore demonstrated how best to foster enabling social contexts for genderqueerness, with positive implications for the physical and social health and wellbeing of gender variant people. This approach can be applied in organizations, institutions, and by service providers who interact with genderqueer individuals, in that it can inform a shift to approaching diversity positively in ways that are not restricted to pre-determined and binary identity categories.     

A psychoanalytic understanding of the desire for knowledge as reflected in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood1

The author offers an understanding of the psychoanalytic notion of the desire for knowledge and the possibility of attaining it as it fi nds expression in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. This understanding has not been explicitly articulated by Freud but may be considered integral to psychoanal ysis' Weltanschauung as shaped by Freud's legacy. It emerges through an attempt to explain basic shifts, contradictions, inconsistencies and tensions that become apparent from a close reading of the text of Leonardo. Articulating this implicit understanding of knowledge provides the grounds for a stance on epistemology that is integral to psychoanalysis and relevant to contemporary psychoanalytic concerns on this topic. This epistemology focuses on the necessary involvement of passion, rather than detachment, in the search for knowledge and views the psychoanalytic aim of self‐knowledge as a derivative, and most immediate expression, of a broader and more basic human drive to know.     

Sexual ethics, marriage, and sexual autonomy: the landscapes for Muslimat and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Muslims

Muslims today are increasingly re-examining gender and human rights in the light of Qur’anic teachings, and these issues crucially intersect in the terrain of sexual autonomy. The Qur’an insists that men and women are spiritually equal, yet dominant interpretations of sexual rights in Islam are not gender symmetrical. This paper asks whether Islam’s depiction of sexuality and marriage allows a space for female, and non-heterosexual, sexual autonomy. It also explores current interpretations of Islam, sexuality and same-sex relationships amongst British Muslims who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered. Large issues are at stake for contemporary Muslims re-examining their institutions and identity. Does marriage remain authoritative when paradigms of sexuality shift, and what does this mean for sexual autonomy in the wider Muslim consciousness?     

Race,Belonging, and Participation in Religious Congregations

Significant effort has gone into understanding and promoting racial diversity in congregations. Still, uniting worshippers of different races remains a challenging endeavor. Even congregations that successfully attract worshippers of different races often have difficulty sustaining their multiracial composition. This study contributes to the discussion of race and religion by examining racial group differences in belonging and participation in congregations. Drawing on organizational ecology theory, we develop four hypotheses to test whether and how racial group size corresponds to congregational commitment. Results of multilevel modeling using 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey data reveal that those who are a part of a congregation's largest racial group possess a stronger sense of belonging and participate at a deeper level than congregants of other races. Moreover, differences in belonging and participation by racial group persist regardless of group size.     

The New Anti-Semitism in Europe: The Islamic Dimension of,and Jewish Belonging in,the EU

This article examines the sense of Jewish vulnerability and exclusion in Europe that has resulted from manifestations, and Jewish perceptions, of the “new anti-Semitism,” and the role of Islamic communities in Europe in propagating this form of hatred of Jews. First emerging in 2000 with the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, and tied in with the Middle East conflict, anger at Israel is directed at Diaspora Jewish communities. This “new anti-Semitism” targets the Jewish collective with the characteristics of anti-Semitism previously aimed at individual Jews. The article focuses on the wave of anti-Semitism that erupted as a result of the 2014 Israeli–Hamas War. Based on an analysis of European Jewish communities, it considers the active part played by European Muslim communities in perpetrating the new anti-Semitism. Using an analysis of survey data, emigration statistics and newspaper opinion articles by leading European Jewish intellectuals, the article considers how the new anti-Semitism is adversely affecting Jewish–Muslim relations and the concomitant sense of “belonging” of European Jewry. The article considers what is required to overcome the new anti-Semitism propagated by Muslim communities to restore a greater sense of Jewish belonging to, and identification with, Europe.     

Edward said: Identity,politics and history 1

Abstract

This paper draws on the work of Edward Said in order to extend understandings of the social and historical roots of identity, and to introduce possible new insights into the inextricable relationship between the West and the Rest. Edward Said, a critical thinker and exponent of postcolonial theory, was profoundly concerned with a range of political, historical and literary matters. His concerns focused on elucidating and analysing the social and political conditions that he argued are shot through culture. For Said nothing and no-one is immune from history, ideology or the political and social conditions that we inhabit. Said's preoccupation focused on illuminating that which is irreconcilable and he emphasized the tensions and contradictions in texts and in societies (especially America and the Middle East). His political and literary writing is ethical as it emphasizes the psychoanalytic endeavour to continually think anew and to investigate one's projections and illusions. There is no place for complacency in Said's work.