Friday, December 31, 2010

From a Montevidayo post regarding The Black Swan:
 
"In the comment field to a previous post Adam Strauss suggested that Nina is a lesbian, but I think that’s making her too stable."
 
The above response strikes me as participating--accidentally I suspect--in the well established discourse of lesbian erasure.  For something to be visible there--typically--is a minimal degree of stability required, so to jump (as the comment does in the bit I didactically leave out) to emphasizing an instable sexuality seems to me to be a move in collusion with the prior mentioned erasure; or if not erasure just uninterest.  Now if it was stated that the character in question--Nina--is for sure not clearly a heterosexual, then I'd be less suspicious of this comment.  As may be clear, I find the notion of polysexuality--or sexuality as unstable electron-cloud etc--very problematic: it seems to afford the opportunity to bypass just how terribly rigid sexuality exists in situated circumstances happening off the page or out of the performance or frame or art-space.   That said, I don't think utopical theorizing/rendering the world wonderfully aesthetic and outside conventional political restraints is bad; just very simultaneously problematic, and perhaps a great vehicle for subtle forms of heterosexual hegemony.  If someone wants to go to logoslalafantabulastic land (or more like outre atmosphere)--and I often want to and do--yay--but please clearly cite counter-arguments to that stance! 

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