Difference, Becoming, and Interrelatedness: A Material Resistance Becoming

Abstract

Difference, Becoming, and Interrelatedness: A Material Resistance Becoming Robyn Henderson‐Espinoza Language has by far been used to colonize bodies. In fact, the coloniality of language is one such strategy in controlling bodies. The technology of control in movements that use strategies of resistance is something to which we should pay attention. I am thinking particularly to movements of liberation that are seeking something that is identifiable as “equality.” We see the myth of quality in the homonormative movement that is called marriage equality. That, if we, as a movement (that is mostly based in white liberal gay men and lesbian women of a certain economic class), can establish, and then mobilize, the language of “equality,” it can result in the state‐sanctioned and socially recognizable relationships that are found in coupledom. Yet, what we don't realize is that this language of equality is rooted in white, neoliberal capitalism that privileges the individuality of relationships, not the deep contours of community that have shaped our movements for decades. Stonewall, built on the backs of Transgender folks, remains a touchstone for me, a Latin@ queer Trans*gressive genderqueer. It was the material resistance of radical queers to normalization and the palpability of change that encourages me to this day. And, so, the movement of equality is an affront to real liberation, rooted in the collective consciousness of all, because equality simply roots us all in an economy of coloniality that refuses to take up the politics of resistance and instead uses strategies of 19th liberalism (in particular, individualism) to nourish this movement. If marriage equality is a movement of resistance, then we would see marriage manifested in new and different ways that challenge the status quo, and a movement that seeks to disrupt the economic structures that keep marriage in a very stable state‐recognizable expression. Instead, the state only recognizes a two‐person coupled unit. How does this state‐sponsored recognition encourage equality? Furthermore, how does the rhetoric of equality re‐inscribe the privileges that have been a part of state‐sanctioned marriages for centuries and in turn normalize the marriages of LGBT persons as part of the norm that was created? Here, I am focusing on the speech acts that emerge as part of marriage—a particular politics that focuses on unity and in theory, “equality.” When, in fact, what the discourse of marriage does is create an internal hierarchy whereby the state becomes the governing body of the couple, and the most dominant person in the couple becomes the spokesperson. Does the marriage equality movement realize this is what they are promoting? How is marriage equality a movement of resistance? I argue that it is not! I argue that marriage equality, couched in the language of white, neoliberal freedom whose outcome is marriage, is really a very particular iteration of white, upper‐middle class “liberation” tactics that are only meant for a certain economic class and racial structure. I can go further and suggest that it re‐inscribes the logic of white supremacy. It is assimilationist politics that I think are particularly antithetical to the history of the LGBTQ+ movements that have grown out of a sense of radical separatist moments that privilege, in philosophical terms, difference and becoming. I do not think that marriage equality is for all, or has the ability to liberate us all. It privileges the few, as seen in the cases that were presented to the U.S. Supreme Court and other U.S. state supreme courts. And, so, if marriage equality is actually harmful to the LGBTQ+ community, in that it promotes a universalizing reality of socially recognizable and state‐sanctioned relationships that is palatable to the dominant group, then can the LGBTQ+ movement reclaim its politics of resistance and struggle for freedom in the creation of a movement of radical difference, or a return to radical difference? If there is a word or gesture for which I would advocate, it would be that of a return to the politics of radical difference. What difference establishes (in non‐foundational ways) is a multiplicity through diffraction. Diffraction is that particular method of combining disparate strands of thinking and being (and becoming) and...