Queering the praxis divide: queer theory and personal accountability

Abstract

This article confronts the rhetoric often at the forefront of debates concerning the relationship between queer activism and queer theory. I argue that the notion of the praxis divide – most often evoked under the mandate of ‘turning theory into practice’ – assumes universal relationships to social history and functions to delegitimise ‘theoretical’ utterances from the political sphere. In effect, the praxis divide substantiates liberal ideologies of the self by demanding certain hegemonic modes of being present. Lee Edelman's psychoanalytically rooted argument that, when it comes to the signification of the self, queer is what insists on the ‘vicissitudes of the sign’ (2004, p. 7) provides the framework for this critique. My discussion challenges the conception of ‘personal disclosure’ – or the affiliation of one's self and its victimisation in accordance with a particular social identity – as a means of substantiating a ‘truer’ subjective voice or one that is more politically grounded. An insistence on the impossibility or slipperiness of accounting for the way we account for our queerness is central, and not antithetical, to the uses of both queer theory and queer activism.