Qu(e)erying Pornography: Contesting Identity Politics in Feminism

Abstract

Contemporary approaches to sexuality demonstrate a simultaneous dissatisfaction with identity categories, and an acknowledgment of the difficulty of moving beyond or through these. In the face of relativism, strategic essentialism is at best a temporary measure and most likely counter-productive as we are caught in the bind of attempting to articulate our identity politics by means that regulate our identities further. Identity politics (ranging from separatism to strategic essentialism and reiterative performativity) operate on the grounds of ‘authenticity’, whether of anatomy, preference or experience. Yet these efforts to explain or articulate identity, even in the most temporary or contingent sense, are recuperated hegemonically as discourses of inclusivity give way to hierarchies of dissidence, pleasure, or even marginalisation. If the necessary articulation of sex and sex identity is at best a temporary totalisation, exclusive rather than inclusive in its function, in what sense can sexuality theorists speak of the practices, possibilities and transgressive potentialities of ‘sexualities,’ without this implicit classification and its dimorphic discursive and material function?KeywordsIdentity PoliticsWave FeminismLesbian StudyHegemonic IdealStrategic EssentialismThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.