At the Borders of Queer Nation
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Why speak.
Because
The process of categorization, and thus the psychology of categorization, reside, not just in the mind, but... within discourse as part of a collective domain of negotiation, debate, argumentative and ideological struggle. ...
The same argument extends to other aspects of subjectivity - motives, personality, intentions. Identity - who one is and what one is like - is established through discursive acts. (Wetherell and Potter 1992, in Sampson 1993:1223)
This paper is an action of
identification, and
bisexuality exists. As bisexuality exists and persists, it threatens the
oppositional and
binary conceptions of both
gender and existing
sexualities. It also in some ways calls into question the
entitivity of groups such as
gays and
lesbians - "it is primarily in periods of declining
hegemony that such outbursts of
cultural identification become a genuine possibility"(Friedman 1992:854). It could be because the categories of 'lesbian' and 'gay' are based on their opposition to the
hegemonic straight world that they are perhaps losing hegemony over their own (more or less) constituent groups; I'm not sure why the hegemony is declining except perhaps for even more
individualism and more channels for voices to come through. However,
in the breakdown of authority... a new voice appears. This is not the voice of reversal, not even, necessarily, of subaltern power, but a complex understanding related to the internalization of a Western discourse that can now be placed in a perspective that encompasses and supersedes the former situation.(Friedman 1992:854)
I do not agree that there will necessarily be one,
unitary voice, but they are appearing.
If a bisexual community can form with no need to define itself in relation to its
"opposite," perhaps there I will have my coming-out place. Until then, home is not a place, but a process.(Queen 1991:21)
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