Abstract
Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson, Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships, and Power, Routledge: London, 2011; 238 pp.: 978-0-415-59989-4, $125.00, £75.00 (hbk)
The question of sexual freedom continues to plague contemporary understandings of gender, sexuality, and the body. How do we make sense of the peculiar intersections between the personal and the political? In what way are our impulses toward freedom sexualized just as our impulses toward sexuality long for freedom? What might it mean to queer freedom? In their 10 chapter volume, Anarchism & Sexuality, Heckert and Cleminson assemble a poetic range of scholars, artists, and rebels to interrogate the way anarchy—a subject typically quarantined into only the most narrow corners of political discourse—interfaces with the many manifestations of sexuality. Framing their work as an entry point into a surprising gap in the literature (indeed, few texts have seriously considered the ways that anarchy maps onto current debates within queer theory, sexuality studies, and feminism), the text positions anarchy to facilitate new modes of sexual knowledge and understanding. How might colliding bodies signal bigger stories of social movements? How might the bodies of our grandmothers better inform anarchist politics than the bodies of the state? Does love, as Che so famously claimed, inform the core of the revolution(ary)?
Taking a relatively loose definition of anarchy as a movement that destabilizes hierarchies, pushes boundaries, and destroys typical notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ the volume provokes readers to consider how anarchy could critically upend a number of taken-for-granted assumptions about sexuality: the goal-directed aspects of orgasm, notions of intimacy and nonintimacy, (racialized) dominance and submission, monogamy and polyamory, phallic-centered sex acts, and concerns with ‘topping’ each other. Rather, a sexuality that actively learns from the tenets of anarchy would advocate renegotiations of gender/queer roles and racial boundaries, relational aspects of bodies and caretaking, the mutuality of ‘freedom’ (however defined), and an adamant resistance to orthodoxy and barriers between people. Each of the 10 chapters tackles these lofty goals in sharply different ways, from the highly personal and testimonial (Chapter 8, Heckert) to the intensely political (Chapter 9, Kolářová).
Reading the text as a whole, it becomes clear that Heckert and Cleminson have assembled an astonishing range of perspectives that tackle the question of anarchism and sexuality from a multitude of perspectives. The book strikes a near-perfect balance between powerhouse ‘high theory’ (queer, poststructural, postanarchist, subaltern, and so on) and embodied knowledge. After an astute opening chapter that lays the groundwork for what is at stake in theorizing and writing about sexual anarchy (Chapter 1), we encounter Jenny Alexander’s remarkable rereading of Russian-American anarchist Alexander Berkman (the companion of Emma Goldman) and his memoirs of finding same-sex love not categorized as homosexuality while in prison (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, Shevphen Shukaitis builds on the concept of affinity groups (first established by Ben Morea of Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker) to argue that all resistance movements must establish affective bonds between people so that intimacy can form the basis of social revolution. Radically critiquing the (male) gendering of labor movements (with a particularly astute critique of Wages for Housework), Shukaitis argues that anarchists must consider the gendered and sexualized positions of all workers in order to build new kinds of solidarity.
We then visit the wonderfully postmodern landscape of cyborgs in ‘dildotopia’ as Lena Eckert (Chapter 4) argues for a radical decentering of the phallus in modern sexual life. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts of diffuse resistance and Butler’s notion of ‘aggressive reterritorialization,’ she calls for the eroticization of all body parts and a complete upheaval in the way people ‘know themselves’ sexually. Following this, Chapter 5 delivers a fascinating interview between Jamie Heckert and famed gender trouble-maker, Judith Butler, who gives an uncharacteristically accessible interview about divides between Western gay liberatarianism (aimed at securing privileges from the state) and queer anarchism (one that racializes its subjects and seeks to undermine all hierarchies), ultimately queering the divides between activist and scholar. Chapters 6 and 7 both address different literary interpretations of anarchism and sexuality, tracing Ursula Le Guin’s Four Ways to Forgiveness as a text where love and revolution remain inextricably intertwined (Lawrence Davis), followed by Lewis Call’s reading of the science fiction landscapes of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany as spaces where the consensual sexualization of power contrasts sharply with state imposed power of slavery and racism.
Calling into question the meaning of love in the present tense, Jamie Heckert takes up the question of radical, personal sex education by weaving together autobiographical moments and astute political analysis (Chapter 8), followed by Marta Kolářová’s examination of how, in the Czech Republic, queer and feminist perspectives have only recently entered the discourse of anarchy, resulting in clashes between the fascist state and the emerging LGBTQ rights movement. Using the example of Queer Parades, Kolářová interrogates the fundamental importance of intersectional understandings of social rebellion. To complete the collection, Chapter 10 brings us a thoughtful consideration of ‘queer autonomous spaces’—always outside of capitalism and the state—that reflect back the fictions of the mainstream. By situating these spaces as offering new possibilities for social relationships, he uses examples of queer mutinies (e.g. Queeruption), rural rebellions (e.g. Queer Pagan Camp), anti-capitalist projects (e.g. DIY queer scene), and autonomous housekeeping (e.g. public toilets in East London) to capture the unique rebelliousness of the now.
Read together, Heckert and Cleminson have created an intricate web of writings that unsettle the boundaries between anarchy and sexuality while also earnestly asking readers to question their own practices, ideologies, and self-imposed limitations. Here, queer becomes an ethic, sex becomes a radical reinvention of the body moving through political space, and love is dislodged from its place as ‘touchy feely’ and instead wedged squarely at the center of political consciousness. As Heckert writes, ‘I don’t want to wait for “after the revolution” to feel joy; indeed, perhaps there is no after. No afterlife, only life. And life, I know, is full of erotic potential’ (p. 174). The volume provokes readers to constantly consider new possibilities of sexual exchange, including new points of entry into the discourse of sex and new visions for what sex could be. Much like the Occupy Wall Street protests occurring now, anarchist sex and sexual anarchy have no leaders, no spokespeople, no hierarchies between poetry and literature, scholarship and testimonial—as long as it represents an impulse toward sexual freedom, it has the power to transform. In this sense, the book radically reimagines the potential of sexological, psychological, and sociological literatures by knocking down not only disciplinary boundaries but by questioning the creation and dispersal of resistance narratives within and outside of academia. We are asked to challenge the notion that sex has special status, defines selfhood, and should forever link up with capitalism; rather, sex has the potential to change shapes, adapt, (d)evolve, develop new tactics, and, ultimately, always question.
Something of this text reminded me of Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic (2000), as it harnessed both radicalism and gentleness, sweeping political change and the slow burn of personal growth. This collection makes no demands on readers to adopt any particular strategic position, but rather asks more questions than it answers. This is the book I have been waiting for—the book I want to give my students, share with friends, and draw from in my own work. It makes me grateful for my training in feminist theory, and ever more committed to using anarchy as a basis for sexual politics. Further, with many entry points and many uses across fields—particularly sexuality studies, gender studies, psychology, sociology, queer studies, and cultural studies—it speaks to the problems circulating now within those discourses. In an age where people too often settle for ‘just sex’ or ‘friends with benefits’ arrangements or ‘hooking up,’ this text asks for more: What other possibilities can sex offer aside from a physical outlet or a way of using others’ bodies for personal gratification (as the state often does to its citizens)? How can we queer the boundaries between sex and ‘everything else’? Can we reread the texts of our past and find erotic potential there? Most importantly (and I interpret this loosely), how can we raise the bar on what we have come to expect from the erotic? Can sex become a tool of personal and political revolution, even in the smallest of ways?
In this sense, I recall the recent decision that São Paolo, Brazil lawmakers enacted which banned all public advertisement (e.g. billboards, subway advertisements, signs, etc) in their city (Burgoyne, 2007; Herro, 2007; Plummer, 2006). This ban, supported by over 70% of the city’s population, forced its residents to consider new ways of relating, new ways of consuming, and new ways of utilizing public space. People found themselves demanding a greater presence of public art and community gardens. They asked their neighbors for recommendations for a hairdresser or a clothing store. Businesses had to sell good products and services (and, incidentally, found themselves with a lot more profit when scrapping their giant advertising budgets). People in São Paolo saw their city differently, as if for the first time. Heckert and Cleminson have done the same with this text; they have put forth this astonishing collection of writings as a way to provoke thinking about a world without the typical limits and interventions we have come to see as inevitable. They aren’t. As such, what else becomes possible?