Judith Butler and Maggie Nelson: Gender, Identity, Memoir

hi everyone I think we're not going to start at Berkeley time so we have more dialogue rhiness are pretty promptly hello my name is shannon jackson it is primarily as a reader and mentee and interlocutor would be acolyte fan of the speakers that are featured tonight that it is a thorough pleasure to welcome you here its secondarily as the associate vice chancellor for the arts and design that i welcome you to our first in a series of arts and design monday's spring series here at bam/pfa this series is devoted to ongoing dialogue every Monday night that we have school every Monday night you can arrive here in order to hear an ongoing public dialogue around issues in the arts in social justice new media and the future of cultural criticism we're thinking all throughout about the future as we reckon with the circumstances of our time our time is of course a moving target and I do mean moving and I mean target sometimes targeted like all of you perhaps our speakers are assumptions about what tonight's assembly was going to be have changed over the last two months indeed they probably have changed over the last three days but we assemble and we assemble knowing the importance of these kinds of collective structures but also knowing that they are going to change that assemblies will need to respond nimbly and responsibly to changes in our assumptions about our time and about who the hour is in our time who is the we who assembles Judith Butler and Maggie Nelson each in their own ways have made a habit of anticipating such shifts and of the intimate politics of assembly and of kinship internal resistances and it's systemic possibilities says Butler the point of a democratic politics is not simply to extend recognition equally to all people but rather to grasp but that only by changing the relation between the recognizable and the unrecognizable can one equality be understood and pursued and to the people become open to a further elaboration inclusion and recognition she continues have to be addressed as part of a temporarily open democratic struggle so what does it mean to maintain this democratic struggle with temporal openness we might even ask tonight for both Butler and Nelson questions of queer belonging figure consistently in this imagining even as the institutional structures and social futures of such assemblies remaining question as Nelson queries there's something truly strange about living in a historical moment in which the conservative anxiety and despair about queers bringing down civilization and institutions marriage most notably is met by the anxiety and despair so many queers feel about the failure incapacity of queerness to bring down civilization and its institutions so as we debate about who is bringing who down we might also reflect today about who is bringing what up or if up isn't quite the term perhaps we might ask who and what we are bringing who in what we are reassembling daily weekly and for the long haul this series of Monday lectures has been a process of assembly and of resource sharing among centers and faculty from across the Berkley campuses and it's part of the ritual of event introduction that you think all of the contributors who made it possible but this is an important part of making sure we can have events like this so I hope you'll help me honor these contributors for sharing their wisdom their connections their time and their resources so that we can have spaces like this to gather tonight and for the rest of the semester tonight's program is part of series ongoing devoted to the forms and politics of cultural criticism in the digital age one Co curated by the Townsend Center the Arts Research Center the art of writing program black room and digital humanities future Arts and Design Monday's will also feature explorations and public dialogues in arts and social justice and in immersive technologies as part of the art and technology and cultural colloquium the Weisenfeld visiting artists series curated by the Berklee Center for new media the arts Research Center the art practice department and the English department it goes on and on because our campus is so wide-ranging and has so many partners and possibilities and it has been about building trust and resources in order to make sure we could have a routine place to gather that I am so thankful for our faculty collaborators especially tonight director of the Townsend Center Allen townsmen and also so thankful for our staff including bam/pfa staff members such as sherry Goodman standing there Dave Taylor as well as our campus staff collaborators Colleen Barroso Rebecca Eggers and especially Loren Pearson for providing the support structure that makes gathering like these possible can you thank them [Applause] all right this is an assembly built for you for you to use it for you to struggle with it and for you to be part of its further elaboration and for those of you who need reminding about those who will elaborate tonight Judith Butler is the Maxine Elliot professor and the department of comparative literature and critical theory at the University of California Berkeley she is the author of over a dozen groundbreaking books including but not limited to gender trouble bodies that matter excitable speech precarious lives more recently in 2015 she authored census of the subject and notes toward a performative theory of assembly and in 2016 she published a co edited volume vulnerability in resistance with Duke University Press she's been the recipient of numerous international awards including the Andrew Mellon Award for distinguished academic achievement in the humanities the Adorno prize from the city of Frankfort in honor of her contributions to feminist and moral philosophy the Bruckner prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies the Albert Magnus professorship from the city of Cologne she's received nine honorary degrees her books have been translated into more than 20 languages and most importantly her ideas have transformed Catholic lives and in case you don't know Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose and has been the faculty on the faculty of the school of critical Studies at Cal arts since 2005 where she currently serves as the director of the Creative Writing Program her Tech's have forged new modes of nonfiction bridging the theoretical and the autobiographical exploring sexual violence the media as well as gay marriage queer family making and transgender politics she was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award for her 2001 work and won a Susan and glass ik award for interdisciplinary scholarship for her critical work on the New York school of poets school poets women the New York school and other true abstractions she received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her most recent New York Times bestseller the Argonauts she's been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in non fix any a in poetry and innovative literature fellowship from creative capital an arts writer fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation and in the fall of 2016 she was recorded a mark Arthur do we say the G word fellowship she these two will be joined by Jocelyn Edinburgh who will serve as moderator for the evening seyton Berg is a doctoral student in comparative literature here at UC Berkeley her dissertation survivals Echo otherwise itinerant reading and corresponding listening takes as its point of departure a constellation of poetic texts from classical Greek Latin and contemporary Anglophone writers whose work seek to transform readers and to disrupt normative accounts of history the natural world and causality Seidenberg has been a contributor to a range of projects including those hosted by The Belladonna collective second floor projects SFMOMA open space and many others and as someone whose style and method are motivated by the belief that the imbrication of form and content sound and sense generates new forms of being alternate histories and voices we thought she was the perfect person to guide tonight's exchange so perhaps the three can rise and we'll welcome Maggie to the lectern [Applause] will you leave me here can I close this or do I need it up I can okay okay hi let's are everybody oh my gosh it's so great to be here did everything okay bad things happen okay I'm sorry do what do you owe me can I put it to the side and open it will that help you okay or would everyone okay I don't wanna make it Ripa that's okay um it's funny when we were just um back in our hotel glued to CNN and I was thinking I don't want to come out and do an event because and we got talked about something else and exactly what's going on right now and you were talking about you know in three days and three hours and I think but then when I come out we were just talking about how great gathering feels and also how great it feels to make time in space to you know to talk about you know a constellation of things some of which have to do with the present and also some of which just give our mind space to think about some other things so I was so thrilled to to come up here tonight it would there'd be no way in the world for me to overstate how important Judith Butler's work has been to my writing life and my personhood as you were mentioning to so many others but I was just clarifying to get the fact check that it is true that I think I read gender trouble when I was 17 the year that it came out and I've read every book that you just mentioned since I'm all along the way and sometimes I was looking through work to read to you tonight that might that that either had you know Judith Butler in the notes or that referenced you know her directly and I thought and then it was just like just ended up bringing all my books down off the shelf because it was just it was everywhere so it was hard to decide but I thought that um I would read to you and I also I'm ashamed and mortified that I'm the only person reading but Judith has opted not to read so I'm going but it's not because I want that to be the same situation for say so but I'm gonna read for about 10 or 15 minutes from - from both this book the red parts and the Argonauts more recently two totally different selections of material but I thought might be some nice things to throw out on the table for a conversation because I think that question questions we talked about the three of us about queer kinship or other things are also maybe you know made more just made more faceted and interesting by putting maybe some other things along beside them so this book the read parts was written completely in the deep flush if not fever of precarious life and the question that has now you know become a household phrase but about you know which lives are you know what makes life grievable makes a life livable was kind of the entire ontological structure for for three books that I wrote about sexual violence Jaina murder the red parts and then a book called the art of cruelty and everything really in them was filtered through the lenses of some of those chapters so I'll redo a little bit for that reason I forgot my water so I'll read just a little bit from the red parts this book came out in 2005 Oh 2007 key remember I don't know but it was very gratefully reissued 2007 I believe and it was a very gratefully reissued by grey wolf this past year so it feels kind of new so this is in the middle of the book and all you need to know is that my this book is a kind of a courtroom memoir about the trial of a suspect from my aunt's murder who was murdered in 1969 and it was a murder that received a fair amount of tension in the media back in the 60s and so when the case was reopened 48-hours mystery and most other places was interested in doing a show on her murder so this is such from the chapter called American taboo which is about that just a little bit the first email I received from 48-hours mystery comes a few months before the trial from a producer who addresses me as mrs. Nelson unwittingly conjuring up an identity held but fleetingly by my mother many years ago and his email the producer says that he hopes I will consider working with them as he feels very strongly that quote my family's story of struggle and hope and quote has great relevance to their audience I pondered this phrase for some time I wonder if he is imagining my family as the kind to print up t-shirts with James picture James my aunt and we will never forget slogan on them as I have seen some families on these TV shows do I wonder if he read the article in the Detroit Free Press in December in December 2004 in which my grandfather likened the reopening of James case to quote picking a scab I wonder what he would think if he knew that after the January hearing when attorney Hillier asked my grandfather what he thought of the court proceedings so far my grandfather said he found them quote boring I agreed to meet the producer for dinner on a rest at a restaurant the Upper West Side the night before me I stay up late perusing the website for 48 hours mystery I learned that 48 hours used to focus on human interest stories of varying degrees of social importance the International sex trade the pros and cons of the subway diet the risks of gastric bypass surgery but those ratings for investigative journalism plummeted and ratings for true crime shows began to soar 48 hours became 48 hours mystery at times they attempt to take on deeper topics within the murder mystery rubric a recent show for example investigates the topic who killed Jesus and star as Elaine Pagels as I scroll down the long list of show titles I feel my spirit start to sink there are a host of stories about missing or murdered girls and women with panic-inducing titles like whereas baby Sabrina where's Molly where's mrs. March others feature high-profile cases JonBenet DNA rules out parent parents as amber still in love with Scott others drive for more poetic effect Dark Side of the Mesa did Michael Blagg murder his wife and daughter I try to imagine a title they are going to choose for Jane's show but I come up dry I find the producer on a street corner on Broadway talking outside the restaurant with some of his college friends all of him graduated a couple of years ago I'm shocked I had imagined dinner with a slick patrician a hard-boiled veteran of the TV business the surprise is apparently mutual when we sit down he tells me that I look way too young to be a professor and that he's taken aback that I'm not married I have no idea why he thought I was we are meeting early in the evening because he has to fly to LA first thing in the morning to cover the Michael Jackson child molestation trial I'm not very interested in the Michael Jackson molestation trial but I try to make small talk about other famous trials I bring up Gary Gilmore and Norman Mailer's the executioner's song he says he has not heard of Norman Mailer but he will definitely look him up he orders us a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and appears perplexed when it arrives I thought I ordered us a read he says decanting with a shrug over the wine he asks me if while writing Jane I felt as though I were channeling my aunt I say no he looks disappointed I try to explain that Jane is about identification not fusion that I never even knew her the in the book I don't try to speak for her but rather let her speak for herself through her journal entries and although I have tried many times to imagine her death there was really no way of knowing what she went through not only because I don't know what happened to her on the night of her murder but because no one ever knows what it's like to be in anyone elses skin and that no living person can tell another what it is like to die we do that part alone our entrees arrive stylish piles of monkfish and he shifts gears says it's time for the hard sell he says that although 48-hours strives to entertain it also always keeps a serious social issue at stake when I asked him what the issue will be in this case he says the episode will be about grief about helping other people to mourn he says my family's involvement could really help other people who are in similar situations all those viewers who thought they lost a family member to a famous serial killer and then are told 36 laters that DNA from the crime scene matches both that of a retired nurse and a man who was four years old at the time and grew up to murder his mother I think that's a very condensed version of the plot of this book and more generally um with less graciousness than I had hoped to display I asked him if there is a reason why stories about the bizarre violent deaths of young good-looking middle to upper-class white girls help people to mourn the better than other stories I thought it might come to this he says good-naturedly but warily refolding the napkin and his app okay I'm gonna leave that poor guy alone and skip to a different part of this one okay so now to be completely you know implicated this is a hundred pages later when I'm in fact on the set of 48 hours mystery here we are alright okay so I'm about to leave late moved from New York so but before I go I agreed to spend my last day in the city doing one more interview with 48 hours mystery it's hazy and hot a dog day of summer I made up with the crew in an empty loft in Soho kept blissfully dark and cool by black crepe paper is stapled over the arched windows I enjoy the cool air in the free Greek salad they feed me for lunch but the interview itself is not easy it goes on for hours and the correspondent is smart asking much harder questions than I had anticipated at one point she asks me if while writing Jane I had ever stopped to wonder why murders like the Michigan murders or like my aunt's murder occur does she mean serial murder torture and murder random murder rape and murder just plain old run-of-the-mill men killing women of course I say flashing on the awful book sexual murder Kadath I'm ik and compulsive homicides which sat on my desk like a dirty bomb all winter but that doesn't strike me as the right question she doesn't respond so I add the why seems like the obvious part well then she zeroes in if it's so obvious then tell us why do they remember questions are not evidence the judge had instructed the jury at the start of the trial only answers are evidence the answer on the tip of my tongue is a curt one because men hate women but I cannot say that on national TV without coming off as a rabid man hating feminists and nor is it really what I mean James Ellroy can say in his book my dark places this is a quote all men hate women for tried and true reasons they share in jokes and banter in everyday and now you know you know that half the world will condone what you were just about to do look at the bags under that redheads eyes look at her stretch marks she's putting that rag back in now she's getting blood blood all over your seat covers men are animals my grandfather told me so many times growing up I began to wonder if he was making a kind of veiled confession or just voicing a lament for his greater tribe Sousa quote the most serving murderers kill for only one reason their own enjoyment declares the voiceover at the start of killing for pleasure an History Channel show I chanced upon a few days after the January hearing well channel surfing at a friend's apartment a show which to my very great surprise featured the Michigan murders with the grandiosity better suited to an inaugural dress or inaugural dresses of times past the closing voiceover says that despite their differences John Collins who was accused of my aunt's murder and the other rapists murderers featured on the program all sharing one thing quote the ancient bloodlust of the Greeks and Romans and quote the parting shot is of the Coliseum so now to the reporter what can I say all men hate women men are animals or quote George Bataille in essence the domain of errata sysm is the domain of violence of violation or we're these are all quotes from previously in the book we live in a society in which there really are fearful and awful people or conversely gosh I have no idea how could I possibly understand the sick depraved monstrous things human beings do to each other and have apparently done since time immemorial might as well just chalk it up to the ancient blood lust of the Greeks and Romans but both of those answers come out of a script and it's a script I want out of a script with two equally lazy endings cynicism or incredulity neither is right and neither is good enough so that's from the read parts and laba oh that's no no I was good that's just like a palate cleanser because this is um okay now I'm ruining the computer this is a really different um kind of a book the argonauts I'd written three books about similar subjects to the read parts the books I just mentioned and with the exception of a book in between about the color blue I felt like I've been focused on a lot of darkness and kind of negativity for some time so this book was in some ways it was a aesthetic attempt to aesthetic in at the Cole attempt to write about happiness so I said so that's why I'm palate-cleansing okay so I'm just me read two short sections from this and then we'll get to the good part which is the talking um not long ago a friend came over to our house and pulled down a mug for coffee a mug that was a gift from my mother it's one of those mugs you can purchase online from Snapfish with the photo of your choice and blazoned on him I was horrified when I received it but it's the biggest mug we own so we keep it around in case someone's in the mood for a trough of warm milk or something well my friend said filling it up I've never seen anything so heteronormative in all my life the photo on the mug depicts my family and me all dressed up to go to the Nutcracker at Christmastime a ritual that was important to my mother when I was a little girl and that we have revived with her now there are children in my life in the photo I'm seven months pregnant with what will become egging my son I'm wearing a high ponytail and leopard print dress Harry and his son are wearing matching dark suits looking dashing we are standing in front of the mantle at my mother's house which has monogrammed stockings hanging from it we look happy but what about it is the essence of heteronormativity that my mother made a mug on a bougie service like Snapfish that were clearly participating or acquiescing into participating a long tradition of families being photographed at Holiday time in their holiday best that my mother made me the mug in part to indicate that she recognizes and accepts my tribe as family what about my pregnancy is that inherently heteronormative or is the presumed opposition of queerness and procreation or to put a finer point on it Maternity more of a reactionary embrace of how things have shaken down for queers rather than the mark of some ontological truth as more queers have kids will the presumed opposition simply wither away will you miss it is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself insofar as it profoundly alters one's normal state and occasions of radical intimacy with and radical alienation from one's body how could an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolize or enact the ultimate conformity or is this just another disqualification of anything tied too closely to the female animal from the privileged term in this case nonconformity or radicality what about the fact that harry is neither male nor female I'm a special a two-for-one his character Valentine explains and by hook or by crook now I'm going to quote you dude is another what when our hell quote do news kinship systems mime older nuclear family arrangements and when or how do they radically recontextualize them in a way that constitutes a rethinking of kinship how can you tell or rather who is to tell tell your girlfriend to find a different kid to play house with your ex used to say after we first moved in to align oneself with the real while intimating the others are at play approximate or an imitation can feel good but any fixed claim on realness especially when it is tied to an identity also has its finger in psychosis Lacan says if a man who thinks he is a king is mad a king who thinks he is a king is no less so perhaps this is why when it costs notion of feeling real is so moving to me one can aspire to feel real one can help others to feel real one can oneself feel real a feeling Winnicott describes as the collected primary sensation of aliveness the aliveness is a quote of body tissues and working body functions including the hearts action and breathing which makes spontaneous gesture possible for Winnicott feeling real is not reactive to external stimuli nor is it an identity it is a sensation a sensation that spreads among other things it makes one want to live so our intention tonight is to have tonight's conversation Center on memoir affiliation affiliation kinship those to whom we belong or who belong to us and what makes any of it queer how do we still talk about queer how do we choose and in what sense is it a choice who we depend on and on whom we depend uh well first of all let me also welcome you here it's just a great pleasure to have you here I thank you for this opportunity I also just wanted to say that I was struck by what you said about trying to come to terms with this murder that has been part of your autobiographical legacy and your own efforts to arrive at a position that was neither cynicism nor incredulity and I'm thinking about what it means to steer between incredulity and cynicism I'm also aware at this political moment that almost every day brings a kind of fresh wave of incredulity like surely not that can be true and that the fundamental sense that people have at least on occasion when they haven't found concerted action that that feels right to them is a disorientation like what world my living in what time is this what what will what has happened what will happen where is is there is there predictability or regularity or our are we now in a kind of um time and space where we're not exactly sure how to arrive at orientation and I think that term is a is an interesting one um in a way because not just because it's about orienting oneself in space and time but it also carries with it sexual orientation in other words where am i facing too who do I face in in in what direction with what desire with what a set of pulsations and sensations and I think that there are fundamental questions of how to position oneself physically in the world under conditions such as these but I'm aware maybe I'll just say this about incredulity um I mean I have pals on the left who say uh-uh we shouldn't be so shocked you know America was always capable of there so I be shocked you had a higher view the United States then you should have had and I kind of think no let's stay let's stay ready for shock let's let's hold on to the capacity to be shocked let's not let this become normalized and cynicism can normalize it like Oh what did we expect we were always a fascist country now we're a fascist country what's know what's know not things know right um but also um to stay in the place of incredulity without being able to move as if oh maybe by magic a different kind of order of the world will restore itself and I'll be able to function again in the ways that I already did no no it's it's you know that's not happening right there we have to arrive if we have to face it we have to like yes this is so this is a dynamic historical reality almost a kind of accelerated incredible historical reality but it but that kind of acceleration in that kind of unpredictability is exactly what we're going to have to be able to track and live with and orient ourselves to which is a new orientation and I think um that maybe in some ways we in order to deal with this unpredictability we have to be at least partially unpredictable for ourselves and and and find the ways in that are perhaps not straightforward maybe it may be a queer way in maybe a queer approach to disorientation maybe a moment in which we we start to think about orientation in another way but I also appreciated very much well many issues here but one one question about about social forms like marriage or pregnancy as a social form or I guess we could include monogamy or we could include forms of gift-giving it's always possible to say well I can't be part of any of those things because they are heteronormative and I need to stay in a place that's purified of heteronormative Hadra normativity because why because I'm pure right because purity is my highest value as like I'll think so I don't think that's a good idea you know and and and I think being implicated in a lot of social structures as we are right it's a it's a it's a difficult kind of navigation like how to be a family or how to be a cop ball god forbid or how to be you know our you know how to live with others where where yet social forms are structuring but they're also being kind of oddly improvised or revised as one goes long and I'm I'm just thinking um that's something of of a practiced improvisation in the middle of social structures that cut both ways always and cut several ways always you know is is probably what's up right now I mean how who are we allies with oh no I'm not going to be allies with state officials who are opposing the Trump administration because they're state officials it's like well I don't know folks maybe maybe that's the ally you did not expect to have right who's saying I'm not implementing daca I'm not implementing this travel ban right so doesn't mean you have to love that person doesn't mean you have to identify fully doesn't mean you have to share breakfast right but there is like that's that's a queer Alliance if there ever was one right like okay so we get like like unpredictable improvised you know in some sense of response to historical necessity and new conditions right so something of that maybe um is a queer way of trying to a avert cynicism and incredulity as kind of permanent positions you know anyway sorry I went on too long to say I wish I had a pencil because I just want to be taking notes but I mean I'll just say one thing about that with just it strikes me when I was reading that passage about feeling real that you know one thing I think that that book was trying to do was in part with that Lacan quote about you know a king who thinks he's a king a king is equally mad having a kind of a you know a deep even disorienting skepticism about oneself in the roles that one finds oneself inhabiting in a life well at the same time you know by telling him breasts or other things trying to also pay pay close attention to the experiences of being and/or having a body in this lifetime and that both things can be done in the same pages and in the same space and you know and it's not a it's actually not a hard contradiction you know to hold people's names I felt like you know for this happens to you all the time like I like pity for you like must be so hard that you you know deconstruct so many things but you still have to live a life you're like not really like I like it you know like this is a good life this is the one I'm going for you know so I think and I think most of us feel like that often because we find no the strictures that would be otherwise you know and often are to be murderous you know yeah murderous yeah so you know yeah so thinking about the sort of tensions that are like challenging and enabling to hold in one's life and one writing and once writing this is a question for both of you is that you both take up the importance of nomination and whether it's naming a provisional collectivity a provisional we or whether it's the naming of a boat whose planks are always being remade and and at the same time in both your writings you have tremendous density to the very indeterminacy of language its excesses its gaps it's it's a it's the way that it escapes em escapes nomination itself and so I just want to hopefully hear from both of you about how you know through your own writing practice and you how you experience and feel those kinds of tensions I mean I'll just say that you know that the Argonauts opens with this kind of extended discussion of about nomination and language and you know and about words being good enough or not being good enough to you know whether or not as we can sign had it you know the inexpressible is contained inexpressibly in what we express you know or whether or not we need to you know how to make space for ineffable or you know do chase it down with hoax or what do you do anyway but to me that conversation about language that that begins that book and and III tell this story because I think it's actually if not cribbed it's just kind of probably became part of my DNA from Judas work was that you know people often talk about that book is about gender you know to me that the the instigating conversation about language is kind of more the umbrella of which gender to me seems like an instance of what I'm talking about but it isn't but I mean it to Flickr I don't mean it to be about language or about gender that's that that would be you know a fallacy I think but the goal of it way was to set those two things in motion you know I'm you know not to be too courting with the puns but you have set those sails a ship like side-by-side and and let them let them roll because they are so you know obviously I'm you know Jesus work is yeah everybody about the discursive qualities of gender so um I guess um well maybe just a remark about gender which is that I mean over the many years that I've had to field questions about gender many people have come to me with different views and some people will say look Butler I kind of like the binary system and I just want to find my right place within it so don't be deconstructing it and and for that that person I have to say okay alright because what that person is saying to me is I have found that my life is more livable or it has become livable for the first time once I have been able to emerge on the right side for me of the binary system so I've needed to become a woman or man or I've needed to become trans in some way that actually holds the binary in place um and I'm not going to say no right I mean that's I mean this person is saying these are the conditions of my livability and the only thing you can say in response to that is yes right because those are the conditions of livability right and then there are other people come to me and say if I have to be on one side of that binary or another I'm going to die I cannot live I cannot breathe I cannot feel I cannot love there's no sensation for me it's a it's a sensation killer and I absolutely need to be outside of it in some other place without category or in a set of vocabularies that I am working on with other people in order to make life more livable and what do I say to that and I say yes right so in a way it's and of course there are many positions like throughout but I think without this without asking the question how gender makes life unlivable and how it can make life live or live Abal and in different ways for different people we are get confused about the debate right it's and it's it's a you know people expect me to say oh no no no no you know the binary has to be can be constructive invites like mmm no I mean perhaps for me right I mean that is true and maybe theory carries autobiography in a way that is not always fully confessed certainly Nietzsche made that point about philosophy that all all philosophy was autobiography I'm sure there's no gender theorist or sexual theorist in the world who is not doing autobiography in some way although some people actually counter their tendencies in their writing right like you write all about masochism right or you write all about gender fluidity but you can't move it right so you kind of like layout like theoretically a possible world that might be nice or might be absolutely unlivable right and the way it connects to autobiographies is tricky it's true it's not just like a mirror or reflection but I think that I learned a lot from the responses to gender trouble where you know people just said no thanks or thank you very much you know and I and I think when one has to actually find out what the conditions of livability are for people and and regard that offer that regard offer that recognition offered vocabulary right because without that we're involved in an abstract debate that has lost touch with what's at stake in which what's at stake is I don't know in sensation and the desire to live and the capacity to love and to move and be moved by others to live in a body in a way that actually feels livable and you know it went especially when it has not which is um which is a massively painful uh issue anyway uh so nomination what I guess maybe I did answer the question but maybe that's the moment for the UM Hotel joke Hotel joke I'm afraid I'm telling it too often and everybody's heard it but okay um I like repetition yes okay um so yes I decided not to read anything my language is too hard for me but but but this is what happened to me I went into a hotel room in in London and I was late with grades and I had to connect to the internet and the internet wasn't working and there's a knock at the door and I'm aware that you know grades have to be in at Berkeley at a certain time it's like trying try and can't get through and then a guy is there tall guy um I don't know I'm short matter to me he was tall and he says excuse me uh mr. Madame mister madam mister madam mr. Mehta mister madam mr. madam mr. Matt whoa whoa whoa like wet accelerate like and it couldn't stop and so I realized I needed to make an intervention right because things were out of control and so I but I was as a little nasty I'm afraid and I said um I said what are you here for and he said well I'm supposed to check the minibar mister madam mr. Adam and it starts again and I said is it necessary to determine my gender in order to check the minibar okay nasty I'm nasty right I'm nasty and I did actually immediately feel some guilt right because it wasn't a very kind thing to do and I could have given him a pronoun or allowed it to just go and in most case says I will fill in the gap but in whatever way feels comfortable just to move on with the business of life since apparently I mean you can't even order a meal in Berkeley without being a lady ladies whoo okay I argue one out of ten times but then nine times I just want to get the food okay uh anyway this poor gentleman finally um he managed I said I just arrived there was no purchase from the minibar and he left and then later I thought about all that repercussions of this and I thought you know he's a worker and I'm I'm a I'm paying I'm staying in this you know reasonably nice hotel and he was trying to be polite gender was for him of the marker of politeness he wanted to offer the recognition of gender so that he wasn't just bluntly asking me a question like can I come in like you know without addressing me in other words he had no way to address me without gender but but by addressing me in that way he was actually offending me it was his effort at hospitality and I I registered it as a fence right and so in fact he and I would have had to have a much longer conversation uh to kind of get to that but I did realize that you know um we can't disarticulate gender from questions of class or questions of race or how how that exchange of interpolation is situated in broader social structures that's that's really the the truth of the matter so I felt such guilt about it the next day I walked into the women's locker room and somebody looked at what was going on with me short hair something I don't know and so and and one of the women says excuse me this is for the ladies so apparently I was not a lady then and and I wanted to reassure her so I said oh don't worry I'm I said this in by British I said oh don't worry I'm a lady you know even because I was so guilty about what happened and then she kind of liked looking she like you're late I don't know she said to her friend let's get out of here you know I anyway this is part of my ongoing confusions thank you and now the lady thing really sucks um so this is the question another question that for me in some ways I feel most invested in us talking about tonight is is for both of you to talk about the larger conversations that you're involved with that make it possible for you to write the works that you write and to consider to what extent your writing is a kind of social endeavor I guess I'll just say I'm really interested in this question lately because I think back to the question of nomination like I always want to know like I mean victim Stein has a great passage and was talking about like if I say God or if I say pain or if I say blue you know how do we know we're talking about the same thing and you know such as this was lady or any term you know those those kind of conundrums really um you know they fascinate me I'm very attracted to them which is to say people talk about the social or anti-social are they socialite I often don't you know I'm often very curious as to what what we're talking about in so far is it you know we I was on the event last night and I was talking my really today about this might be the murder of Fred Hampton and kind of revisiting the Panthers history and you know there was a and we're talking talking about education in the Black Panther Party and about the notion of you know like someone said on this stage you know you you know you should never read alone I think it was Robin Kelly so you know you should never read alone and kind this notion of always making a you know making reading something you you know you read and then you talk about what you read with other people you know for me like I'm like I'm all for it and I'm so excited about it and then I do but you know it my guilty heart I think the sociality for me of writing is often something practiced and performed in deep solitude while I think with other people who are who are defined by their non presence but their presence and kind of words that they live on you know whether it be over centuries or millennia or whatnot and there's something kind of so I guess what I'm trying to say is I I believe deeply in this sociality of the writing space or of literature or you know whether its theory would ever want whatever you want to be but sometimes I just think that defining things more broadly that allow I mean kinda like the livability like allowing people to have forms of sociality that are sustaining to them but that don't necessarily have one picture of what it's like for you know like that it doesn't it may be I mean Fred moans talked a lot about this but about you know that you know he doesn't at this point I think kind of has a very radical belief that you know no writing no word that's ever uttered is uttered in an a socially every word is written with others and I and I think that I feel like that's a deeply my writing it really seems to matter to me if I have a community that I mean doesn't it matters to me but I you know I'm trying to say there's just many ways that you can I think define the social or community although I do think um especially in the argonauts it's really stunning how many authors you collect and you you give them a certain kind of graphic presence on the page sometimes they they have their own quotation sometimes they're interwoven in your own history and it it did feel like you were you were bringing together a certain kind of legacy you are also maybe articulating a new kind of um filiation and maybe in some cases uh making them sit next to each other when they in in real life that it might have been difficult for them I'm Aly Myles is a great you know where time might you know I'm sure live you know any miles a poet but if she always talked she was my teacher when I was young I took a lot workshops with her and she was talked about a poem as a party you know like what words do you want bite to your and to me that was just that was really really useful and I always like to me the Argonauts as a party and you're like we're gonna be here together like Audrey Lord we're going lacan like we here you are like in the margin like what do you got to each other you know like and I think that that's really important because it's also a way of you know it's it's I mean as we all know you know you have to make you have to make people talk to each other because certain people are thought of as you know in one conversation other people are you know not loud and or a police do you know about whose work is you know serious or matters or what or what what world it can circulate so to me that notion of the part of the poem is the parties you know it extends to all works and is really important you know but there's there's also something in the writing um that works against the academic tendency to occupy a single position like oh I do queer theory or I do autobiography or I do race studies or I'm interested in women artists I mean in in the Academy at least you're kind of taught let you know what's your dissertation on what's your niche going to be what's your specialization and then you have like these other things you get to say down below like areas of concentration or areas of interest right but there's that and then there's that dissertation right and it seems to me that the kind of writing you do on the one hand we would teach it in the Academy on the other hand we would probably tell most of our students that they need to kind of get their act together and you know I mean you would you would have the I mean the way you move among communities of writers and insist upon that juxtaposition kind of almost making communities in the writing that would be very very hard to make in a in an institutional setting like a university I mean that's thrilling it's very very exhilarating and it makes me realize how how deeply hampered we are sometimes by strong disciplinary distinction I guess when I was thinking about conversation I didn't really mean a in person you know I mean I think we've live and write and sync with the dead as much as we do with the living so I but I do I mean from my perspective like I I write and read with those who I write and read and a big part of that is a lived experience in a community of writers and I can't imagine that my writing would exist without that community and some was so um I guess my sense of social is a kind of maybe we could think about friendship or we could think about like channeling the dead it doesn't have to be you know the sort of social formations that that are most available necessarily meg is just on like a very mist on about a biographical level I think I you know I I think I am vibed really heavy friendships um in my youth you know that that like all writing was was was done you know it's a surrealist credo you know poetry is written by all and and I think and that was all I think it's very common people in your early 20s or whatever you know me I think for me personally I've really moved into just as a writer a really different kind of writing life I don't judge it as better or worse but I'd but it has become you know radically more private but it also to me is that poetry was very communal in a certain way not not in the poetry made by all like we're going to sit around and write you know CentOS together whenever but like but that but that it was the formation of the entire enterprise was a social I mean I worked at the poetry project at st. Mark's name is like a socially shared space I find that you know the kind of attention and length of time that long prose thoughts ask of you it just has a different rhythm in terms of how much and also to solve really long problems in a piece of writing it just sometimes requires for me like I you know I think of the books like you know just being in a you're being in a tunnel and you and you you're fighting your way out of it in a way there's only kind of one way out which is through but I thought you know it has become increasingly privates not the right word but it just but that's just on the autobiographical level but I did but then there's of course this beautiful bloom of when things come into community when they're published and then everyone asks you were you thinking of you know who are you trying to please when you wrote this or who are you trying to piss off and you're like absolutely nobody just because that tunnel it it's you know to me it's utterly determined by a deafness to the idea of audience which it's not everyone doesn't write like that at all you know and again whatever makes the writing possible or livable for you but that's just for me you know I wonder if sometimes we don't seek to produce an audience in other words we we make an appeal or we it we address someone anyone and see who comes it's like an invitation to the party um and um I guess maybe I would just add this about my own work which I think might be different from yours which is that I I sort of expect people to just take what they want from what I write and I don't mind that like like you know move around in it see what works for you take it make it make use of it in another way um in effect I expect it to be shredded but for the pieces to then circulate anew and come back to me and give me something that I didn't expect to find and that's that seems um right I mean it probably doesn't conform with the usual idea of the book or maybe even the essay but I I presume that I'm going to be um read in part and not read in part depending you know how you enter and what what what is what is accessible or what is useful right the way that a book is written is so different than the way that it's read I mean that's an obvious kind of statement that you're so inside of this process of discovery inquiry through the writing but then when it's received its it's read as if it was all already there and so it's really different kind of but it seems like for both of you reading it's really a huge part of the process of writing like it's like what I tell my students is that if you're going to write for my class you have to have a reading in your writing so it's the idea of having a reading which I still believe in I think it makes me old-fashioned is is important as part of writing so I actually think of them as as completely bound up with one another so I just got a sign saying that it's time to open it up to the audience and two questions that you all might have for Judith or Maggie or comments on the conversation that's already taking place uh um in I'm I'm impressed at this moment about how much populism is being enlisted in the in the politics of the day it's almost kind of promiscuous populism and we're asked to believe that that that we as a people if you wrote a profile of of the American people it would be a confused agglomeration of conflicting beliefs and I guess from a political social cultural criticism perspective how does one respond in a coherent manner to a populist that's being enlisted to make contradictory claims and to defend political positions that are contradictory so in in on every every side of the argument I mean it's kind of foolish to address Trump in this way but he's got a lot of people who are being enlisted in this way and we're being enlisted as a populist that's being represented and it feels different than in the past where polls were being addressed it feels I am not sure if this is clear in any way but it feels like a moment where we're being not simply misrepresented but but but used in in a sense and how does one respond to that kind of promiscuous use um it seems to me that there are two to different parts of your your remark that I find myself responding to the first is about populism and what does it mean that that term is now at the forefront of our political discourse but then the second might be a different question which is if we are part of the American people and I don't assume that everybody here is but if some of us understand ourselves as part of the American people in general to what extent is reference to the people being used and listed and misrepresented in some of the heinous edicts that are coming out of the the presidential office during this time populism seems to me to be worth studying and I think it's not it's not I mean there are those who think populism that's that's right-wing resentment that bubbles up from below and suddenly emerges into electoral politics in very frightening forms but it seems to me that populism may may well be a term that designates a kind of mobilization on the part of people who could turn right or could turn left or who could have any number of political positions so I don't think of populism as necessarily right-wing even though I know that perhaps you know in places like France it's just presumptively right-wing in Ernesto LeClair my my friend who died a few years ago I used to say that we we actually need to understand the emotional basis of political mobilization and to see what it is that people are demanding what their anger is what their frustration is what they're indignant is and to give it a different language at different articulation to bring it around to a radical Democratic possibility so he actually has an even stronger view that populism can be articulated towards or in the direction of radical democracy like what are people angry about what are they demanding what language are they using now for that - man what language could they use how do we need to enter into that process of articulating that outrage indignation anger aspiration so um so that's one thing I mean the best way to fight against misrepresentation is to represent oneself in radically in radical numbers I think I think we can as appalled as I presume many of us are by this this travel ban that seems to be undergoing legal D Constitution as we speak let's hope on the numbers of people who who came to airports the number of numbers of people who arrived at the the women's marches list last week I mean these this is the populace this is also the populace right so the real question is how to move that into a political space where it effectively interrupts the representation of the people that Trump is making let's remember that he only received about a little maybe about 24% of the vote from the eligible voting public we also have fifty percent of the eligible voting public who either suffered voter suppression or who are so disaffected with electoral politics that they need to be brought back into the political process so it seems to me that those two issues voter suppression which i think is for the most part simple racism institutional structural racism a disaffection or demoralization has to be addressed in order for there to be an ocean of the people we can we can live with or feel feel represented in that was a long-winded polemic story I would like to address Judith Butler I want to make two questions one is if you use the word queer in the sense of non normative and the other one is when you were discussing about identities and how we're marked I am for being address as a person I think everyone will be a big to be addressed as a person like when I write an email to someone I don't know who he is or she is right I now put the earth person who receives the emails I mean I'm very thoughtful after this year I've been in Berkeley right with the women in gender Department line I don't know I wonder what do you think about that if there is a space that we could all live as a person without having to be addressed in our passports and everywhere like a man or a woman who cares right but we have to put it into every day's life that's my point of view and I would like to know yours please I think it's a I mean it's it's hard to understand how to do that in a public sphere like in a official realm and I think there there may be ways of of not making gender presumptions such as those you propose that should be more fully practiced I always think the best thing to do though is to actually ask a person like I think gender should become a question rather than an appellation like how would you like to be addressed it's not that it doesn't take that long and and and let let somebody respond and they may say doesn't matter you know I'm pronoun indifferent apparently I am pronoun indifferent to some degree I was told by a 15 year old that I that I pronoun and different I didn't know there was a category for me that is so exciting um but uh but but but but for the most part people will will let you know and it can be part of a they can be become a regular part of conversation that said I'm I'm not always sure that the lexical as important as it is to call to address somebody in a way that they wish to be addressed right there to use your term their personhood is at stake there it may be that their personhood is only arrived at through a gendered pronoun maybe that is the way in which personhood is established and so we have to we have to be alive to that somehow I'm not I guess there's a broader question of how lexical questions like this structure there exist in relationship to larger structural problems and problems of power in the world and although they they may be individual practices that make us feel like we're living a more thoughtful life and we also have to be mindful of what are the larger strategies and movements we have to be part of in order to make the maybe the more profound structural transformations that are required that's that's just the thought um by the way I think queer is not necessarily opposed to normative it can be a pathway through the normative it can be a fissure at the heart of the normative right that's what you've kosowski sedgwick taught me like right in the middle of gender normativity right in the middle of the heterosexual marriage you can find you can find queer streaking through and and and I thought that and that's a really important point that was a super important point um this is for Maggie Nelson any Argonauts you stated that there was this like sensation of aliveness associated with feeling real and that it's not an identity and that it's a sensation and my question is just who defines the sensation of reality is it personal communal cultural what sort of defines this sensation of reality that a person can identify with interesting I mean that that passage was quoting Winnicott as a child British child psychologist and I don't think for him quite feeling real would be the same thing as having a would be the same thing as a sense of reality reality think they'd be a little bit different and so I think that that's why I was kind of emphasizing the sensation which is that um I mean I guess maybe to overlap with witches was talking about about gender and fitting livability is that there are moments it doesn't have to be about gender but where if you kind of keep the emphasis on the feeling and not on the category of the real there can be us there can be surges in this makes you know as when it calls talking about when you talk about the the feeling of the heart beating or the aliveness of the body tissues working there can be feelings that make you feel alive and that life is livable and it doesn't it doesn't have to you might say you know I finally feel real but it's not about me it's not real like in the sense of I've you know I mean you can read Janet mock on this way I haven't become you know the real thing obviously the message of gendered and insubordination but I think that but it's a little bit hard to talk about I'm being in articulate because I think that when it caught senses idiosyncratic it's not Lacanian real it's not what we mean generally when we speak of RIT about reality and I think it's I mean I try I've been accused of cherry-picking things from theorists and then bending their meaning in my work but I okay but I but what I'm what I do try and do is give enough of their concept just enough to indicate that this is not what you again with that notion of like when we say God or we say blue we say pain like to give enough of their concept so that you know that his feeling realism is a distinct category of experience and then and I find myself Judith in complete agreement with the notion you put out early on of a time for a queer Alliance that were in such exceptional moments right now that one perhaps has to find oneself faced with the idea of working with someone who in the past might have been abhorrent to be working alongside with for a temporal moment and so I wanted to somewhat put you on the spot Maggie and Judith and say in this current moment who might you be thinking about forming a queer alliance with I think just enter before about populism is a kind of sentiment that has yet to or it is available to take different directions it's a really interesting one because again instead of instead of focusing on the identity of like I will now identify with State Department official who I Adeem to be XY and Z and this is also back to if Cedric's kind of universalizing rather than minoritized logic about queerness is that you may find that in me I think this is true of a lot of people right now back to your question by the kind of cauldron of contradictions and people that there is a lot of there's a lot of you know people I think right now in this country or just a not of a not of indignation and frustrations and issues that that they could be steered in different directions and and I think that in that way I guess I don't say it necessarily about queer alliance with like two people who I could demographically or a politically named as I know sorry abstract based particular identities but more looking for the kind of currents of queerness like Judith is talking about as the fissures that run through but while I have said all that I will think of an actual concrete person or thing and I will let you answer um well it may be I mean the way you post a question is a good one asking with with whom are we contemplating a lying uh and and have we have we considered those to be a noxious or impossible to ally with well you know alliances can be tactical and provisional and they can actually repeat over time without becoming a strong and enduring relationships within a social movement so let's keep that in mind but for instance I mean I was pleased I believe it was the Los Angeles Police Department that just said we're not going to comply with any federal requirement to produce a Muslim registry it's like--go LAPD when have I said that you know Who am I such that I'm saying go LAPD okay um worrying about constitutional rights right so some of us are becoming unwitting Liberal Democrats like Oh what about due process that was a good idea and what about you know what about the First Amendment and what about that equal protection you mean you know I mean really there are some like is there a good lawyer like who's on this right and and um so I mean I think that um you know it's it's impressive uh I mean I I tend to fight I'm involved in quarrels within the Jewish community more broadly and yet suddenly their whole sectors of the Jewish community that are standing up and saying no to this um travel ban this is discrimination this is horrible there are others who are accommodating anti-semites because they support Israel so I mean that's that's a suddenly a new a new terrain and I'm trying to you know figure out how to read that and where to place myself and next to whom it doesn't mean I have to love that person I as I said no breakfast right but but but but those are odd kinds of and sometimes very surprising a moments of solidarity uh I mean I I actually had a couple of conversations with the College Republicans today where we we arrived it's it's moments of agreement you know namely at least three of them agreed with the proposition that it's better to have an open debate where people actually give reasons for their views and try to produce evidence for the views they hold rather than just a hurl insult and produce a political theater of Cruelty sorry art oh I know that's a different thing but uh but so you know that was interesting to find myself like having a moment of agreement there but I'm glad I had that conversation I don't know if they are but they're high the last question cool excuse me now I'm nervous um so this questions actually for you Maggie Nelson about how one how a writer specifically can reconcile writing about other people or other characters particularly people who are close to you and people you love with the genre of autobiography and the word Auto obviously pertaining to the self specifically and do you find that in doing so you either silence that character's voice or give them a voice or is it a Fisher something is is sort of a queering of a sort yeah I mean the question really I think process is kind of you know some other really big questions not a biography and I think that I mean the passage I just read to you where I'm talking to that producer and I and he says you felt fusion with you Anna and I say no and I say I don't speak for her and I think people approach this different ways but I as a my personal approach to autobiography is not to purport to be giving voice to anybody else because I think that it is my voice that is the book and it is my story and these different things and and I think it's increases the kind of natural violence that I mean violence might be too strong a word but I you know I do think that it's very painful to be represented in a book in which you don't speak and I've you know been on both sides of that and I think that the immediate reaction is often like well why do you get to say the story you know and I'm you know it seems kind of disingenuous to say well write your own or something but I do think that you know I do I do think that you know it's it's it's been deeply you know important survival tactic you know especially for women and women of color and you know to be able to speak autonomously instead of taking care of everybody else all the time about what they think that they need to put the that doesn't mean that you're like a runaway ethical train it just means that like ethics is practiced person-by-person right it's not you don't make you don't get a blanket rule like it's always okay to write about mothers you know it's always okay to write about you know your wages are always okay you know you don't get that you get individual instances where you have to figure out what to do and that might mean I've known a lot of people who they make their choices they either you know if they hate their father and their father abused them and they don't speak anymore whatever they don't show it to them you know if they if they live with somebody and they want to as you know I do with my beloved Harry you want to keep your marriage alive you show them what you've written and make sure they're ok with it before you publish it you know there's a whole range of things and you know in that book the red parts I wrote about a lot of strangers about people on trial for murder what their family looked like in the courtroom I don't know those people they were enduring their own form of Hell you know in a different box on the other side of the courtroom that my family was enduring its form of Hell and you know I think that I think that you I mean hopefully I think you can you're never going to please everybody but that you can try and perform making ethical choices in the work that reflect what how you would like to be in the world you know uh can I first of all I want to thank our incredible interlocutors and also bam/pfa for opening the theater for us on a dark night this theater will be open every Monday night we hope you'll come back and join us for an ongoing conversation going conversation on these topics I actually just if you don't mind I had another quote from Maggie Nelson that I didn't get to share that seems actually so important next to what Judith ended up provoking us to think about around queer alliance so if we can give her still a last word via my voice perhaps it's the word radical that needs rethinking but what could we angle ourselves toward instead or in addition openness is that good enough strong enough you're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you're opening and letting things fall apart letting the world come as it is working with it rather than struggling against it you're the only one who knows and the thing is even you don't always know all right here's to not knowing you

Channel: Berkeley Arts + Design

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Length: 82min 26sec (4946 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2017