Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 07:46 +0930 (CST)
From: "LORD, Robert" <ROBERT.LORD-AT-santos.com.au>
Subject: RE: no heterosexuality?



On Thursday, 25 June 1998 Unleesh wrote:

>I was reading a passage where Guattari says there is only homosexuality, no
>heterosexuality. This is somehow connected to Levi-Strauss's theory of
>marriage arrangement, etc.
>Could someone please explain this to me?

I don't know which passage you are referring to, but there is a passage in 
Genosko's book where Guattari says, "For me desire is always 'outside'; it 
always belongs to a minority.  For me there is no heterosexual sexuality. 
 Once there's heterosexuality, in fact once there's marriage, there's no 
more desire, no more sexuality.... So don't say that I'm marginalizing 
sexuality with homosexuals, etc., because for me there is no heterosexuality 
possible.
GS- Following the same logic there is no homosexuality possible.
FG- In a sense yes, because in a sense homosexuality is counter dependent on 
heterosexuality.  Part of the problem is the reduction of the body.  It's 
the impossibility of becoming a totally sexed body."("A Liberation of 
Desire", in "The Guattari Reader" ed Genosko).  To clarify, it is saying, 
there is no homosexuality, just as there is no heterosexuality. In my recent 
reading, I've found that Foucault seems to vaguely hold a similar position. 
"Even on the level of nature, the term homosexuality doesn't have much 
meaning... It seems to me that it is finally an inadequate category. 
 Inadequate, that is, in that we can't really classify behaviour on the one 
hand , and the term can't restore a type of experience on the other." 
("Sexual Choice, Sexual Act" in "Foucault Live").  To say, "I am homosexual" 
or equally heterosexual suggests a categorisation of sexualities, an 
either/or, which occludes the polypositionality of the becomings.  According 
to Deleuze we are heterosexuals molarly, we are homosexuals individually, we 
are transsexuals molecularly, we are mastobationists as well....  we are a 
thousand tiny sexes.  This "I am" rather than "I am ... and  ... and ... ", 
implies a subjectification, a territorialization of the possibilities of 
ones sexual subjectification into a fixivity. "We are not heterosexual, 
homosexual, bisexual or transsexual.  We are simply sexual" (Genesis 
P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle).  It is about a refusal to territorialize 
the thousand tiny sexes and a refusal to privilege a locus.  Which is why, 
"no gay can ever definitively say "I'm gay."" (Deleuze, "Letter to a Harsh 
Critic"/"I Have Nothing to Admit"), or for that matter, nor can any 
heterosexual ever say definitively, "I'm heterosexual", since it would, 
according to Deleuze and Guattari, be implying an essentialism, a 
territorialization of the milieu.  We are all plugged into multiple 
becomings, none of which are fixated.  But accepting all of that, the 
question remains, how do we make it work, what is a thousand tiny sexes in 
action?  What is also interesting is the way that one's sexuality in society 
is considered the key to who you are, whereby to know ones sexuality is to 
know who one is, and thus the socius's necessity to categorise, and above 
all, to elicit a fixed sexuality in each person.  This is why the 
disciplining of ones sexuality is viewed as integral to the disciplining of 
the "self".  To have no sexuality is even considered perverse, as if to have 
no sexuality would mean the absence of a "self".  A decoded sexuality, that 
which actualises a thousand tiny sexes, represents the disinvestment of the 
organs onto a body without organs, as an irreducible flux. While on the 
topic of Levi-Strauss, the following passage by Bataille has for some time 
left me intrigued and curious; "Levi-Strauss affirms that it [the taboo on 
incest] does not appear anywhere before the nineteenth century but it is 
still wide-spread; there is nothing more common today than belief in the 
degeneracy of the children of an incestuous union.  The observed facts do 
not confirm this superstition in any way; none the less the belief is still 
very much alive." (P199 "Erotism, death and sensuality")  Is this true, has 
it been confirmed by other theorists?  Foucault also appears to maintain 
that incestous relations were quite common up until the beginning of 19th 
century.



Robert