Queer'd Liberalism : Ch. 2
II. ALL IDEAS ARE STAMPED WITH THE BRAND OF A CLASS
So, what are these backwards and incorrect views and attitudes being parroted, and what makes them so? The central issue is of the ideologies of puritanism and liberalism. In the discourse to which we pertain, it is manifest as a consumerist, sexually repressed, philistine, liberal, and fundamentally petit-bourgeois attitude that originates from the newly Queer young masses of the petit-bourgeoisie. The attitudes that breed so-called “cancellations” and treatise-length lists of attitudes (correct and otherwise) the subjects of whom should fiercely obey the warning of “Do Not Interact.” The sex-negativity, scorn of creativity, and sophomoric obsession with media as if these are the principal (or indeed exclusive) struggles being waged: This is the attitude that we are faced with combatting here.
To again borrow from Mao Zedong, all ideas and “every kind of thinking” is “stamped with the brand of a class.”[2] And the class branding of any type of thinking is a central component in determining its correctness. Put simply, ideas do not arise out of aether, nor do are they ever-present. Ideas are born from one’s material standing in the world. Just as independence, creativity, and consciousness do not arise from vacuous space— they must be struggled for and ardently supported— neither are any perceptions, interpretations, or ideas. Given that ideas arise from practice and one’s practice is principally informed by their class position, we must analyze these ideas from the class position from which they originate.
Stemming from the notion that Queer people exist in all manner of classes and take all manner of class stands (proletarian and reactionary alike), camps and styles of Queerness arise. The camps that are we centrally concerned with here are the liberal Queer of the philistine “Steven Universe” style, and the proletarian Queer of the “Ketamine” style. The specific objects mentioned in naming them, however, does not provide an ample description of these styles of Queerness.
The “Steven Universe” style is centrally defined by its relationships with media, the internet, a “respectable” politic, and sex-negativity. Being that they are principally concerned with the image of Queerness rather than the material basis. They could, in this vein, be considered Queer idealists. They are pre-occupied with “identity” and “representation” rather than the material standing of their community. The origins of this style— as may be apparent— originate from a strictly petit-bourgeois (and occasionally non-monopolistic bourgeois) space of existence.
The “Ketamine” style is centrally defined by the subject’s place in their community. They are those who exist in physical (read: “offline”) spaces, engage critically with their community, and their Queerness is, above all, material. Their Queerness is defined by the function of its existence in material reality rather than in self-prescribed identity. Their Queerness is production in a sense. The production of a certain type of self and community rather than simple proclamation. This style is centrally of a proletarian or lumpen-proletarian character and has long been the driving and near-universally progressive force in the struggle for Queer liberation. Whereas those of the “Stephen Universe” style are content in engaging with endless “discourse,” controversy, and hypotheticals; those of this style engage materially and have a vested interest in struggle against the currently dominant bourgeois institutions which bind them. We cannot, it must be noted, exclusively define the “Ketamine” style of Queerness exclusively in its role as a negating factor opposed to the “Stephen Universe” style. “Ketamine”-styled Queer people are not exclusively an oppositional force. In fact, they are no anti-thesis at all. They are the original thesis that wildly predates the “Stephen Universe” style.
Queerness in its original form is of the proletarian, “Ketamine” style. The Queerness that was carved into the walls of nightclubs and bars; the Queerness that was scrawled across subway cars. That is the Queerness of this style. That is a proletarian Queerness. The Queerness that “vogued” [3] in ballrooms where mothers [4] tended to their adoptive children. As proletarian revolutionaries, this is the Queerness that we are principally concerned with exalting and liberating.