Queer'd Liberalism : Ch. 4

 IV. THE ASSIMILATIONIST TURN

We previously examined— through a historical-material lens— the birth of what have referred to as proletarian or “Ketamine”-style Queerness. That being said, for a thorough analysis of the contradiction between the “Steven Universe” and “Ketamine” styles, we must also grant a historical-material analysis to the “Steven Universe” style. It was said previously that the “Ketamine” style is the original thesis, and that the “Steven Universe” style presents an outgrowth thereof. To say this is to say that “Steven Universe” Queerness may be defined in terms of its relations to and is existentially contingent upon the “Ketamine” style. At a fundamental level, the “Steven Universe” style is the crystallization of the development of Queer independence that would be unthinkable if not for the struggles waged by the original “Ketamine” style. 

Previously, we noted that the Queer development has been substantially retarded by the oppression that Queer people have faced and continue to face by bourgeois-heterosexual society. The development which would have seen Queerness exist in all manner of class from the lumpen-proletariat through the highest echelons of monopoly capitalism was ruthlessly compressed into the lumpen-proletariat and the working-class. However, as a direct result of the struggles waged by our foremothers of the original style, the development of Queer people has accelerated and resulted in the presence of Queer people in all classes. As the struggles for Queer integration into wider society proved victorious, Queer people managed to enter classes which to them were previously forbidden. At present, Queer proletarians exist amongst a Queer petit-bourgeoisie, and indeed Queer capitalists. While still ultimately subordinate to heterosexual society, Queer people gained access to a newer degree of class mobility that— with quite rapid pace— launched them from a relatively backwards mass of people to a developed mass ripe for new forms of exploitation and co-optation by the forces of bourgeois capital. 

Queer people became more publicly visible and as such, there became a new identity for whom the bourgeoisie could produce commodities. The assimilationist turn came principally with the advent of Queer people who could independently shape their own destiny and who— often with capital— “bought in” to the bourgeois heterosexual society that had long held them beneath its heel. Without the rabid criminalization and lumpen-proletarianization of the preceding centuries,[11] Queer people were able to engage more freely with the wider society. This development, however progressive historically, was a double-edged and dialectical sword. As a new petit-bourgeois strata of Queer people emerged, the ideas of assimilationism, respectability, and a fundamentally opportunist capitulation to capitalist/heterosexual society emerged. Campaigns that may have previously fought for the fundamental liberation of Queer and other oppressed peoples— centered on the liberation of the working-class— shifted to simple “acceptance,” “tolerance,” or “representation” of and for Queer people. 

It is from this period— the period lasting from the 1990s pax Americana to around the 2015-16 “pre-Trump” era— that the ideas that would crystallize into assimilationist and “Stephen Universe” Queerness would emerge. This is not to say that the advancement of political, economic, and social rights for the Queer masses was not progressive in the historical sense. It was certainly progressive; it was progressive in the sense that the development of any community through historical-material stages is progressive. It was progressive in the sense that lives were materially improved. This being said, Marxism is not teleological and with as with any progressive current, contradictions will continue to emerge. The transition from slave society to feudalism was progressive. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was progressive. Through these progressive epochs, however, there will always been new problems to be rectified. 

The assimilationist line that developed in this period, fundamentally evacuated Queerness of its class character and was principally focused on the new strata of petit-bourgeois Queer people and their interests. It focused on “respectability” and “representation” and fundamentally presenting Queerness as something congruent with bourgeois society. This is wrong. Put simply: it is wrong, because it neglects the material reality that Queer liberation is working-class liberation. If Queerness is entirely compatible with bourgeois-society, then it ceases to exist and distinct phenomena. Furthermore, it then distances itself from the liberatory movements that struggled and died for the development of the Queer masses to begin in the first place. 

This period’s emphasis on “identity” and assimilation into mainstream structures stripped the movement for Queer liberation of the very transgressive character that allowed for the development of Queer people as a stratum.

The focus on “identity” also has further philosophical errors, which will be addressed in forthcoming chapters. The most pressing issue is that the liberal sense of “identity” is inherently metaphysical and idealist. It claims “identity” as existing outside of oneself and yet simultaneously entirely within one’s body-mind, rather than as a socially-constructed process built through one’s community labor. As we continue to explore the infantile syndrome of liberal and “Stephen Universe”-style Queerness, we will return to the notions of ideal-metaphysical “identity” as opposed to material identity. 

[11] Homosexuality was ‘de jure’ legalized for the whole of the United States in 2003.