Philosophy, Revolution and the Queer Dimension

by Julia Jones

Today I am struggling to work out the importance of dialectical methodology in revolutionary struggle, and it’s relation to the Queer movement. I am trying to do this through a back and forth between Raya’s archives column from the June 1998 issue of News & Letters called, "Practicing philosophy and revolution," and Jennifer Pen’s essay from the same issue entitled, "The Queer Left Legacy and Marxist-Humanism." (Both reprinted in this edition of Queer Notions.-Ed)

In her letter to Colleagues of May 28, 1968 – almost exactly 30 years ago – Raya is emphasizing the "new discoveries" in Philosophy and Revolution (P&R), that is a focus on Hegelian dialectics in which forward moving revolutionary methodology is rooted. Her understanding that Hegel and our revolutionary process are intertwined prompted Raya to exclaim that her work with P&R was the most concrete activity. According to the letter, dialectical methodology allows us to analyze events we are participating in, as well as relating ourselves to other organizations, ie others within revolutionary struggle. Because I have been so frustrated with our difficulty in projecting what revolutionary methodology actually is, I want to try to expound a little on what I understand Raya to mean by this.

As I understand it, dialectics allows us to analyze events and relate to others in the movements because through this method we can see what the contradictions within a movement are, how theories projected in those movements measure up to freedom, how the actions of ourselves and others fit on the pathway to a new society. Hegel writes, for instance, that the highest contradiction exists within the Absolute Idea, and shows how the internal contradiction and the transcendence of it propels a movement forward. If we understand methodology as looking to the ideas being projected, finding the contradictions within them, and recognizing those forces of transcendence, we can see how this methodology will help us bring clarity to revolutionary thought and activity.

Dialectics allows us to understand the development of thought through history, as part of a universal rather than a series of isolated incidents. In her letter, Raya points to Lenin and Bukharin and the debate on national self-determination and shows how Lenin supported national self-determination not as merely a right, but as, "integral to the very dialectic of proletarian revolution." Through dialectical methodology, Lenin was able to see the process of history in action, and the relation of his day to the universal.

I want to develop more of an understanding of Raya’s column before going to Jennifer’s essay, but I feel compelled to interject here a point regarding News & Letters "Who We Are Statement," which we recently changed to include an opposition to heterosexism. The questions raised by people involved in the Subjectivity of Sexuality group, as well as comrades in other locals, is are we merely saying we oppose heterosexism on the level of human rights, or do we see a dialectic in queer subjectivity which is integral to the success of any revolutionary project? When discussing queer subjectivity, some Marxist-Humanists and most of the Marxist Left raise contradictions within the gay community as pointing to the bourgeois nature of queer liberation itself. I believe that Raya’s point on Lenin here illuminates the limited nature of such a critique. She says that in response to Bukharin’s claim that nationalism was necessarily backward as against internationalism - and that, "nothing short of proletarian revolution as the revolution. Lenin retorted that the imperialist war must have ‘suppressed’ our reasoning for you to fail to see the development through contradiction, the dialectics of the many varied forces that participate in the mass outburst." In other words, Raya is illuminating here how dialectics allows us to see the important points along the road to liberation as well as the many forces struggling against internal contradictions holding us back from total liberation.

I was very taken in this regard by Raya’s discussion of the "lost moment," where the risk of not looking at history dialectically is that we will not catch those important moments which could be a beginning to a pathway to freedom.

In our Subjectivity of Sexuality group we have often discussed how the queer dimension has been missing from our historical and theoretical development as members of News and Letters as well as participants in Left struggles- The queer dimension has been a lost moment if you will. In her essay on the Queer Left Legacy and Marxist-Humanism, I see Jennifer as trying to show not only how there have been important queers involved in revolutionary struggle, but also how dialectical methodology reveals the necessity of recapturing this lost moment for the forward movement of any revolutionary project.

There are so many brilliant points made by Jennifer in her essay that I’m afraid I will not be able to cover them here without reading the entire piece to you line by line. However I would like to bring out some of the points which struck me as relating directly to Raya’s column, though Jennifer had no idea what would be published on the opposite page from her essay when she wrote it.

Jennifer brings out the most Marxist and most Revolutionary aspects of four very important revolutionary queer theorists, Harry Hay, Edward Carpenter, Audre Lorde, Mario Mieli and Gloria Anzaldua, and finds a common theme between them through the lens of Marxist-Humanism, i.e. dialectical methodology. One commonality she sees between the thinkers is their criticism of false naturalisms, i.e. the fetishization of common patriarchal and heterosexual social structures. She shows Anzaldua speaking of her choice to be queer being a direct opposition to her "native culture," which is sexist and patriarchal. The path of homosexuality is the path of knowledge, as through a contradiction with her culture, her mind grows.

Pen here brings in Carpenter to develop the point further, where he discusses the "intermediate man," or queer, as "finding himself different from the great majority… he would be forced to think." Jennifer sums this up beautifully, "Both Anzaldua and Carpenter are suggesting that their sexuality prompted them and will prompt others to think about social conventions and false limitations. They did not fear that their sexuality had depleted their revolutionary impulse, but theorized it had added a crucial dimension of critical self-consciousness." Our dialectical methodology allows us to see how the queer person’s struggle living in contradiction with society inspires the birth of revolutionary thought and activity.

The other commonality Jennifer raises between these theorists is their search for a non-determinist Marx. Hay and Mieli both raise the Negation of the Negation explicitly, attempting to work out that methodology’s relation to the queer struggle. Lorde refers indirectly to this methodology in her Erotic as Power, as shown by Jennifer through a relation to Marx’s views on alienation and human subjectivity. In all these cases, the theorists are working out how the queer dimension is a vital aspect to working out the contradiction between the sexes and negating patriarchy as a whole.

I love how Jennifer discusses the dialectics of silence and passion because it shows her own use of dialectical methodology to reveal not only a huge contradiction within the Left - that is the silencing of any discussion of sexuality or criticism of it as being entrenched in psychology, too personal or too bourgeois - but to begin to show a pathway out through revolutionary passion, or as Marx would say, "new passions and new forces for the overthrow of capitalism." Of course the fact that the queer dimension has been silenced despite its vital revolutionary elements is not the only contradiction we face. The inability of even this inspired Queer Left Legacy to firmly root itself in dialectical methodology and it’s tendency to opt instead for a retreat into Intuition or immediate individual consciousness is a pull which must be battled by us within revolutionary queer circles.

Jennifer lays out the problem beautifully, "Once the intuitive is so invoked, it becomes an inaccessible fact of individual consciousness rather than a consciously shared objective development."

What I take from these readings is that we need to understand dialectical methodology to be able to not only to recognize the new important subjects arising in opposition to oppressive reality, but also to pin point the contradictions facing those struggles and ourselves, and to begin to work out pathways forward.

Email Queer Notions: qnotions@graphicgirlz.com