Time Binds , livre ebook

257

pages

English

Ebooks

2010

Écrit par
Freeman Elizabeth Freeman

Publié par
Duke University Press

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Découvre YouScribe et accède à tout notre catalogue !

Je m'inscris

Découvre YouScribe et accède à tout notre catalogue !

Je m'inscris

257

pages

English

Ebooks

2010

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

29 novembre 2010

EAN13

9780822393184

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Time Binds is a powerful argument that temporal and sexual dissonance are intertwined, and that the writing of history can be both embodied and erotic. Challenging queer theory's recent emphasis on loss and trauma, Elizabeth Freeman foregrounds bodily pleasure in the experience and representation of time as she interprets an eclectic archive of queer literature, film, video, and art. She examines work by visual artists who emerged in a commodified, "postfeminist," and "postgay" world. Yet they do not fully accept the dissipation of political and critical power implied by the idea that various political and social battles have been won and are now consigned to the past. By privileging temporal gaps and narrative detours in their work, these artists suggest ways of putting the past into meaningful, transformative relation with the present. Such "queer asynchronies" provide opportunities for rethinking historical consciousness in erotic terms, thereby countering the methods of traditional and Marxist historiography. Central to Freeman's argument are the concepts of chrononormativity, the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity; temporal drag, the visceral pull of the past on the supposedly revolutionary present; and erotohistoriography, the conscious use of the body as a channel for and means of understanding the past. Time Binds emphasizes the critique of temporality and history as crucial to queer politics.

Voir

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

29 novembre 2010

EAN13

9780822393184

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

TIME BINDS

Perverse Modernities

Aserieseditedby

JudithHalberstam

andLisaLowe

TIME BINDS

Queer Temporalities,

Queer Histories

elizabeth freeman

Duke University Press

DurhamandLondon2010

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Carter & Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-

in-Publication Data appear on the

last printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully

acknowledges the University of

California, Davis, who supported

the publication of this book.

FortheFrogandtheFly

Andformymother,

whoneedsmoretime

contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction:

Queer and Not Now

xxv

Junk Inheritances, Bad Timing: Familial Arrhythmia in Three Working-Class Dyke Narratives 21

Deep Lez: Temporal Drag and the Specters of Feminism 59

Time Binds, or, Erotohistoriography

Turn the Beat Around: Sadomasochism, Temporality, History 137

Coda

171

Appendix: Distributors for Films and Videos 175

Notes

177

Bibliography

Index

209

193

preface

In 1915, the British poet Robert Graves wrote a poem, ‘‘It’s a Queer Time.’’ Popularly understood as a lighthearted, topical ballad about the trauma of trench warfare, the poem sets up a counterpoint between im-ages of gory battle and of the hallucinatory utopias the second-person speaker encounters when he loses consciousness. ‘‘It’s hard to know if you’re alive or dead,’’ the poem opens, ‘‘When steel and ﬁre go roaring thro’ your head.’’ It’s also hard to know if being ‘‘alive’’ consists of ﬁghting the war or blacking out. Here is a sample stanza, the third of ﬁve:

You’re charging madly at them yelling ‘‘Fag!’’ When somehow something gives and your feet drag. You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain And ﬁnd . . . . . . . . you’re digging tunnels through the hay In the Big Barn, ’cause it’s a rainy day. Oh, springy hay, and lovely beams to climb! You’re back in the old sailor suit again. ∞ It’s a queer time.

Here, the homophobia necessary to fuel masculine violence gives way to another version of the trench: tunnels in a haystack. The speaker ﬁnds himself back on the farm, where rain, ‘‘springy’’ hay, and wood suggest life. He also appears to be dressed as a gay icon. Lest I be accused of reading ‘‘sailor suit’’ and even ‘‘queer’’ anachronis-tically, let me summarize the other stanzas. All but the ﬁrst two-line closed couplet end with the refrain ‘‘It’s a queer time.’’ In the second stanza, the speaker is wounded (‘‘you’re clutching at your chest,’’ line 5) and astro-travels to the homosocial Treasure Island, which is some amalgam of Orientalized Eastern tropical romance (‘‘spice winds blow / To lovely groves of Mango, quince, and lime—,’’ lines 7–8) and dime-novel west-ern (‘‘Breathe no good-bye, but ho! for the Red West!,’’ line 9). In the fourth stanza, when a bomb hits the speaker as he’s sleeping in a trench, he ﬁnds himself ‘‘struggling, gasping, struggling, then . . . hullo! / Elsie

Voir