Birth of the Cyberqueer

Author(s): Donald Morton

Source: PMLA, Vol. 110, No. 3 (May, 1995), pp. 369-381
Published by: Modern Language Association
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 Donald Morton

Birth of the Cyberqueer

DONALD MORTON is pro- I N TODAY'S dominant, "post-al" academy, the widely celebra
fessor of English at Syracuse "advance" in the understanding of culture and society brought
University, where he teaches about by ludic (post)modernism has been enabled by a series of
placements: of the signified by the signifier, of use value by exchan
critical and cultural theory and
value, of the mode of production by the mode of signification, of co
the politics of gender and sexu-
ceptuality by textuality, of the meaningful by the meaningless, of dete
ality. He is coauthor of Theory, mination by indeterminacy, of causality by undecidability, of knowi
(Post)Modernity, Opposition: by feeling, of commonality by difference, of political economy by lib
An "Other" Introduction to Lit- inal economy, of need by desire, and so on.' In the domain of sexuali
erary and Cultural Theory (Mai- the new space of queer theory is a postgay, postlesbian space. Lu
(post)modernism, which promotes the localizing of cultural phenom
sonneuve, 1991) and Theory as
ena, discourages any effort to render these developments systematica
Resistance: Politics and Culture
coherent and intelligible. Hence, the reappearance of queer today is gi
after (Post)Structuralism (Guil-
local "explanation"-for example, as an oppressed minority's posit
ford, 1994), editor of a material- reunderstanding of a once negative word, as the adoption of an umbr
ist anthology on homosexuality, to encompass the concerns of both female and male homosexuals an
Queer Theory: A Lesbian and bisexuals, or as the embracing of the latest fashion over an older, squ
Gay Cultural Studies Reader style by the hip youth generation.2
I argue here that explanations relying on trends, styles, and the sex
(Westview, 1995), and coeditor
subject's "voluntary" intentions trivialize the issue of queerness for t
of Theory/Pedagogy/Politics:
purpose of occluding the ideological significance of the return of t
Texts for Change (U of Illinois queer. In other words, queer studies-as a superseder of the older an
P, 1991). He coedits the jour- presumably outmoded Enlightenment-inspired gay and lesbian stud
nal Transformation: Marxist ies-participates in the contemporary shift brought about by lu
Boundary Work in Theory, Pol-(post)modernism toward a theoretically updated form of idealism a
itics, Economics, and Culture. away from historical materialism. This idealism comes to light whe
the return of the queer is historicized as part of a systematic develo
ment connected to the appearance in late capitalism of such notions
virtual realities, cyberpunk, cybersex, teletheory. The return of th
queer today is actually the (techno)birth of the cyberqueer.3

That more is at stake in the return of the queer than mere trends, styles,
or fads is suggested by the strongly contestatory, even violent, edge that

369

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370 Birth of the Cyberqueer

the reappearance has had. Popular accounts of the jouissance). The public sphere-the space of shared
queer emphasize its negative relation to the gay: citizenship-is not formed by common sensations
"The one thing on which everybody was agreed (individuals do not all have or even desire the same
was that whatever else it may or may not be, queer sensations) or by sensation at all: the public sphere
definitely is not gay" (Mitchell and Olafimihan 38). is constructed through concepts, the very notion
The authors of a queer Canadian "zine" declare, desire theorists reject.
"BIMBOX is at war against lesbians and gays. A war Gay liberation, envisioning a "gender-free, com-
in which modern queer boys and queer girls are munitarian world," did not promote the separation
united against the prehistoric thinking and de- of which Browning speaks. The explanation for the
mented self-serving politics of the above-mentioned shift from gay and lesbian studies, based on the cat-
scum" (Cooper 31). The conclusion that gay libera- egory gender, to queer theory, which fetishizes de-
tion failed to meet its goals, possibly motivating sire by rendering it autonomous, is not self-evident.
the Bimbox outburst, is certainly true. As a historian It is commonly assumed that (post)modern queer
of the movement puts it, "The paradox of the 1970's studies has made a decisive and radical advance

was that gay and lesbian liberation did not produce over modernism (and its precursors), which as-
the gender-free, communitarian world it envisioned, signed questions of sexuality and desire to second-
but faced an unprecedented growth of gay capital- ary social and intellectual status. Even while
ism and a new masculinity" (Adam 97). The ques- giving sexuality and desire central importance in
tion remains, Did lesbian and gay liberation fail his theory, Freud, as a modernist thinker still com-
because of the limitations of particular persons (as mitted to Enlightenment assumptions, stressed that
Bimbox implies) or because of the movement's the rational regulation of sexuality and desire was
limited theoretical grasp of its project? Does the necessary to civilized life, despite the inevitable
very project of emancipation need to be abandoned "discontents" that accompany civilization as a re-
(along with the notions of reliable knowledge, con- sult. Against such supposedly outmoded modernist
ceptuality, theory, and, most important, need), as assumptions, ludic (post)modern theory produces
the queer perspective suggests, or must the project an atmosphere of sexual deregulation. As a-if not
of emancipation be retheorized to overcome the the-leading element in this development, queer
weaknesses that helped produce "an unprecedented theory is seen as opening up a new space for the
growth of gay capitalism"? subject of desire, a space in which sexuality be-
Rather than as a local effect, the return of the comes primary. As Eve Sedgwick puts it, "[A]n
queer has to be understood as the result, in the do- understanding of virtually any aspect of modern
main of sexuality, of the (post)modern encounter Western culture must be, not merely incomplete,
with-and rejection of-Enlightenment views con- but damaged in its central substance to the degree
cerning the role of the conceptual, rational, system- that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of
atic, structural, normative, progressive, liberatory, modern homo/heterosexual definition" (Epistemol-
revolutionary, and so forth, in social change. The ogy 1). In this new space, desire is regarded as au-
queer commitment to desire, emblematized in Frank tonomous-unregulated and unencumbered. The
Browning's The Culture of Desire: Paradox and shift is evident in the contrast between the model
Perversity in Gay Lives Today, is a commitment to of necessary sexual regulation promoted by Freud
pleasure that is on "a journey separate from the in Civilization and Its Discontents and the notion
path to equity, democracy, and justice" (Browning of sexual deregulation proposed by Gilles Deleuze
104). Behind Browning's popularly articulated and Felix Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari represent
"paradox" lies an urgent philosophical and politi- the deregulating process-in which desire be-
cal issue: while homosexual citizen subjects and comes a space of "pure intensities" (A Thousand
their sexual needs must be defended, the defense Plateaus 4)-as a breakthrough beyond the Oedi-
must be part of an argument for social justice for pus complex (that "grotesque triangle" [Anti-
all citizens and cannot be founded on pleasure Oedipus 171]), which colonizes the subject and
(whether pleasure is labeled desire, sensation, or restricts desire. Since the oedipal model is explic-

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 Donald Morton 371

itly heterosexual, its supersession appeals particu- excess that accompanies the production of mean-
larly to many queer theorists, who take up the call ing. Generated in the unbridgeable gap between
for sexual deregulation. organic need and linguistic or symbolic demand
Contesting this lineage is a countertradition (of (the subject's call for its need to be satisfied through
which this essay is a part) that acknowledges the language), desire "is not an appetite: it is essen-
significance of desire but insists on relating desire tially excentric and insatiable" (Lacan viii). Desire
to the historical world (not an ideal one) and to then is the excess produced at the moment of the
worldly materiality. The materialist tradition ranges human subject's entry into the codes and conven-
from the ancients (Heraclitus, for instance) to the tions of culture. As such, desire is an autonomous
(post)modems but becomes especially critical with entity outside history, an uncapturable, inexpress-
the rise of capitalism and class society and thus ible, and actually meaningless remainder left over
finds acute expression in the writings of eighteenth- when the person becomes a socialized participant
century European Enlightenment philosophers and in what Lacan calls the symbolic. (Post)structural-
its strongest theorization in Marx's historical mate- ist theorists articulate the disruption of conscious,
rialism. Marx, of course, sees history as the trans- convention-bound, and voluntary meaning making
forming of social organization by changes in the by unconscious desire as the disruption of the sig-
mode of production. The encompassing commit- nified (the conceptual, meaning-full part of the
ments of historical materialism are expressed sign) by the signifier (the quasi-sensory, meaning-
through its goal, as Marx formulates it, "of com- less sound-image). In short, (post)structuralism
prehending theoretically the historical movement represents desire as an autonomous, if language-
as a whole" (64). Here Marx defines materialism embedded, entity that inexorably disrupts sociality,
as an understanding that is theoretical, historical, the domain of collective codes and conventions.
and global. In this perspective, desire too must be Jean Baudrillard exemplarily stages the displace-
theorized, historicized, and situated in global so-
ment of the economic account of need by the lin-
cial relations. guistic account of desire. He proposes a shift from
Some will doubtless object that materialism is the (Marxist) analysis of political economy (which
everywhere in mainstream academic and intellec-focuses on the mode of production and which priv-
tual writing, including queer theory, and that myileges what Baudrillard calls "utility" "needs," "use
idealism-materialism distinction is overdrawn. value," "economic rationality" [For a Critique
After all, a broad range of contemporary cultural
191]) to the analysis of "the political economy of
and social critics and theorists-such as those the sign" (which concerns itself with the mode of
signification). Marxism, Baudrillard argues, has
working within the frames of (post)structuralism,
psychoanalysis, feminism, Foucauldianism, and
made a false distinction between use value and the
the new historicism-espouse something theymore
call "abstract and general" level of exchange
materialism. However, these claims are themselves
value, a distinction in which "lard is valued as lard
expressions of idealism since they deploy theand no-cotton as cotton" and they "cannot be substi-
tion of the material in such a way as to erase tuted
class for each other, nor thus 'exchanged"' (130).
conflict. Materialism is a structure of conflicts.
Capitalism, which requires exchangeability or
Against Freud's more biological- and physio- equivalence between commodities, is founded on
logical-sounding terms, (post)modern theory gives exchange value and is driven by the need to pro-
desire linguistic and significatory explanations: duce from it a surplus value that is responsible for
"Desire is the perpetual effect of symbolic articula- the difference of class. Overcoming capitalism
tion" (Lacan viii). While Kristeva's phrase "desire would involve a return to the more fundamental
in language" suggests that desire is not autono- level of addressing human need, represented by
mous, being in language does not define desire, use value, and entail the cancellation of all the
since in the (post)modern paradigm everything is (needless) desires produced by capitalist commod-
ultimately language-based. Desire is distinctive ity fetishism. But, against Marx, Baudrillard argues
rather because it is the unruly and uncontainable that "[u]se value is [also] an abstraction. It is an

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372 Birth of the Cyberqueer

abstraction of the system of needs cloaked in the cepts) by which collective social life is conducted
false evidence of a concrete destination and pur- are merely evanescent mirages thrown up by sig-
pose, an intrinsic finality of goods and products," nification, which is driven by autonomous and
and thus that "use value and exchange value" are socially meaningless desire. In the end, the desire-
"regulated by an identical abstract logic of equiva- bound signifier is postulated as autonomous, outside
lence" (131). Use value is not distinct from but de- history and its materiality. Furthermore, illusory,
pendent on exchange value, and both are equally concept-based social understandings cannot be the
subject to the operations of commodification and basis of an effective political position. Following
fetishization. Hence, no overturning of capitalism this conclusion, deconstructionists propose that
could ever return the subject to a "simple relation pedagogy should be regarded not as the production
to his work and his products" (130). of concepts but as the unleashing of desire: Bar-
Need is therefore caught up in the same language- bara Johnson speaks of "teaching ignorance" (68)
based relations as is desire. Baudrillard expresses and Jane Gallop of "thinking through the body."
this correspondence in a modification of the famil- Articulating this conclusion emphatically for queer
iar Saussurean formula: studies, Ed Cohen offers a slogan: "We fuck with
categories" (174-75).
exchange value signifier The return of the queer today was produced in
use value signified the wake of the historical developments of ludic
(post)modern theory. Following Baudrillard's par-
adigm, which disrupts the conceptual series of
Commenting on this ratio, Baudrillard remarks:
Enlightenment thought by elevating desire and dis-
Absolute preeminence redounds to exchange value placing need, queer theory creates a similar disrup-
and the signifier. Use value and needs are only an ef- by rewriting the sexual ratio:
tion
fect of exchange value. Signified (and referent) are
only an effect of the signifier .... Neither [signified queer signifier desire
nor referent] is an autonomous reality that either ex-
gay signified need
change value or the signifier would express or trans-
late in their code. At bottom, they are only simulation
models, produced by the play of exchange valueGay
and liberation grew historically out of the lesso
of signifiers.... Use value and the signified doof the civil rights and feminist movements of t
not
sixties
constitute an elsewhere with respect to the systems of and depended for its self-understanding a
the other two; they are only their alibis. (137)
its political agenda on conceptualization, the fo
mulation of a reliable knowledge on which a po
Thus, not only is the mode of production (as tics
the could be grounded. Gay liberation depend
basis for accounting for need) subsumed byon the development of concepts such as exploit
the
tion and oppression, on the one hand, and socia
mode of signification (as the basis for accounting
for desire) but also, in broad terms, the human
justice, on the other, which could lead to the co
needs to which materialism wants to respond lective
are goal of overcoming the former to achie
the latter. (The movement thus counted also, an
merely simulacra of desire. In particular, historical
not incidentally, on the concept of causality.) B
materialism's social goals, founded on a rational,
just as ludic (post)modernism proposes that t
concept-based understanding of the social totality,
and any of its possible allied political aims conceptual
and part of the sign is only a "meaning e
agendas, such as emancipation from injustice fect"
and and that need is a "need effect," queer theo
from exploitation, are rendered chimerical. Bau-sees gayness as nothing more than a gay effect
drillard reverses the relation of concept (signified)
mirage of signification.
to sound-image (signifier) in Saussure, rendering Sensing the ghostly status of the gay in the cu
rent cultural environment, Barbara Smith, a lesb
the concept a subordinate mirage of the operations
of sound-images. The conventional meanings (con-political worker, observes that "today's 'quee

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 Donald Morton 373

politicos seem to operate in a historical and ideo- The queer subject is deprived of the possibility
logical vacuum," so that "revolution seems like a not only of speaking for (others or even itself) but
largely irrelevant concept to the gay movement of also of speaking in the name of: it cannot speak in
the nineties" (13). Smith is correct, but there are the name of any principle, such as social justice
deeper theoretical changes at work. It is conceptu- (an up-to-date position articulated in Stanley
ality itself, not simply the concepts of history, ide- Fish's declaration "I don't have any principles"
ology, and revolution, that has been displaced in [298]). As a social construct that can only act self-
(queer) politics: "rational politics, in the sense of reflexively, by deconstructing itself, the (post)-
the concept, is over," declares Jean-Franqois Lyo- modern subject can only perform, not practice. In
tard; "that is the swerve of this fin-de-siecle" (Ly- the terms made familiar by Judith Butler, whose
otard and Thebaud 75). Embracing what Lyotard work deconstructs the notion of (gender) identity,
designates the libidinal economy and rejecting the the subject's actions are "not expressive but perfor-
conceptual economy, queer theory excludes the mative" (Gender Trouble 141). In other words, they
Enlightenment project of social progress envisioned do not express the subject's inner essence (soul,
by gay studies and renounces (concept-based) com- spirit, psyche, etc.), as the modernist tradition pro-

monality in the name of uncapturable difference: poses, or even some constructed and existing iden-
tity, as the (post)modernist position might imply.
"erotic desire always introduces the phenomenon
Just as Baudrillard understands the simulacrum to
of difference," Karl Toepfer remarks, "which sub-
be a copy that has no original and that renders all
verts the great unifying ambition of revolution"
representations copy effects (see Simulations), But-
(136). Today the "social universe is formed by a
ler understands gender as a gender effect, a simu-
plurality of games" for which there is "no common
lation or mimicry of nothing that is prior to it, a
measure" (Lyotard and Thebaud 58, 50).
nonreferential repetition. "There is," Butler argues,
The rejection of the signified, of course, has con-
"no gender identity behind expressions of gender;
sequences at the level of subjectivities. Queer the-
that identity is performatively constituted by the
ory carries further the injunction of difference
very 'expressions' that are said to be its results"
politics forbidding anyone to speak for the other.
(Gender Trouble 25). The subject becomes what
As nothing more than insatiable signifiers of insa-
Deleuze and Guattari call an "asignifying particle"
tiable signifiers, the authors of the queer zines are
(A Thousand Plateaus 4). Such a position leads
said to "speak for no one-not for an emerging gen-
Butler to declare that although she will use "the
eration and not even for themselves. If anything,
sign of lesbian," she will do so only on condition
they position themselves as savage cheerleaders
that it is "permanently unclear what precisely that
feeding off and fueling their contemporaries' vio-
sign signifies" ("Imitation" 14). To be gay is to have
lent mood swings." Cheerleading queer subjects, a mere identity; to be queer is to enter and celebrate
existing in a dimensionless dimension and an im-
the ludic space of textual indeterminacy. As Greg-
material materiality, devote themselves to the inten- ory Bredbeck declares in the queer mode, "Ho-
sification of pure intensities. Composed of "quirky mosexuality is textuality in its most potent and
outcasts," the queer community (if it can be called postmodern form" (255).
that) is "intense" but "scattered," unorganized and The shift from gay studies to queer studies has
unorganizable. Although almost instinctively sen- been accompanied by the displacement of gender
sitive to exclusion, the queer can have no principles as too conceptual a notion.4 Eve Sedgwick insists
(concepts) of inclusion or exclusion: "they don't that the dissociation of gender from sexuality is
expect anything close to a consensus, and so are "axiomatic" for "antihomophobic inquiry" today
able to fight among themselves with a degree of (Epistemology 27). In contrast to queer studies,
affection" (Cooper 31). If judgment is called for, gay studies-which conducted an "intense critique
the queer subject responds like the ludic (post)- of gender" (Adam 97)-was grounded on the prem-
modern subject, which "judges without criteria" ise that any effective fight against sexual oppression
(Lyotard and Thebaud 16). and exploitation requires a reliable understanding

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374 Birth of the Cyberqueer

of their causes. Like predeconstructive feminism, on the psychiatrist's couch. Of course, Foucault
gay studies conceptualized gender as a part of a extends the notion of materiality (beyond textual-
larger determinative system-as a structural and ism) by tying the generation of discourses to spe-
systematic regulation of sexual practices resulting cific historically developed institutions such as the
from the binary power arrangements generated by church, the prison, and the asylum. But at the same
patriarchy. On this logic, gay liberation could only time, he theorizes these institutions as purely local
comprehend the struggle against sexual oppression sites that emerge islandlike on the surface of a cul-
as a struggle to overthrow the gender system and ture and, like Lyotard's language games, have no
the patriarchy as the causes. The movement had common measure ("Nietzsche" 148-52). While
explanatory, causal, determinative, and globalizing Foucault's localization of the material has provided
impulses, an ensemble unacceptable to queer theory. theoretical support for localist political actions, by
Queer theory departs from traditional human- groups like Act Up and Queer Nation, it has also
ist literary and aesthetic studies (and from gay and blocked the possibility of theorizing, as Marx does,
lesbian studies) by virtue of its absorption of lu- systematic global exploitation in relation to the
dic (post)modern theoretical developments along mode of production. Furthermore, in "Nietzsche,
their two main axes. Aside from the overtly ludic Genealogy, History," Foucault reiterates the Lyo-
Derridean-Deleuzean axis, in which "liberated" de- tardian shift away from the conceptual and toward
sire subverts the official relations of signifieds (con- the libidinal by arguing that the "effective history"
ceptuality) and signifiers (textuality), there is the he wishes to write has "more in common with med-
historicist Foucauldian strand, which insists that icine than philosophy... since among the philoso-
outside the text are material institutions, enabled pher's idiosyncrasies is a complete denial of the
by discourses but not textualist in the Derridean body" (156). Effective history will thus shun the
sense.5 These institutions (as against historical ma- kind of abstraction philosophy deals with and em-
terialism's global account of them) are disconnected brace bodily concreteness. Foucault's later work,
and autonomous, and they can be sites of liberation particularly the final published volume of his his-
where marginal groups seize power (which is vol- tory of sexuality, The Care of the Self, anchors the
untarily reversible). For these historicists, social new split, postindividual subject firmly in the body.
inequality is a measure of the inequality of power Just as Barthes promotes a mode of pleasure-full
among groups and is not, as conceived by Marx, "reading with the body" defined by attention to
produced by exploitation during capitalism's ex- what is "close up" (66-67), Foucault declares that
traction of surplus value. On the political plane, "[e]ffective history studies what is closest" ("Nietz-
Foucault's work converges finally with Derrida's sche" 156). Foucault's notion of "material" politics
and diverges from Marx's. It is undoubtedly some is captured in this declaration: "The essence of
seeming agreements between Marx and Foucault being radical is physical" (Miller 182; emphasis
(for instance, in the view that desire is not so much added). While not rejecting outright concept-based
repressed as produced) that results in the use of theoretics for body-based erotics, Foucault's work
such misleading phrases as "Foucauldian Marxism" nevertheless moves strongly in that direction. He
(Kernan 207), an expression that blurs the differ- establishes the distance between his materialism
ences between the forms of materialism in Marxand Marx's by aiming "to move less toward a 'the-
and Foucault and creates the impression that ory'
Fou-of power than toward an 'analytics' of power"
cauldian materialism is a better (because more(Introduction
up- 82). This analytics is a middle ground
to-date) Marxism. between a historical materialist, concept-based
theoretics and (the destination toward which Fou-
While indeed rejecting Derrida's pantextualism,
Foucault's work nevertheless coincides in crucial cault finally points) a play-inspired, desire-guided
queer
ways with ludic theory. The desire or sexuality Fou-erotics.
cault writes about in The History of Sexuality "New"
is readings of Marxian concepts and texts
discursive: sex is "produced" in those interminable
are being published today in the dominant acad-
discourses early in church confessionals and emy,
later and following Derrida's recent pronounce-

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 Donald Morton 375

ment that "[t]here will be no future ... without ment on the fringe of lesbian and gay culture." He
Marx" ("Spectres" 132), more will surely come. then yokes the punk and the queer to a common
However, these readings are commonly ludic, li- antileft position: both "spring from an idealism
bidinalizing, localizing. For instance, commentators that radicals have abandoned for the pleasures of a
on the relation of lesbianism and commodification
compromised but stable Left" (31). In the new
describe local consumer features and represent
queer space, the word compromised does not mean
"complicit" in the old political sense; any position
commodification as a generalized form of reifica-
whatsoever that is stable is already "compromised"
tion of the subject in which desire is oppressively
fixed (Clark; Wiegman). Other writers produce
because it is an illusion. Thus, what Cooper calls
queer (fetishistic) readings of Marxian texts (Kip- queer and punk idealism cannot be the kind of so-
nis; Parker; Keenan). In Marx: A Video, Laura Kip- cial idealism supported by materialist left theory
nis has a worker remark that Marx "looked to the (the commitment to social progress). In envisioning
material foundations of the moment, he looked to a society with different norms, the gay movement
the body" (253). It is now commonplace for up-to- had a social idealism tied to conceptual understand-
date bourgeois critics-under the influence of ludic ings of material and historical conditions and be-
(post)modern theory-to reread the concept-based lieved in a politics that was theoretically grounded
theoretical texts of Marx through the lens of the (and, for the Left, at least related to the tradition of
local, the fetishistic, the libidinal, and the bodily. Marx). Cybercized queer theory, with its roots in
the anarchic skepticism of Nietzsche, envisions a
II decentered, Interneted, normless society (if that is
not a contradiction in terms). Indeed, one cyber-
Forward-looking gay theory had a historical vision punk professes a post-Nietzschean project: "Ni-
of a future more just than the present. Caught in in- hilism doesn't go far enough for me" (Caniglia 95).
terminable Derridean self-dismantling, in the speci- The association with cyberspace (entry to which is
ficities of Foucauldian closeness, disconnectedness, literally not open to all) allies queer idealism with
and localism, or in a Lyotardian libidinal economy, the self-interested individualistic idealism of the
queer theory points not toward a differently or- bourgeois subject: another cyberpunk states that
dered utopia but toward a nonconditioned and his life goal is "to move up" (Caniglia 92).
nonordered atopia. When queer theorists envision Cyberspace is the universe of virtual reality pro-
a future, they portray an ever-expanding region duced of by the cybernetic electronic systems of con-
sensuous pleasure, ignoring the historical con- temporary plugged-in or air-wave technoculture.
straints need places on pleasure. Queer theory- From 3-D yesterday to VR today, there has been a
like ludic (post)modernism in general-can betremendous advance in the enhancement of illu-
critically and historically understood as a part of
sion: "VR may ultimately project the user into the
the confluence of elements that constitute late, midst of a digital space as concrete, chimerical,
and manipulable as a lucid dream" (Davis 10). Con-
multinational capitalism, sharing fundamental fea-
tures in particular with the hyperspace, cyber-
sidered globally, the illusions of cyberspace link
space, and cyberpunk of technoculture. Hints ofwith the dreams of its Euro-American inventors:
these shared features appear, for instance, whenbeyond merely practical and aesthetic questions lies
cyberspace is described in the same nostalgic, the politics of cyberspace. Cyberspace is a bour-
ahistorical, and atavistic formulas used to charac-geois designer space in which privileged Western
terize the queer. As the queer is said to be older or Westernized subjects fantasize that instead of
than gay identity, cyberspace is said to tap intobeing chosen by history, they choose their own
"desires far older than digital computers" (Davishistories. By manipulating the machines, the user-
11). The ahistoricity of the queer is indicated by its
subjects write virtual histories according to their
violent separation from the historically minded desires and seek to evade present historical con-
gay. Dennis Cooper describes the queer as "the
ditions. Cyberspace is thus symptomatic of the
punky, anti-assimilationist, transgressive move-(post)modern displacement of need by desire (the

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376 Birth of the Cyberqueer

material by the ideal). Julian Dibbell emphasizes body fetishized by the imaginary and promoted for
the connection of cyberspace to (post)structuralist profit: "You can be any BODY you want to be on a
notions of textuality: "cyberspace is a place all fiber optic network" (60-61). While the features
right, but it is an insistently textual one" whose fetishized in different representations will of course
purpose is the same as that of all writing-"to fake vary with the target audience (indeed, a wholly
presence," Dibbell notes (13-14), citing Derrida. ludic self-shifting subject-audience-bisexual, pan-
Part of not only Derrida's textualist world but also sexual, gay-male woman, male lesbian, etc.-would
Lyotard's libidinal economy, cyberspace is pro- permit the most efficient market), the same process
duced when "the libidinal pleasures of video-game is at work throughout contemporary culture in the
joysticks" are connected "with dry data banks" United States-from explicit pornography to crotch
(Davis 10). grabbing by popular performers.
For my purposes here, one of the most important Bright reveals not only virtual reality's mi-
new zones in the technocultural expansion of the cropolitical uses (the enhancement of erotic con-
bourgeois subject's desire is cybersex, or "'teledil- sciousness) but also its macro- and geopolitical
donics' (simulated sex at a distance)" (Rheingold applications (the salving of Western powers' bad
19). Like cyberspace, cybersex is often accounted consciences). The United States Defense Depart-
for pragmatically: in the age of AIDS, cybersex, ment, which has "the most advanced telerobotic,
which produces what Susie Bright refers to as "the long distance computer scanning equipment" avail-
virtual orgasm" (60), is the newest form of safe sex. able, used it to make the Persian Gulf war a "'vir-
From telephone sex lines that still rely on the user's tual' war" in which the pilots of cyberbombers
imagination to erotic messages and pictures trans- strapped on special "goggles [to] see where they
mitted by e-mail and computer bulletin boards to [were] going and where... to drop bombs." The
the full-fledged graphic virtual sexual experiences advantage was that "technological imaging" "get[s]
enabled by VR goggles and gloves, cybersex pro- human beings out of the loop." While Bright sees
vides "tactile telepresence" (Rheingold 346) that the use of virtual reality in war as "the dead oppo-
simulates the conditions and sensations required to site of the technoeroticism" she promotes (63),
produce sexual stimulation and release. One cyber- these micro-uses and macro-uses converge on the
fan predicts, "Thirty years from now, when portable political plane: virtual reality situates both bomber
telediddlers become ubiquitous, most people will pilots and cybersex participants in an ahistorical
use them to have sexual experiences with other space supposedly disconnected from actuality, put-
people, at a distance, in combinations and configu- ting them beyond social responsibility.
rations undreamed of by precybernetic voluptuar- Alongside Bright's popular report (and produced
ies" (345). by the same dominant assumptions) are such so-
Reporting on a telephone-sex operation run by phisticated theoretical accounts of contemporary
two women, Bright reveals not so much its prag- cyberculture as, for instance, Avital Ronell's The
matics as its political economy. Bright deploys tell- Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Elec-
ingly contradictory discourses: on the one hand, she tric Speech. Ronell's work is self-consciously in-
describes phone sex as "out-of-body" travel (body- formed by all the ludic (post)modern assumptions
less-ness; 67); on the other hand, such travel is that give primacy to the mode of signification.
undertaken in search of sensuous experience (body- Ronell takes the signifiers of the telephone book to
full-ness). The contradiction is resolvable in mate- constitute the human community (thus understood
rialist terms: cybersex enables travel out of the as a linguistic entity). Therefore, she conceives of
actual, historical body and into a virtual body of her inquiry into the operation of the telephone not
Deleuzean pure intensity. Bright listens as a sex- as reflection (that is, traditional philosophy) but as
line hostess with hips that "haven't seen thirty-six performance, as "response," or "answering a call"
inches in about ten years" describes to a client a vir- (3). For Ronell, the telephone is not so much a
tual body meant to satisfy him: "I'm a 36C-25-36." technological instrument developed at a particular
This virtual body is the commodified, ahistorical historical moment as an emblem of an endless pan-

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 Donald Morton 377

historical connectedness: "The telephone splices a on the day Sedgwick met and "fell in love with"
party line stretching through history" (295). The him [194]). The problem with Sedgwick's text is
subject of this party line is the schizophrenic: De- not that she organizes it around what she calls "ob-
leuze and Guattari's schizo "desiring machine" be- sessive imagery" (198) but that the fetishized
comes the subject "who has distributed telephone glasses become the emblem of the current privi-
receivers along her body" (4). Thus Ronell's con- leged ludic mode of understanding, for questions
temporary subject exists in a state of generalized of health and illness, for queer studies (since Lynch
perversity (queerness), in which it is difficult to and Sedgwick have played prominent roles in the
decide or conclude any question. Human intersub- development of that mode) and "otherness" itself,
jectivity is a system of shifting relays that never and indeed for any kind of inquiry. My critique
reveals who calls and who answers. The same polit- concerns the broader effects of "White Glasses" as
ical question of social responsibility haunts Bright's a text by a committed queer studies critic and ped-
essays and Ronell's book. agogue that promotes fetishes. This modality is an
If Bimbox queers and cyberpunks are similar in intellectual problem because, as Laura Mulvey
mixing "youthful rage and technological terror- puts it, the function of the fetish is not to produce
ism" (Caniglia 88), the difference between the two new understanding but "to guard against the en-
is that cyberpunks derive their technology from croachment of knowledge" (12). By wearing white
differential, digital, and binary computer culture glasses, one produces local (fashion) effects, sets
while cyberqueers base their technotheory on the oneself apart through association with a new desire
differential and binary theories of ludic (post)mod-(for the signifier, white glasses); and by appropri-
ernism. From the classical Marxist perspective, ating a new difference, one feels in control over
both technologies are the consequences of changes difference itself. As Mulvey suggests, the substitu-
in the mode of production under late capitalism. tion of feeling for knowledge trivializes the under-
As virtual, post-al spaces supposedly beyond his- standing of how differences are produced and of
torical consciousness where those who can afford the place of particular differences within prevail-
ing exploitative relations. My point is neither to
it choose their reality, postgay queerity and postleft
political cyberpunk are the latest forms of bour- deny nor to erase fetishes but to inquire into their
geois idealism. production and use. In Sedgwick's essay, what
The same violent imposition of virtual realitystarts out as a personal fetish ("to me the glasses
over historical actuality is present in "more civi- meant . . . nothing but Michael" [195]) is trans-
lized" queer studies. "White Glasses," for instance,formed into a universal one, a "prosthetic device
is an intimate essay by Eve Sedgwick written asthat a attaches to, extends, and corrects the faulty
memorial in advance for a friend dying of AIDS limb of our vision" (197). Sedgwick also provides
(the gay poet, teacher, scholar, and activist Michael
a striking instance of the merger of the fetish as
Lynch). In the form of a journal or memoir, the erotic with the fetish as commodity. She reports
essay deals also with the author's sense of her own that her "first thought" on seeing Lynch was this:
mortality brought home by the discovery of her "Within a year, every fashion-conscious person in
breast cancer. Certainly such matters are personal, the United States is going to be wearing white
but what better opportunity to raise transpersonal, glasses.... I want white glasses first" (193). In the
collective issues? Instead of inquiring into the "magical" realm (197) made available by the white
global historical conditions that determine health glasses (which create, Sedgwick says, a "series of
care availability and quality, instead of using AIDSuncanny effects" [197]), reality is queered: a
and breast cancer as occasions for a conceptual in- woman who thinks of herself (and believes that
quiry into unjust patterns of resource distribution
others think of her) as "fat" can escape that histori-
on a global scale, Sedgwick follows the queer cal condition and can moreover slip the moorings
mode: she lets desire play by fetishizing a signifier
of her social construction and become, "along with
(white eyeglasses) associated metonymically with Michael, a gay man" (198). In the end, the white
the dying friend (Lynch was wearing white glasses glasses produce the same effect as VR goggles: the

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378 Birth of the Cyberqueer

bourgeois subject, whose desire is (relatively) au- scene of the film). Catherine works hard to separate
tonomous, is in a position not only to have the lat- her understanding of sexuality in general and of
est commodity first but also, more broadly, to write her relationship with the murdered man in particu-
her own virtual history.6 lar from normative social views. It was not a lov-

ing relationship but a sexual one of pure desire. She

III corrects a detective on this point: "I wasn't dating
him. I was fucking him." The film is an investiga-
Although the ahistorical thinking characteristictionof of the principles that history is nothing more
queer theory and cyberspace seems most readily than a text and that the text's meaning is undecid-
visible in "avant-garde" texts, it constitutes the un-
able. On the one hand, Catherine becomes the prime
derstanding of the real in all texts of the dominant
suspect because the murder follows the plot of her
fictional account; on the other hand, she has what
culture. A popular example that lies at the intersec-
Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), a detective inves-
tions of queerity, perversion, psychopathology, cy-
berspace, and virtual reality is Paul Verhoeven'stigating the case, calls the perfect alibi (she would
film Basic Instinct. Queer activists vigorously pro-
not be so stupid as to commit a murder that matches
tested the making and distribution of this film,herin own fictional plot). As Catherine becomes in-
which the characters Catherine, Roxy, and Beth volved sexually with Nick, she is writing (on a
are involved in lesbian sex and are intending to computer)
be, a novel about a detective who, after fall-
suspected of being, or finally proved to be murder-
ing for the "wrong woman," is killed by her. Part
of the film's tension derives from the fear that fic-
ers. The queer activists' criticism is ethical and
moral and, therefore, idealistic: it accuses the pro-
tion may come true again. Eventually, the relation-
ducers of the film, who know that most lesbians ship of the rich and free woman and the employed
and gay men are not murderers, of circulatingand a thus constrained man takes on the aspect of an
false and negative stereotype. Such criticism, how-
allegory not just of class relations but also of the
ever, merely mirrors the religious fundamentalists'
contrast between ludic (post)modernist and mod-
moral account of homosexuality, replacing their ernist ways of living. Nick is represented through
negative associations with positive ones. Further-familiar discourses: he is an ordinary joe and an
more, it is pointless to issue moral protests fromex-alcoholic and ex-cocaine user who is trying to
resist falling off the wagon. For Nick, who must
the queer frame of reference, for by definition it sets
aside questions of (humanist and modernist) moral- work for a living ("I don't have any money," he
ity as irrelevant. By contrast, materialist critique
says), desire is pitted against need. For Catherine,
investigates how associations themselves (positive wealth sustains pleasure-seeking adventures (with
or negative) are produced and connects questions drugs, sex, etc.) and produces a state of conscious-
ness in which desire seems to have escaped mere
of sexual practices not to morality but to the politics
of class and of other grounds of oppression and need;
to the regulation of desire-resisting tempta-
ideology, of which morality is one expression. tion-seems as irrelevant to her as oedipal regula-
One of the most urgent aspects of Basic Instincttion is to Deleuze and Guattari. Like the subject
is its demand that the viewer separate sexuality from
articulated in ludic theory, Catherine writes play-
humanist, modernist, and moralist frames of refer- fully (the plots of more than one of her published
ence. The central character, Catherine Trammell novels parallel events in her life) and strives to live
(Sharon Stone), is an exemplary ludic (post)mod- playfully too.
ern subject: wealthy, she is a writer who graduated From the materialist perspective, to protest Basic
from Berkeley with a double major in literature Instinct in behalf of the queer is less useful than to
and psychology. She has written a mystery story critique the kind of queered reality the film explores
that anticipates in its details the murder of one of and to relate the film's "message" to the queer po-
her sex partners (this sensational ice-pick murder litical project at large. The central character is not
of a man by a woman, occurring at the point of just queer and a murder suspect but, more impor-
orgasm during sexual intercourse, is the opening tant, a bourgeois subject free to write her virtual

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 Donald Morton 379

reality. In her novel, Catherine composes her own the outside and the inside. It is often remarked that
jouissance, her pure intensity (Nick calls her "the modernist depth has disappeared and that nothing
fuck of the century," evoking the desire to escape but (post)modern "surfaces" remain (Jameson 6).
from history), and lives out her desire in a virtual On this view, nothing is hidden any longer; the
space. Not everyone can let desire play as Cather- outside is the inside and vice versa. The human
ine can: Gus, a middle-aged detective who is Nick's subject no longer has an "interiority": conscious-
best friend and a voice of normative reality, re- ness and unconsciousness are written on the sur-
marks: "I can get laid by blue-haired women, but I face of the body, which is a text. In the new world
don't want 'em." This reminder that desire is (rela- of the cyberqueer, modesty or reticence in speech
tively) autonomous only for some calls in question or behavior is irrelevant. The film's content reflects
the occasional claims that the queer agenda in- the collapse of the space of civil behavior into the
cludes free sexual expression for all. For a ludic private space of instinctual reaction.
(post)modern subject like Catherine, desire is rela- One of the most telling aspects of the queer
tively autonomous. Although the film's sex scenes response to Basic Instinct is that while rejecting
do not immediately recall the technically engi- the negative image of homosexuals, the queer per-
neered pleasures of cybersex, sex in Basic Instinct spective would support the sexual frankness-and
is nevertheless technically (pharamacologically would justify both positions on the moral or ethi-
and otherwise) enhanced. Furthermore, virtual re- cal grounds of accuracy of representation. This
ality is by no means unfamiliar to the film's direc- contradictory response raises another question that
tor, who also made the technoculture hit Robocop. I have yet to see asked in queer studies: Does not
Catherine, for whom historical reality is only vir- cyberqueerity (which promotes the supposed au-
tual, uses her novel to unsettle her identity as tonomy of desire and suppresses the issue of need)
murderer for those trying to solve the crime. Her play a pivotal role today-while seeming to oppose
manipulation of representations according to her this development-in the transition to that new
desire recalls the manipulation of gender identity bourgeois morality and state of consciousness
by the queer theorist Judith Butler: both Catherine
which is desperately needed by late, multinational
and Butler relate gender to desire and occlude the
capitalism to maintain its exploitative and oppres-
connections of gender and sexuality to need (class). sive regime of class relations?
Right-wing criticism of the film would no doubt
focus on its sexual images and dialogue, placing
them in a "moral" frame. Assuming the existence
of timeless and universal truths (and seeking a
"proper," "pure," and thus "moral" expression of Notes
those truths), conservatives would find the sexual
content a sign of moral decay and an affront to
'On the "post-al," see Transformation 1, especially Mas'ud
"family values." The observation that the film of- Zavarzadeh's lead essay, "Post-ality." As I understand (post)-
fends bourgeois morality, however, overlooks the modernism, the term denotes not a positive entity "out there"
way in which bourgeois morality alters to keep up but a political construct-the collectivity of reading strategies
deployed to make sense of a particular historical series. Follow-
with historical changes in the mode of production:
ing Teresa L. Ebert, I use ludic (post)modernism to designate
the morality needed by the bourgeoisie under ear-
the understanding that sees (post)modernity as a problematics
lier stages of capitalism and the morality needed of representation and conceives representation as a rhetorical
by the same class under late, multinational capital- issue, a matter of signification, in which the process of
ism are different. Thus, the film's sexual content is signification itself articulates the signified. Under the law of dif-
not so much a calculated transgression of bour- ferance, representation is always incommensurate with the rep-
resented. Ludic (post)modernism, therefore, posits the real as
geois values for shock effect as it is the mark of a
an instance of "simulation" and in no sense the origin of the
transition in bourgeois consciousness; the frank
truth that can provide a ground for a political project. Dif-
sexuality results from the (post)modern erasure of ferance is regarded as the effect of the unending playfulness
the distinction between the public and the private, (thus the term ludic) of the signifier in signifying processes that

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380 Birth of the Cyberqueer

can no longer acquire representational authority by anchoring Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of
themselves in what Derrida calls the "transcendental signified" "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993.
(Of Grammatology 20). For more sustained discussions of the . Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Iden-
different understandings of (post)modernity in relation to cur- tity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
rent competing forms of cultural studies, see Zavarzadeh and . "Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Fuss, In-
Morton 152-54. side/Out 13-31.
2On the queer, see de Lauretis; Berlant and Freeman;
Caniglia, Julie. "Cyberpunks Hate You." Utne Reader July-
Warner; Smyth. Aug. 1993: 88-96.
3For other theorizations of mutations in subjectivity (besides
Clark, Danae. "Commodity Lesbianism." Camera Obscura
cyberqueerity) in technoculture, see Haraway; Penley and Ross. 25-26 (1991): 181-201.
4For a sustained inquiry into this shift from gender to sexual-
Cohen, Ed. "Are We (Not) What We Are Becoming? Gay 'Iden-
ity, see Morton, "Politics." tity,' 'Gay Studies,' and the Disciplining of Knowledge."
5Exemplary instances of the first mode are Hocquenghem;Boone and Cadden 161-75.
Fuss (Essentially Speaking and Inside/Out); Bristow; Munt;
Cooper, Dennis. "Johnny Noxzema to the Gay Community:
Meese; Edelman; Warner; Wolfe and Penelope; Abelove, Barale,'You Are the Enemy.'" Village Voice 30 June 1992: 31-32.
and Halperin; Doan; and Butler (Gender Trouble and Bodies).
Davis, Erik. "A Computer, a Universe: Mapping an Online Cos-
Exemplary instances of the second are Watney; Halperin; Dol-mology." Voice Literary Supplement Mar. 1993: 10-11.
limore; Abelove, Barale, and Halperin; and Evans. For contes-
de Lauretis, Teresa, ed. Queer Theory. Spec. issue of Differ-
tations between proponents of the two modes, see Ryan, and forences 3.2 (1991): i-xviii, 1-159.
another critique of (post)modernity in relation to sexuality, see
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
Edwards. In spite of local differences, the two strands converge and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and
on the political plane. For expansions of the arguments I make
Helen R. Lane. New York: Viking, 1977.
here, see my "Queerity" and introduction to Queer Theory.
. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
6In a recent interview conducted by Jeffrey Williams, Sedg-
Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
wick hints that she is moving on a "hunch" in the direction of
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak.
the cyberqueer ("Sedgwick Unplugged" 63-64). I believe that
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
such a text as "White Glasses" shows her to be already there.
. "Spectres of Marx." New Left Review 205 (1994): 131-60.
Dibbell, Julian. "Let's Get Digital: The Writer a la Modem."
Voice Literary Supplement Mar. 1993: 13-14.
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