Identity (again) (8 July 2009)

Do we really have a choice to be only, simply, merely who we say we are? "I'm just me." -- But the "me" that I say I am is always in the position of being not the I who speaks. I have to look in the mirror, step outside of myself, take the position of an other with respect to myself--not just to live this body and this life but to observe and define it: "Je est un autre" (Rimbaud).

1. Persona. I overheard one of the meatheads at the gym say something about how unjust it is for us to give all this attention to the death of Michael Jackson when there are all these soldiers dying in Iraq--where are their concerts and commercialized television specials? Purely aside from the difference in circumstances, what matters is not simply the death of a body, wherein "all deaths are equal", including the death of a beloved pet. The question has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the deceased but exactly the opposite. All the news coverage and memorials have nothing to do with the value of the flesh and bone laid to rest but everything to do with the extrinsic value of the person, the public figure, the character, the parriah, the myth, the wound that we called Michael Jackson--a life that was more than anything he did or said but exceeded by what we made of it.

2. "The Trouble With Normal." We heard today that Massachusetts is suing the federal government over the constitutionality of DOMA (which, unfortunately, we should remember was passed during the Clinton administration). On the one hand, because the institution of marriage is defined heteronormatively, the case can be made that equality can structurally never be achieved insofar as "equal rights" merely perpetuates the system of norms that define queer identity as subordinate or derivative (we are still "playing by their rules" and any victory that is won is a victory permitted by those rules). Yet at the same time what matters in this specific instance is not the love between two people nor even the identity of the lovers as queer. As a legal matter of "essential rights and protections", at stake in this conflict is the very existence of queer couples as legal entities (i.e., a question of legal and not queer identity).