“Queer Theory … regards the very existence of categories of sex, gender, and sexuality to be oppressive, … wholly as a product of how we talk about those issues. It thus ignores biology nearly completely. …

The word ‘queer’ … refers to anything that falls outside binaries (such as male/female, masculine/feminine, and heterosexual/homosexual) … To be queer allows someone to be simultaneously male, female, or neither, to present as masculine, feminine, neuter, or any mixture of the three, and to adopt any sexuality – and to change any of these identities at any time or to deny that they mean anything in the first place. …

There are biologists and psychologists advancing knowledge of how the sexes differ (or do not differ) biologically and psychologically on average, how sexuality works, and why some people are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender – but their work is not welcome by queer Theory. On the contrary, such knowledge is generally regarded … as [a] … violent way to categorize and constrain …

Queer Theory…’s founding figures are Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler and Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, all of whom draw heavily upon Foucault. …

Rubin asserts that we should believe sex, gender, and sexuality to be social constructs, not because it’s necessarily true, but because it is easier to politicize them and demand change if they are social constructs than if they are biological. … For Butler, gender is wholly socially constructed. … For [her] … the very existence of coherent and stable categories like ‘woman’ leads to totalitarian and oppressive discourses. … For Sedgwick, then, a binary understanding of sexuality forms the basis on which all binary thinking rests. Furthermore, all such thinking is false. …

Queer Theory differs fundamentally from the liberal feminism and LGTB activism that preceded it. Claims that queer Theory is the only way to liberate those who are not heterosexual or gender-conforming are belied by the success of universal liberal approaches both before and since. …

People generally do not appreciate being told that their sex, gender and sexuality are not real, or are wrong, or bad. … The idea that homosexuality is a social construct … threatens to undo the considerable progress made by lesbians and gay activists in countering the belief that their romantic and sexual attractions are a mere ‘lifestyle choice’, that could … be … prayed away. …

It doesn’t help people who wish to have their sex, gender, gender or sexuality accepted as normal … by arguing that considering things normal is problematic.”

aus: Helen Pluckrose / James Lindsay: Cynical theories, Durham, NC: Pitchstone 2020, S.89-110.

Abb: Paul Cadmus: The Fleet’s In! (1934), im Internet.

05/23

“Jacques Derrida … in 1967 … introduced … [the] concept ‘deconstruction‘. … Derrida rejects the commonplace idea that words refer straightforwardly to things in the real world. Instead, he insists that words refer only to other words … ‘There is nothing (read: no meaning) outside of text’. …

The author’s intentions are irrelevant, … due to Derrida’s adaptation of Roland Barthes’ concept of ‘the death of the author’. Consequently, since discourses are believed to create and maintain oppression, they have to be carefully monitored and deconstructed. …

The most common postmodernist response to this …, [is] to read ‘deconstructively’ by looking for internal inconsistencies … in which a text contradicts and undermines itself. …

In practice, deconstructive approaches to language therefore look very much like nitpicking at words in order to deliberately miss the point.”

aus: Helen Pluckrose / James Lindsay: Cynical theories, Durham, NC: Pitchstone 2020, S.40-41.

Abb.: De.Construct, Second Life Art, im Internet.

05/23

Abb.: Text von mir, Foto aus dem Internet.

05/23

“A man does not have roots, he has feet.”

Riad Sattouf, zitiert durch Adam Shatz, mit dem Hinweis, das Zitat sei ursprünglich von Salman Rushdie. In: Adam Shatz: Drawing Blood. A French graphic novelist’s shocking memoir of the Middle East. The New Yorker, 12.10.15, im Internet.

Abb.: Suzanne Jongmans: Back to the roots, Galeriewilms, im Internet.

01/23

“Shakespeare’s Hamlet said: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ But that is no problem. We all want to be. The real problem, biblically speaking, is how to be and how not to be.”

“I would say to young people a number of things, and I have only one minute. I would say, let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can do, everyone, our share to redeem the world, in spite of all absurdities and all the frustration and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build life as it if were a work of art. You’re not a machine. When you are young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.”

aus: Abraham Joshua Heschel (1972) zitiert durch Arnold Eisen in Krista Tippett interviewing Arnold Eisen: The Opposite of Good Is Indifference. On Being 2008/2017, im Internet.

01/23

[DE]

“… I came across these words of Jewish philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: ‘I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I am not accommodated. I don’t accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I’m still surprised. That’s why I’m against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised, not to adjust ourselves.’ …

I have no idea how to realise that. Be surprised. Don’t accommodate yourself to evil. Show solidarity, grow. And yet: Live, enjoy life. Find your own way …”

aus: Kübra Gümüsay: Sprache und Sein. München: btb 2021 (Originalausgabe 2020), S.93/94, Zitat im Zitat aus Krista Tippett interviewing Arnold Eisen: The Opposite of Good Is Indifference. On Being 2008/2017, im Internet.

Abb: Banksy?

01/23

“If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country. Their targets will be civilians – mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law. The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.

We know this because far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war. …

Civil war experts know that two factors put countries at high risk of civil war. The US has one of these risk factors and remains dangerously close to the second. … The first is ethnic factionalism. This happens when citizens in a country organise themselves into political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology. The second is anocracy. This is when a government is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic; it’s something in between. Civil wars almost never happen in full, healthy, strong democracies. They also seldom happen in full autocracies. Violence almost always breaks out in countries in the middle – those with weak and unstable pseudo-democracies. Anocracy plus factionalism is a dangerous mix.

We also know who tends to start civil wars … The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden. It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power. … Today, the Republican party and its base of white, Christian voters are losing their dominant position in American politics and society as a result of demographic changes …”

aus: Barbara F Walters Beitrag zu: ‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?, The Guardian online, 6.11.22, im Internet

11/22

“Maybe it is the name that is the problem. Climate change. It doesn’t sound that bad. The word ‘change’ resonates quite pleasantly in our restless world. No matter how fortunate we are, there is always room for the appealing possibility of improvement. Then there is the ‘climate’ part. Again, it does not sound so bad. … A changing world. A warming planet. What’s not to like?

Perhaps that is partly why so many people still think of climate change as a slow, linear and even rather harmless process. But the climate is not just changing. It is destabilising. It is breaking down. … There are … points of no return. And we do not know exactly when we might cross them. What we do know, however, is that they are getting awfully close, even the really big ones. …

The German oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf writes: ‘We have enough ice on Earth to raise sea levels by 65 metres … and, at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose by 120 metres as a result of about 5C of warming.’ Taken together, these figures give us a perspective on the powers we are dealing with. Sea-level rise will not remain a question of centimetres for very long. …”

aus: Greta Thunberg: We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground, The Guardian online, 8.10.22, im Internet

Abb.: Banksy.

10/22

“‘This is the new normal‘ is a phrase we often hear when the rapid changes in our daily weather patterns – wildfires, hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and so on – are being discussed. … But this is not the “new normal”. What we are seeing now is only the very beginning …”

aus: Greta Thunberg: We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground, Guardian online, 8.10.22, im Internet

10/22

“I don’t think hope is something that can be given to you – you have to create it yourself. Hope means taking action, … I think that we need to redefine hope, because it’s being used against us. If there is hope you don’t need to do anything, but that is the opposite of hope.”

aus: Greta Thunberg, interviewt durch Hannah Nathanson: Greta Thunberg Wants To Clear The Air, Elle Britain Online, 6.10.22, im Internet

Abb.: Grupo Escombros: El gran sueño argentino, 1991, im Internet.

10/22