Somerville's newest project is entitled "Queering the State," which as she puts it intends to "de-naturalize naturalization" or to queer it. In this case, queer is meant to be used as a term that calls into question categories, particularly categories of identity. For Somerville, queering categories is a project that ultimately shows how categories are produced as social constructions. She notes that historically, identity categories have been used to police the lines between "normal" and "abnormal" -- she extends the analysis in this case to refer to the categories of "citizen" and "alien." She begins by discussing her intersectional approach, which is a notion we've been introduced to via "Queering the Color Line." Intersectionality is also central to her current project. Her intersectional approach is meant to highlight the notion that sexuality should not be studied in isolation, but should be studied in conjunction with other categories such as race. While the research that Somerville has looked at so far includes both laws and policy surrounding the naturalization process, for this particular lecture she looks closely at the rituals and ceremonies surrounding citizenship. Her project is to historicize the naturalization ceremony paying particular attention to discourses surrounding sexuality and race.
This is clearly just a short snapshot of Somerville's lecture, but you can start to see how this analysis is a continuation of her project in "Queering the Color Line." For my part, I found this lecture to be quite interesting -- particularly the images of the heterosexual nuclear family that are part of the armory of booklets that are given to newly naturalized citizens. It is clear from this image how the discourses of heteronormativity and citizenship overlap in order to instruct and compel various behaviors via the naturalization ritual.
Final Somerville Diablog post: "Queering the State"
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Thanks for getting the bulk of the summary up, Liora. I want to respond both to our class discussion about QtCL and also to the talk on Queering Like a State.
First, in terms of our class: I agreed with Ashley's comment (see other blog thread) that we had some good stuff emerge, but could have tried to keep conversation flowing more. There was some tough stuff to unpack, but I was glad to see that our "The Kids Are Alright" clip ended up being pretty useful. Now if that wins any Oscars, people can throw shows at the TV and say "but it was so racist!" Stuff like that.
I feel like our "drag vs. blackface conversation" didn't go anywhere, but was reminded of it when I was reading IMPERIAL LEATHER by Anne McClintock (1995) for another class. In it, McClintock warns us not to take up the idea of any type of gender troubling (or any other form of mimesis/mimicry) as necessarily subversive. She writes:
"Different forms of mimicry such as passing and cross-dressing deploy ambiguity in different ways; critical distinctions are lost if these historically variant cultural practices are collapsed under the ahistorical sign of the same. Racial passing is not the same as gender cross-dressing; black voguing is not the same as whites performing in blackface; black minstrelsy is not the same as lesbian drag. In the fetish scene, transvestism often involves the flagrant exhibition of ambiguity (the hairy knee under the silk skirty); indeed, much of the scandal of transvestism resides in its theatrical parading of *identity as difference.* Passing, by contrast, more often involves the careful *masking* of ambiguity; *difference as identity.*" (p. 65)
I thought that distinction was helpful for our conversation. I highly recommend IMPERIAL LEATHER if folks haven't read it yet. Lots of heavy theory in one 400-page whirlwind dose.
As for Somerville's talk, I agree with Liora on many points. Ashley, you'll be happy to learn that she mentioned the Canaday book as an example of queerness in relation to citizenship and nation-state. I was particularly interested in the description of the part of the naturalization ceremony that involved taking a Native American man's hands and first placing in it his bow-and-arrow which he would immediately put down in a symbolic rejection of primitivism, in which the ceremony leader would declare "you have shot your last arrow; now you will live like the White man." and then placing the man's hands on a plow and declaring "only by work do we gain a right to the land." WTF?! Somerville didn't explore that part of the act as closely as I would have liked, but if we know anything about the history of modern capitalism it's that work does not equal ownership! Quite the opposite!
After two weeks with Somerville, I have come to appreciate her work in many respects, but I'm pretty sure she won't be one of my go-to, heartthrob scholars.