Category: 2016 Blog Post

One of most rewarding experience I’ve had at college was a group project about homelessness in Carlisle. We spent a day with a “ homeless guide” and at the end of the day we spent the night at the homeless shelter. It might be crazy to relate this experience to queer theory but just as Halberstam does with pop culture, I’m taking something I know very well which was my own experience and relating it to the Halberstam’s queer time. The sentence that I chose to focus on was “Obviously not all gay, lesbian, and transgender people live their lives in radically different ways from their heterosexual counterparts, but part of what has made queerness compelling as a form of self-description in the past decade or so has to do with the way it has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relation to time and space (2).” The first part of the sentence is explaining that are gay, lesbian, and transgendered may have to do something things different in life or experience something things different but many experiences they have are the same as heterosexual people. Relating this to my experience just like heterosexual and homosexual individuals don’t live radically different experiences either do homeless and non-homeless people do. Like getting a job both individuals can be equally as qualified, one difference may be that a homeless person in Carlisle has to look at a job relatively close and someone living in an apartment in Carlisle can have a more wide spread job search because they have the means to travel to a far job. The sentence then talks about what Halberstam believes that society recently has found so interesting about queerness, which is the thought of new life narratives and alternative relation to time and space. From this second part, I want to focus on the lens Habersham creates about time. I think that Halberstams understanding of time is a construct of society and how we participate in it is just like a subculture. So if you participate in this subculture differently then someone else, your experience of time will be different. So Halberstam believes that queerness is thought to be outside of societies norms just like having kids before you get married, so these people will have a different understanding of time then someone that is heterosexual or gets married and then has kids. In that sentence there are binary opposites such as gay, lesbian, and transgender and it’s opposite being heterosexual counterparts. This relates to the word we defined dialectic meaning an investigation through reasoned argument, so the argument of the experience of time through these two poles. A repetition I saw was with self-description and life narrative these are two things used to illustrate how an individual has their own experiences. This relates to the word temporality meaning the linear progression of past, present, or future. An individuals life narrative doesn’t have an end goal of marriage or reproduction and then that persons self-description allows them to have a different thought of time then someone who’s self -description allows them to have a life narrative with getting married and having kids at the end of it. Something weird that I notice with this sentence is that she calls queerness compelling. I think its interesting that something that is out of social norm is so compelling, because its like that with homelessness its outside of societies orders but for a policy class our professor used it as a project because it was so interesting to learn about peoples experiences and about the polices we could implement to help homelessness in Carlisle. I took the lens of Halbertams thought about queerness and alternative relations of time to look at what I learned with my experience with the project, just like Halberstam says queerness is outside of societies order and that affects your concept of time, being homeless is having a way of life different which is a threat to social constructs of society so homeless people might have a different understanding of time. I explained how the way we participate in life is like a subculture and that subculture may see life differently. So, someone who goes home to the same big bed every night compared to someone who goes to a different church everyday of the week to sleep on a thin matt are in different subcultures which causes there to have different understandings of time.

We were in a Virtual world where the only taboo was real life. But in a true Virtual world I could have gently picked up Elgin and dropped him for ever from the frame. (p.98)

They are in Oxford, away from Elgin. Louise is smiling, calm but she has something undercover. She keeps her secret as if she is a war-time agent. The secret makes Oxford a virtual world. Virtual world is so real, but is not real. The narrator’s prospect and anticipation are wedging into the very thin line crossing real world and virtual world. The narrator is foreseeing that she will go back to her shell, but at the same time wishing she stays.
Halberstam and Freeman’s arguments about time and space of normativity and the queer provide elaborate view in the virtual world, and reveals the characters’ suffocating struggle. Oxford is not just a place where hope and forecast, pretense and sincerity are crossing on an individual level. Rather, it is a place where the narrator and Louise are struggling against overwhelming power of normativity, which is Elgin, marriage, respectful social status and stable economic condition.
They tried to get away from the norm, but their escape may vanish just like their temporary shelter, the rented room. Criticism against them will be as adverse as the scorching heat and distracting noises outside. They may doubt themselves at last, as the narrator sees the illusion of Elgin. You may be some place out of the real world, but the normativity persists so strongly in everywhere that you can never be out of the real world and only realize that you were in the virtual world.
However, these instability and vulnerability of their escape do not undermine its value. As what Halbertstam said, the crisis of instability is also an opportunity to create alternative modes of life. The moment Louise decided to leave Elgin, she made her real world and the virtual world reversed, as ‘my love for you makes any other life a lie’.

I have a relatively “normal” appearance, by contemporary standards of heterosexual college-aged males. I prefer to wear pants and button-up shirts, I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, and my hair is currently combed-over and, arguably, professional. This weekend, however, marks the 4th year of my involvement with a foundation that supports pediatric cancer research, where I will shave my head in support, but change my hair to a pink mohawk for the week before the shave. Compared to my current appearance, this is a big change. Upon telling my parents of the plans leading up to this year’s shave, the first words out of my mom’s mouth were “I hope you don’t have any internship interviews this week.”

Unfortunately, she’s right. That’s something I initially was concerned with. Maybe I could have gotten away with this haircut when I was in elementary school, but at this stage in my life, I am a college student and a pre-professional. I am expected to present myself in what society has deemed a professional way, and a pink mohawk certainly doesn’t fit that bill.

Harvey’s conversation about postmodern space and time as written in Halberstam argues that “…our conceptions of space and time are social constructions forged out of vibrant and volatile social relations” (6), while also stating that we envision that”… our time is our own and, as the cliche goes, ‘there is a time and a place for everything.’… thus people feel guilty about leisure, frustrated by waiting, satisfied by punctuality, and so on. These emotional responses add to our sense of time as ‘natural'” (7). Imagining that time is “natural”, along with the emotional responses that come along with functioning outside of “natural” temporalities, encourages me to believe that other aspects of our life, for instance our attitudes and appearances, should adjust in a natural progression just as time does. Time being “natural”, as it is used by Harvey, explains the emotion associated behind something functioning outside of heteronormative time or ideals. In this case, a mohawk and died hair are not “natural” under constructed normative appearance ideals as they function within the normative temporality of a pre-professional college student. As a young child, a pink mohawk does not necessarily break societal norms to the same degree that a college student sporting the same hair-style would, as normative expectations vary depending on the time in which the action occurs. As Harvey reminds us, we only envision that our time is our own, not understanding that the choices we make are largely influenced by influences intertwined in normative temporalities.

I’m definitely excited for my pink hair this weekend; after all, it’s for charity. I’m still hoping that my boss doesn’t see it though.

 

Written on the Body really made me think about the perception of time. Since Antiquity, human beings have kept trying to measure time, and it has become materialized through institutionalized rituals, such as obtaining job, marriage, raise of children, retirement… As a heterosexual girl who grew up in a heterosexual family, I never had the opportunity to think “outside the box” and unconsciously assumed that I was meant to follow “those paradigmatic markers of life experience – namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death.” (Halberstam, 2) Up until this class, I had never thought that there could be a queer time, which would distinguish itself from the time forged by capitalized society.

 

“The constantly diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here, the present, the now, and while the threat of no future hovers overhead like a storm cloud, the urgency of being also expands the potential of the moment” (Halberstam, 2)

 

This quote by Halberstam sums up exactly the spirit of Written on the Body. Prior to Louise’s arrival in the narrator’s life, he/she seemed to be living only “on the here, the present, the now”. This is conveyed by the fact that he/she used to live at the pace of her/his conquests. There is no mention of his/her everyday life, just names of people with whom he/she was in a relationship. As far as the reader knows, the narrator is not suffering from AIDS and is therefore not threatened by “no future”. But Louise is. Indeed, she has cancer, and that alters the narrator’s perception of his/her relationship with his/her lover. It seems that the narrator’s time evolves according to the one he/she loves: the fact that she has little time to live increases the narrator’s love for Louise. Moreover, the ending is ambiguous: whether they are both dead and meeting in Heaven, or they meet again in real life, it seems that the narrator is setting his/her own time with Louise. Indeed, there seems to be no constraints (“reach the corners of the world” Winterson, 190), no socially defined pattern to follow.

Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone. (Winterson, 90)

 

Winterson’s Written in the Body complicates normative structures of time and space in multiple ways particularly in the narration and language of the novel. At this point in the novel, the narrator and Louise have reached a point in their relationship where they’ve recognized the serious repercussions of their emotions and actions. They are both consumed by their love for one another despite the uncertainty of their future, which constructs a different understanding of the passing and measurement of time. The narrator is content with the inevitable decay of their relationship with Louise because they are aware that their time with her cannot be compared to normative structures of time. Their relationship is “ripe,” signifying its impending decomposition while also highlighting the fact that their relationship is in its prime. The narrator continuously fixates over the ways that time affects their relationships, especially with Louise because they exist outside of the parameters of what is deemed as acceptable in society. The narrator states, “time that withers you will wither me,” emphasizing how the physical and emotional aspects of their relationship are connected and influenced by time. Halberstam’s In a Queer Time and Place illustrates the ways in which queer time or non-heteronormative time operates in a world where the constant “diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here, present, and now and while the threat of no future hovers overhead…the urgency of being also expands the potential of the moment.” (2) The constraints of time have strengthened and intensified their relationship and when the “earth covers [the narrator and Louise] and [they] are gone,” they will still be together as time extends past what is constructed around them.

In Written on the Body, time is nonlinear and unstable. Rather than adhere to a predictable framework of time, the narrator shifts from moment to moment with only the barest hints of an ordered chronology. This ambiguous timeline is contrived in order to force the reader to experience time in the same no normative manner as the narrator. The narrator experience what Judith Halberstan refers to as Queer time. The narrator flits through the moments of their life in pursuit of love, however any love they find is doomed. Most of their relationships are begun with the understanding that they are temporary and certainly deviate from normal behavior. The narrator speaks of love, but not of family or aging. At the same time they obsess over black holes and, after learning of Louise’s sickness, the slow wasting of diseased flesh towards death and decay. But, for the narrator, that is the basic rule of essence. To the narrator, “time always ends” (Winterson 18).
Even if the narrator accepts the dream of a “saggy armchair of clichés” (10), they do not have a form that would fit in normative time. As obsessed as the narrator might be with bodies, their own body is formless. Without the markings of gender or sexuality, they cannot slip into this normalized time. Just as the narrator seems to exist in an ambiguous moment, or string of moments, in time, they also inhabit an ambiguous space. Unable to slip into a more traditional lifestyle, the narrator could even inhabit their own “time without end”(18), at least for a moment.

“Cancer is an unpredictable condition. It is the body turning upon itself. We don’t understand that yet. We know what happens but not why it happens or how to stop it” (Winterson 105).

Louise’s actions in the face of the “unpredictable condition” of her cancer suggest that she uses the circumstances of “the body turning upon itself” to create for herself a new “life narrative,” to use Halbertstam’s term, that is not contingent upon a desire for longevity (2). Although the chronology of Written on the Body is imprecise, Louise states in a conversation with the narrator that she first saw them two years ago (84). When Elgin reveals to the narrator that Louise has cancer, he also states that Louise has known about her cancer for two years (101). I want to read Louise’s decision to pursue the narrator as linked to her finding out that she has cancer. Although the reader is not given insight into Louise’s perspective on her own disease, it is likely that learning that she has cancer would have altered time in some way for Louise. Specifically, I believe that Louise’s awareness of her disease altered time for her in the same was as Halberstam describes AIDS as having altered time for the queer community. Louise’s cancer, and her subsequent knowledge of “what happens but not why it happens or how to stop it” created a “constantly diminishing future” for her, one in which there was no possibility of a life that revolved around the “reproductive temporality” which Halberstam sees as the central feature of normative time (4). By deliberately seeking out the narrator’s address and creating the circumstances of their meeting, Louise enacts the unpredictability of her disease and begins the work of creating an alternative “life narrative” for herself in which she not only exists in “queer time” but also purposefully removes herself from the normative structure of her marriage to Elgin, which binds her to the normative timeline on which reproduction is the next scheduled item. While Elgin and the narrator see the unpredictability of Louise’s cancer as a thing to be controlled, Louise embraces the fact that her body is “turning upon itself” and denying her a normative lifespan and pursuit of longevity by rejecting a marriage-bound, reproduction-based “life schedule” and pursuing unpredictability (Halberstam 1).

 

 

The TV show, Orphan Black, utilizes several of the “clones” on the show to break down binaries. I would like to focus on one clone in particular. On the show, one of the clones Cosima, has several relationships with women, however, she never expressly defines her sexuality until Season 3. Aside from this, what is so great about her character is that she lives by statements like the one above. When asked if she was gay, she states that this is not the most interesting thing about her. Instead, she strives to save all of the other clones through her scientific genius. She dates other women, but this is perceived in a very normal and matter-of-fact way. In addition, one of the women she dates identifies as straight, however, when she fell in love with Cosima, she did not question or run from her feelings. Cosima is one of the most powerful LGBT characters on television in present day, for her sexuality is not what makes her interesting or important. Her worth comes from charm, wit, humor, and brilliance. Rather than view and portray this character as a “token character” or a “novelty,” her character is depicted as “normal.” Like queer time, this television shows strives to break down the walls of what is “normal” and what is “abnormal.” Cosima is a woman with brown hair and glasses who likes science and women, just as another clone has brown hair and likes leather jackets and punk rock, just as another close is transgender. Despite their differences, Orphan Black views each of these characters, their lives, and their relationships the same. If society was capable of viewing all individuals the same, just as this show does, than there would be no need for “queer time.”

 

P.S Orphan Black passes the Bechdel Test.

While Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe  has gotten an avalanche of positive attention for being one of the only children’s shows with queer characters, atypical family structures, and phenomenal representation in terms of race, body type, gender expression, and mental illness, I have yet to see anyone discuss how the show utilizes time to “queer” its narrative. So here I go.

If it wasn’t queer enough that the Crystal Gems (and all other Gems) are magical genderless aliens who all present as women and who fall in love with other Gems (except in one instance throughout all of Gem history), they also do not age. In the episode “So Many Birthdays,” we learn that the Gems are literally thousands of years old, and while they cannot age (and learn later in the series that they can regenerate if only their physical being is hurt), they can get injured and die if their gems are sufficiently damaged. This relates to Halberstam’s article, in that Gem culture “open[s] up new life narratives and alternate relations to time and space” (2).

Steven complicates this already alternative narrative, as he is half human and half Gem. In a more recent episode titled “Steven’s Birthday,” it is revealed that Steven is actually 14 years old, which is slightly older than his best friend Connie (a 12 year old human) and most viewers would have guessed. His birthday photo album reveals that he has not actually aged in several years, explaining why he looks young. Being the first known half human/half Gem, no one is sure how or if Steven will age any more, or the parameters of his ability to die. According to Halberstam, “Queer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience — namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death” (2). Steven’s nonnormative aging process muddies a number of these experiences. If he can even reproduce to begin with, does he become able to when he is physically pubescent, or when he reaches a certain age regardless of his body? Could he reach “marrying age” and still look like a pre-teen? Can he die????? Who knows!

Another fact that further convolutes Steven’s temporality is that, under certain, uncontrolled circumstances, his physical age can fluctuate based on his mentality, as he turns into a withering old man in “So Many Birthdays” and reverts back into an infant in “Steven’s Birthday,” implying that time is not fixed and that age is an illusion. But that is something to explore at another time since I’m nearly 50 words over the limit. 🙂

“Christ was wrong, impossibly hard, when he said that to imagine committing adultery was just as bad as doing it.” (Winters 38)

The narrator develops a deep uncertainty on the idea of religion. Through the quote, we can imagine that the narrator’s affair will Louise has hit them hard in the way they perceive their relationship with Jacqueline. For the narrator, committing adultery is more “bad’ then actually just imagining it. Nonetheless, this quote not only characterizes the idea of family upbringings through religious institution, but also how the surrounding world has changed over time. This idea of time developed a sense of uncertainty in the narrators perspective of his life and decisions.

According to Halbustan, “Queer uses of time and space develop, at least in part, in the opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction.” Winterson’s use of dialect through her characters uses queer time as a sense to portray the narrators genderless view. The use of religion is given to the reader as a cyclical event. From my earlier quote, religion is spread out through the novel in order to understand how the narrator has somewhat changed or developed a different sense of what religion might mean in their own imaginatively place. It might even be crazy to imagine that queer time in Written on the Body might just be a place where all our impossibilities become possible by the simple fact that everything is weird into our own understanding.