I want to start with a radical departure. I want to say that identity itself is dangerous, that there is a pattern of identity formation that relates to minority community formations and that this pattern is problematic. I posit that there are visible and invisible identifiers of marginality, that there is a common experience of coming out, conversion, identification with a marginal community whether itࢀ™s identifying with your sexuality or your ethnicity or your religion, that thereࢀ™s a crisis or splitting of marginal communities when it becomes apparent that the process of identification is imperfect; that is, that no group is ever homogenous enough or perfectly identical and that individuals cannot perform perfect identity. at which point the process commences anew at a more fragmented level. But there is an underlying theme of purity, contamination, and the need for border policing, and that the problem of community continuity now being urgently negotiated in a number of spaces ࢀ” for example the Jewish community, the Gay community, indigenous communities and in ethnic skirmishes worldwide ࢀ” is inherently flawed. I argue that these ongoing debates stem from a fear of integration and the loss of difference and that there are complex connections around ghettos, identity maintenance and oppression. Unfortunately thereࢀ™s also questions of how to address real disadvantage without employing these categories.
One of the issues I want to take up here is the popular proposition that hybrid identities are a potential solution. We are at birth marked with a number of different signs, attributes which are multiple and interwoven and whose discursive power moulds, at least in part, who we will come to see ourselves to be. However society assigns binary oppositions ࢀ” male/female, Christian/not-Christian, white/not-white, rich/poor, able/disabled and I wonࢀ™t quote you the lovely bits of Massumi and other people who talk about academic hybridity.
The radical resistive possibilities of hybrid identities are also challenged within cultural studies. For examples in hybridity and double-consciousness Alberto Moreiras, while still addressing only hybridised ethnicity, begins to explicitly critique post-colonial theories of hybrid subjectivity within a context of global capitalism. Subalternity he says, is the site not just of negated identity, but also for a constant negotiation of identity positions. Identities are always the product of the hegemonic relation, that is always the result of an interpolation and therefore not an autonomous site for politics. As with identity, so with difference or hybridity. His contention is that the radical possibilities of subalternity are domesticated as hybridity or to use Deleuze and Guattariࢀ™s term, reterritorialised. He specifically critiques Stuart Hallࢀ™s notions of ethnic hybridity saying that the politics of ethnic hybridity seem to reach exhaustion in the potential universalising of a resistance which the system itself produces and can therefore always potentially reinstrumentalise. Discussions of hybridity are complicated by the mobilisation of hybrid identities in a variety of contexts. On the whole the terms African American or Chinese Australian refer to hybrid cultures where there is not a hybrid ethnicity, so someone who has both parents being Chinese can still be Chinese Australian because their ethnicity is Chinese but their culture is Australian.
With all the attendant interpolations of post-coloniality and migration discourse in that labelling, and then raising issues around whatࢀ™s an authentic Chinese person, whoࢀ™s authentic in these contexts and also of intercultural interracial relationships so then that the 2nd and 3rd generation children frequently deal with both hybrid cultural identities and hybrid ethnicities and then end up in relationships with white Anglo partners where this hybridity then gets erased in some way through discussion although more and more now we are starting to talk about ethnicities such as Aboriginal/Irish rather than just assuming that all of the Anglo halves or Anglo parts of those cultures are subsumed into the non-White marker. For example reports around Dawn Casey when she resigned from the National Museum. Thatࢀ™s talking about ethnicities there. I just want to say that now in a similar way bisexuality and transgendered identities are hybrid identities in the sense that they are seen as being between straight and gay or they are seen as being between male and female so also there are notions of hybrid identities that are just as problematic for me.
So too often reports about edge identities or hybrid identities rely on the idea of choosing one identity over another with the unsurprising result that we experience psychological isolation if we reject our ethnic identity in order to move into some form of religious or sexual identity to help find ourselves within the Gay community but weࢀ™ve rejected our ethnic communities. Lawrence Schimel described his dilemma that what would make him sexy to the queer community is exactly what would make him an outcast in the Jewish community ࢀoeI have in fact never looked more Gay. The only thing I am missing to be a perfect 90s clone is a tattoo, something tribal perhaps, on my left or right arm, but Iࢀ™m a Jew and Jews donࢀ™t do tattoos.ࢀ These demands to prioritise should not be mistaken as the sole domain of the dominant medical or sociological discourses.
This hybrid-edge identity Iࢀ™m talking about seems to have three options. We can either abandon some part of our historical practice in favour of a constructed self that is more acceptable to a chosen interpretive community, we can learn to become a chameleon shifting who we are depending on which group of people we are hanging around with, or we can attempt to reterritorialise a community based on an ever-smaller identity base, the Black Gay Deaf Muslim club. Many of the approaches to examining diasporic, exilic or global nomad identities are atavistic appeals to a previously imagined idea of home, an attempt to create a new microcommunity of the dispossessed. This question of community is key in the fragmented uncertain world of capitalist post-modernity. The search for stability for community, for the feeling of belonging, leads to reified national imaginings à la Anderson. The desire for community is similar to the desire for love, the extasis of dissolution, relief from the eternal solitude of individuality. The constant appeal for fractured negotiated subjectivity is what makes the reterritorialised microcommunity appealing. Surely the young Gay Asian Menࢀ™s Group will let me be myself?
For example Kashala Bonagy writes, ࢀoeI find a need to create social spaces in which my aspects of my personality are not censored and silenced. The sense of not belonging in either culture seems to be a form of exile. Perhaps it is not the exile our parentsࢀ™ experienced, but is nonetheless a fundamental fear of not having a real sense of community or countryࢀ. She goes on to talk about ways in which holding on to her Indian lesbianism through a variety of methods is a way of dealing with feelings of exile. The only problem is that ࢀ˜Asianࢀ™, ࢀ˜Gayࢀ™ and even ࢀ˜menࢀ™ are artificial constraints in themselves, masking numerous national origins and ethnicities and a variety of sexual experiences and practices and gender identities. Nor does the existence of the microcommunity preclude interactions with the rest of the world: negotiated encounters with exteriority are still likely and despite separatist rhetoric, desirable.
The emergence of a microcommunity simultaneously threatens and delimits the ethnic and sexual communities in question. Michael Schembri in 2000 invited a detailed history of microcommunity formations in Sydney and to a lesser extent in Melbourne and Iࢀ™ve got a huge list of them ࢀ” Jewish groups such a Chutzpah, Jews and Gentiles Together, Jews and Friends, Sydney Aleph, Aleph Melbourne, The Jewish Lesbian Group of Victoria, Dayenu, indigenous Queer groups such as Out Black and Garbangi Lum, Asian and South Asian groups such as Silk Road, Asians and Friends, Galaba Marsala, Sydney Asian Lesbians, European groups such as Greek and Gay and weࢀ™ve got the Italian Gay group out here as well and thereࢀ™s an Italian Lesbian Group that I donࢀ™t have in my list because I didnࢀ™t know you guys existed, sorry.
I donࢀ™t know if Iࢀ™ve got time to both of these. I wanted to talk about the internet as an example of a space in which you can have these kinds of interactions and move to some extent beyond the restrictions of the microcommunity and my experience of standing in front of the first, Year 2000 Stars of David come out Mardi Gras float.
So Iࢀ™ll talk a little bit about the Mardi Gras float first. The marchers were declaring their presence in a variety of communities, the Queer and the Jewish community. Dawn Cohen, one of the floatࢀ™s co-ordinators, told ABC radio in 2000, ࢀoeweࢀ™ve been involved in the Jewish Community, weࢀ™ve been involved in the Gay & Lesbian community, but weࢀ™ve always received the message that we should keep our other half hidden and now weࢀ™re saying No. Weࢀ™re saying weࢀ™re going to celebrate our whole identity.ࢀ This idea of a whole identity, sometimes referred to in academic texts as an integrated identity, is frequently invoked with regards to microcommunities. Gelman says ࢀ” this is an American person writing about the float ࢀ” ࢀoethe memory that will stay with me the longest was of a man in his late 60s, standing alone, cheering us on and pointing to his chest, to tell us that he too was a Jew and most likely one of usࢀ. It is this phrase ࢀoeone of usࢀ that scares me. One of us, not one of them. Even while claiming a space previously unavailable due to prejudice, this new community creates borders, identities, guards. Who is one of us? In what way?
At the time I wrote ࢀoeItࢀ™s hard to describe my own conflicting emotions standing in front of the Stars of David float. I have no interest in being in this float, identifying myself with these people, even though I would fit their criteria. My sister is part of this float. The disco version of Shalom Aleichem blares out from their truck. It stirs memories from childhood, memories only there because of community, common experiences I share with these people and not with the non-Jewish people I am standing with watching. The appropriation of the Star of David in pink, a merger of signs. The star, usually blue, indicating Judaism. The pink from the pink triangle appropriated by Gay men, a sign taken from concentration camps. This star once yellow used by the same guards in the same concentration camps to mark these people as Jews. What about Gay Jews? Would it be exactly this symbol that now performs some strange triumphant self-labelling? Apparently Gay Jews wore a yellow star with a superimposed pink triangle, but it could easily have been a symbol such as this. I fear their labels.ࢀ
Iࢀ™m going to skip this bit but Annie Goldflam started a group in Perth of Jewish Lesbians and she was sort of saying, well you know whoࢀ™s in, are bisexuals OK, are they Lesbian enough, is a transgendered person a woman? What you are seeing on screen now by the way are some examples of the internet space LiveJournal that I think is one of the starts of the ways through this. This is a group called the Queer Hapo Mafia and there are some examples in here of just ways in which people can talk about identity without necessarily circumscribing it and because those spaces are much more open and fluid. By the way I just want to say I think weࢀ™re starting to move through this, weࢀ™re no longer having this thing as much where youࢀ™ve got to be part of the group or you canࢀ™t come, I mean I think we now know that presumably in the Jewish Lesbian group in Victoria, I mean I donࢀ™t know but Iࢀ™m presuming that people donࢀ™t always have Jewish Lesbian girlfriends, that sometimes a Jewish Lesbian can sleep with a bisexual and sometimes a Jewish Lesbian could sleep with a tranny, and sometimes a Jewish Lesbian could sleep with a Christian or a Muslim, so Iࢀ™m presuming that these spaces are now much more open and that weࢀ™re starting to talk about allies and I think thatࢀ™s a really important thing.
I will say that I think that one of the ways we can get around this is by talking about practice instead of about identity, that we can talk about what we do rather than what we are, that we can instead talk about that instead of saying Jewish and Gay we can talk about sleeping with men and keeping kosher, talk about our practices and shared practices are much easier to talk with someone about than somehow an identity which says youࢀ™re different from me, weࢀ™re us and youࢀ™re them. If we talk about shared practices ࢀ” how do we celebrate rituals, how do we celebrate holy days ࢀ” then thatࢀ™s a thing we can do.
So what is significant here is the resonance between the lived experience of the intersection of multiple marginality, the intersection of the black and gay experience, of Jewish and lesbian experience, the experience of deafness and transgender in the same body or living in a blind Asian Aboriginal body. These intersections, this doubling and in some cases tripling or quadrupling of consciousness are articulated through similar aspects and cultural forms. The threads of theories surrounding liminal subjectivity woven together reveal common patterns that may lead to practical suggestions for alternatives for identity wars. In effect since liminal subjects employ similar strategies to negotiate within and between cultural interpretive communities and since these strategies fail in the same way and for the same reasons, it is preferable to develop a working theory of subjectivity where the categories can be exceeded without reprisal while still addressing disadvantage and oppression and I want to very quickly end on a non-academic note and readdress a personal revelation I had while writing my thesis that a rewritten Jewish practice is only possible ironically with an immersion and understanding of traditional Jewish practice which excludes so many of us who feel unwanted or unnecessary as women and queers. Those of us who rejected the religion early now find ourselves tracing a culture, wanting to relearn Hebrew and other liturgies in an effort to subvert what we learn. I am jealous now of those who speak the languages well enough to enact intervention in its spaces while I remain excluded and speechless. By leaving the Jewish community we failed to transform it. By leaving the Gay & Lesbian community we failed to transform it. These resonances I now find moving between and within alternative Queer alternative Jewish and the various intersections of these, allow for liens between these spaces, allow for these spaces to expand, to transform until they are seamless. Not merged seamlessly, not to say at all that they are now somehow identical but rather that it should be impossible to determine at which point one has ended and another begins. Thank you.