Insult and the Making of the Gay Self

by Didier Eribon

  ‘‘universal structures’’ of communication, of intersubjective reciprocity between subjects supposed to be equal. After all, some subjects are required to learn not to communicate (or to rig the way they communicate), to try to create ignorance or error through their communication, until such time as they are ready to relearn how to use language, to relearn their ways of relating to others through language. A gay man learns to speak twice.

  We can see, then, that a communication theory such as the one proposed by Habermas is incapable of accounting for these kinds of realities of everyday language. When Habermas takes as a point of departure for his reflections the idea that any exchange is necessarily oriented toward intersubjective communication, that behind any dialogue necessarily runs the will to reach an agreement with someone else (which involves some kind of reference to the universal norms of language), he leaves out of the picture all the violence language carries with it and all the e√ects of this violence. He writes: ‘‘Fundamental to the paradigm of mutual understanding is, rather, the performative attitude of participants in interaction, who coordinate their plans for action by coming to an understanding about something in the world. When ego carries out a speech act and alter takes up a position with regard to it, the two parties enter into an interpersonal relationship.’’∞≠ This is a theory of ‘‘communicative action’’ that sets up rational exchange and the transparency of consciousnesses as the regulating ideals that should organize concrete interactions. How could any such theory account for situations in which a certain number of interlocutors are obliged to scramble communications, to avoid mutual comprehension? Language, in the real world,

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  is not regulated by universally accepted moral norms, but rather by the structural inequalities in the social and sexual order. An injurious speech act is obviously not subtended by the search for intersubjective communication.

  It does not inaugurate mutual comprehension between two abstract subjects with equal entitlements. When one is dealing with insult, it is not a question of ‘‘opening up a relation,’’ but, to the contrary, of establishing and perpetuating breaks between di√erent classes of social and sexual beings. There is no equality; rather there is dissymmetry. This very dissymmetry organizes all linguistic situations and is reproduced by them.

  To decide that you are going to free your speech from the constraints imposed by permanent self-surveillance means not only that you have chosen to oppose an identity that has been imposed and hidden with one that has been chosen and a≈rmed. It also implies that you will have to reconstruct yourself and find the means and the support structures to enable such a transformation. Today, a socialization in the ‘‘gay world’’ is doubtless one of the most e√ective methods for this.

  Those who denounce the ‘‘ghettoization’’ of gays and lesbians in big

  cities (of course this is often nothing more than a disguised insult produced by a phobic reaction to the collective visibility of gays and lesbians) need to be reminded that this visible ‘‘ghetto’’ is above all a way of escaping from an invisible one, the mental ghetto—that is to say, the act (performed by many of those people who cannot or dare not live their homosexuality openly) of shadowing a goodly segment of their existence and their personality in secrecy. Visibility is an escape path from the terrible interior ghetto that is experienced by a soul that has been subjected by shame. What the discourse of liberal tolerance would recommend is nothing other than the perpetuation of precisely that interior ghetto: its recommendations amount to a suggestion that this inferiorized identity be maintained within the ‘‘invisible’’ space of private life, the space conceded to gay people by heterosexuals, to the minority by the majority.∞∞ This call for discretion would annihilate the historical victories that today allow one to leave behind the psychological ghetto. It would also thereby contribute to the perpetuation of the sexual racism of homophobia and would also permit (as a kind of class privilege) a small number of gay people living in easier circumstances to act out their sexuality without (too many) problems. All the others, denied the objective

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f occasion to realize themselves, would be sent back to live within the interiorized borders of private life—a life that is obligatorily kept secret.

  When gays and lesbians are reproached for displaying their private lives in public, for crossing the line between public and private, we are again dealing with the protection of privilege—of heterosexual privilege. That such arguments can still be mounted these days after so many years of feminist critique attests to the fact that ideology will never be overcome through argument. It also attests to the fact that there will always be people around who are overly eager to defend the structures of oppression and of the established order. Feminism (I think in this case it is permissible to speak of feminism as a homogeneous phenomenon, for we are dealing with a kind of common denominator) has shown that not only the categories of public and private but also the reality of public and private spheres function to assign roles; as places, they create a division of labor between the sexes (the public sphere for men, the private sphere for women—although within it they will find a private life of their own denied to them).∞≤ Similarly for the division between sexual orientations: public space is heterosexual and homosexuals are to stick to the space of their private lives. One might notice, for instance, that all the forms of masculine sociability (the life men lead with other men), along with being fundamentally misogynist, are also based on the exclusion of homosexuality. All the fantasies regarding communal showers that proliferated in newspapers and in o≈cial texts during the debate about gays in the military in the United States show quite clearly that this masculine sociability (this homosociality that might sometimes seem so close to homosexuality, or to a sort of generalized homoeroticism) is in fact based on an abrupt and radical exclusion of any possibility of sex between the men who participate in this common life. Eric Dunning, in his study of English rugby, reports that the themes that occur with the most frequency in the songs sung in rugby clubs have to do with brutality toward women and derision directed at gay men (who are not ‘‘real men’’).∞≥ Homosexuality is thus proscribed from the prescribed relations between men.∞∂ Masculinity publicly constructs and af-firms itself against homosexuality. This, of course, engenders a permanent threat of violence ready to burst forth, especially when men are together as a group (for instance, the attacks by bands of soldiers in military towns or by young suburban youths on gay cruising places and the various forms of mistreatment, even rapes, in barracks and prisons).

  Inside these groups, those who are homosexual or who experience some

  kind of homosexual physical desire must behave so that no one else suspects

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  it. This is so in almost every social situation. At school, in the workplace, men (from adolescence onward) speak (ceaselessly) among themselves

  about their sexuality, about their real or imagined feminine ‘‘conquests.’’∞∑

  We are talking about words spoken in public, and whose public nature is crucial, for the stories are often the products of bragging or exaggeration.

  Bourdieu notes that, in North African societies, ‘‘virility’’ or ‘‘manliness’’ is

  ‘‘subject to a more or less masked form of collective judgment’’ and that, consequently, every man has ‘‘the duty to assert his manliness in all circumstances.’’∞∏ Yet, as his entire book makes clear, this masculine ‘‘point of honor’’ of Mediterranean societies is nothing other than the ‘‘magnified image’’ of the way in which masculine identity is a≈rmed in a society such as our own. And all of the repeated stories men tell each other (that adolescent boys tell each other) about their sexual prowess, to the extent that they are intended to display and h
ighlight their virility, also consolidate the (often violent) rejection of whatever is thought of as a renunciation of this ‘‘virility.’’

  All these communicative situations, where the point is the obligatory public recounting of sexual relations (heterosexual ones), e√ectively and purpo-sively repress and obfuscate homosexuality. In all these situations, in all these exchanges, those whose sexuality is homosexual (or those adolescents who do not yet have a sexuality but who are attracted by persons of the same sex) are obliged to silence and to hide the reality of their desires or their practices. Sometimes they even invent fictive heterosexual relations (to the point where it frequently happens that two gay men discover years later that they had both been lying to each other).

  In all such conversations the gay man will feel excluded. He will have the experience of being ‘‘di√erent,’’ but will be obliged to hide this di√erence on pain of being excluded from the group. In fact, he will often manage to exclude himself from those situations and those groups in which his position is always false and in which he cannot help but feel deeply uneasy.

  Solitude and withdrawal (perhaps with a corresponding turn toward books and culture, to recall our earlier discussion) will be a way of coping with a stigmatized identity, managing it from day to day. (The subtitle of Go√man’s book Stigma is Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. ) The process of rendering homosexuality private, of forcing it into the most secluded interior space, begins in childhood and at school. And the deliberate and liberating gesture by which, one fine day, someone decides to break with secrecy, the act by which that person makes his or her homosexuality public, marks the refusal to submit even a moment longer to the (interior) violence ex-

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f ercised by the intensely experienced dichotomy between what can be said in public and what must remain part of private life, what must never leave one’s heart of hearts.

  For many gay men the break between public and private life is, we can see, imposed by structures of oppression. These structures define the contours of ways of being or ways of life that require a radical dissociation between one’s hidden self and one’s presentable self. Expressions such as ‘‘dissociated lives’’ or ‘‘double lives’’ remind us that one’s ‘‘private’’ life is kept secret, hidden from the eyes of those with whom friendly or social or professional relations are conducted. The public sphere requires one to wear a mask of heterosexuality and to hide any ‘‘abnormal’’ identity; public life is fundamentally linked to heterosexuality and excludes anything that deviates from it. We might even say that heterosexuality is one of the major, foundational characteristics of what is referred to as public space. In that space, heterosexuality is displayed, recalled, manifested, at every moment, in every gesture, in every conversation—as any trip to the cinema, to a cafe, to a restaurant, any bus ride, any conversation at work can attest. The public sphere is the place in which heterosexuals can choose to display their a√ection and their sexuality.

  Every day, at any time, any place, the street o√ers the spectacle of heterosexual couples of all ages kissing, holding hands, or with their arms around each other’s shoulders. And young gay men and lesbians—along with those not so young—have, for many, many years, no other image of couples or of a√ection between two people, than the image provided by the public representation of heterosexuality. For, in inverse fashion, the ‘‘public sphere’’ is precisely that place where gay people may not display a√ection or hold hands or kiss—on pain of insult or violence. They may not and, in fact, they do not, except at night, as they say goodbye, at the door of the building where one of them lives, after having made sure no one is there to see what should not be made public. And except, of course, in the neighborhoods called ‘‘ghettos,’’ because it is precisely there that they feel authorized to do so, because they are present in su≈cient numbers to feel safe. Surely that su≈ces to justify, or at the very least to explain, the existence of such neighborhoods.

  It is, in fact, insult—its power of intimidation—that establishes the frontier between public and private for gays and lesbians. Thus the public and

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  private spheres are not materially or physically distinct spaces for them (public being the street, work, politics; private being the home and personal relations). Rather it is a matter of a binary structure that reproduces itself in homologous fashion in every lived situation and in every social relation.

  Go√man remarks that ‘‘the general identity-values of a society may be fully entrenched nowhere, and yet they can cast some kind of shadow on the

  encounters encountered everywhere in daily living.’’∞π This ‘‘shadow’’ of normalcy is what always and everywhere imposes, even in the slightest conversation, the border between the public and private spheres. It creates for some (heterosexuals) the possibility of fully inhabiting public space, and for others (gay people) the obligation to leave a part of their personality in the private space. Those who carry a ‘‘normal identity,’’ to use Go√man’s expression, can speak publicly of what they are. Those with a ‘‘discredited identity’’

  (even more so for those who have a ‘‘discreditable’’ one) do their best to remain silent, to leave behind in the private space anything that might recall their stigma, any and everything about which they should not or cannot speak. The public/private structure is mobile, constantly in motion, being recreated at every moment of daily life, with the e√ect of excluding homosexuality from every ‘‘public’’ scene, even if that ‘‘public scene’’ takes place within a limited and ‘‘private’’ circle (in the family, among friends).

  The opposition between public and private is so taken for granted that as soon as any gay man fails to respect it (or decides to respect it no longer—

  given that most of them have respected it for a certain part of their life), as soon as he makes his sexuality public (and speaks about it in the workplace), he is immediately accused of flaunting his sexuality. He will hear others complain (those very people who have spoken incessantly about their sexuality since they were teenagers): ‘‘Why do gay people always have to be so open about it?’’ There is a very simple answer to this question: a man comes out as gay so that he will no longer be thought to be straight.∞∫ For that is what always happens if he does not insist that he is gay: heterosexuality is taken for granted, assumed to be the case for everyone, for the simple reason that most gay people do not come out openly. (Thus the never-ending claims to be astonished when someone does come out, or, for example, during a Lesbian and Gay Pride parade, remarks like ‘‘they’re everywhere’’ or ‘‘I never guessed there were so many of them,’’ as if one had lived in total ignorance prior to the recent discovery.) Someone might also come out after realizing that a certain number of people around him already know it or suspect it and are gossiping or making tasteless jokes about it. Perhaps the very same

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f people who, when he was not around, would say ‘‘I think he’s a fag,’’ or ‘‘the queen has stepped out for a minute’’ will be the ones to wax indignant as soon as he ceases to hide his sexuality: ‘‘Why does he have to flaunt it? This exhibitionism is hardly normal.’’

  The gay man who speaks about his ‘‘private’’ life breaks with ‘‘normal’’

  practice. Normal practice is defined as normal because ‘‘normally’’—as we say in everyday speech—homosexuality cannot be spoken, or, what amounts to more or less the same thing, is rarely spoken of. Anytime one speaks of homosexuality, then, it can only be heard as an attempt to a≈rm it, to flaunt it; it can only be seen as a provocative gesture or a militant act. Leaving shame behind is always perceived to be a declaration of pride. (As, indeed, it is. A person who comes out as gay and thus brings homosexuality into

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scourse not as the object of a joke, or not simply as an object, but as belonging to the speech of a subject knows that what he or she has to say will be heard in this way.) It is never possible simply to say that one is gay. It is always an a≈rmation, in the face of everything, in the face of everyone. An a≈rmation not only against those who would have prevented you saying it, but also against those who would insist that there was no real need for you to say it. Thus coming out as gay or lesbian always has a certain theatricality about it.∞Ω Sartre has said, ‘‘Since we are merely playing at what we are, we are whatever we can play at’’ (s t g, 324), but that does not seem satisfying in this particular case. Rather, it is because a gay man must for so long play at being what he is not that he can later only be what he is by playing at it.

  Exhibitionism is apparently shame’s opposite. How could it be otherwise?≤≠

  As we have seen, there is a kind of energy born out of shame, formed by and in it, that can act as a force for transformation. This energy finds its expression in a theatricalized identity, in performance, in a love of display or extravagance, in parody. Self-display and theatricality are and have been among the most important means of defying the heteronormative hege-mony—and this is why they have always been the objects of such virulent attacks. Shame cedes its energy to self-exhibition, to self-a≈rmation by way of theatricality, and thus to self-a≈rmation tout court.

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  Existence Precedes Essence

  The coming out of any individual, whatever conditions facilitate it or hinder it, is always an intensely personal act, one that resembles what Sartre calls an