Essay / NOWLESSNESS, Dyke
Essay deals with phenomenons of identity, relationships, normalising powers, temporality, queerness, queer art, the Anthropocene, the climate change, the apocalypse etc...The whole essay consists of four chapters which are published separately as a four-part serie.
At last I would like to make my conclusion from the individual fragments I was developing throughout this paper. I started with the explanation of the concept of temporality that predominantly came into attention in 1980s, presented by the term of ‘queer time’. I demonstrated this temporality on the subjects belonging to the queer community. Their lifetime, as well as their ‘life goals’ significantly differ from the widely spread heteronor- mative standards of the contemporary society based on familiarism, reproductive futurism and accumulation of the financial/material wealth in the name of future generations and national longevity. Since ‘queer time’ is a concept bound to nowness, an amplified current moment, queer lifestyles are of their own nature widely considered as a failure. They are not bound to the past, nor to the future, be it an individual legacy of the subject or stability of the nation(s) as a whole. My concern is that the concept of ‘queer time’, created by and for certain minority within the society at large, is currently applicable to all living forms on our planet as well as the very Earth itself. I went through the meaning of the term ‘the end of the world’ and its possible interpretations, claiming that both the ‘end’ and the ‘world’ are not clearly defined in any general and/or static way. Starting with several theories from the past based on religious and/or astrological ‘prophecies’, I proceed- ed to scientific claims about current geological epoch of the Earth (the Anthropocene), as well as contemporary condition of the ecosystem. Even if the policies in the whole world became ‘green’ by tomorrow, we would not reverse the changes that we’ve caused. The climate change is not reversible at this point and we are sure it will bring death. Which is not clear is if the warming of the athmosphere will stop at the critical +4 degrees celcius. This process might end up with two possibilities – disappearence of all living forms on Earth, demonstrated as a ‘world without us’ – what the ‘world’ has already been through – or the devastation of the Earth’s resources essential for our lifestyles), bringing us into condition of ‘us without the world’ – a condition, that we have never experienced before. An image of such scenarios is widely presented in pop-culture. These narratives tend to depict a society that returned into a savage fight for individual survival, abandoning all the ethics and morality. With this vision in mind, I propose to call our present time, the ‘nowness’, equal to the concept of ‘queer time’ in general. I suggest we might learn a lot from queer communities as a society as a whole. Thanks to Foucault’s analysis of homosexual identity(ies) being formed in ‘queer spaces’ as a ‘collaborative subjectivity’ that remains dynamic and unstable, we’ve learned that queer identities are created (almost) independently from normative powers. Therefore they are challenging the normativity itself, leading the subjects towards a greater experience of freedom. Since all humans alive are currently living under the thread of temporality, I suggest we abandon the normativity. The Earth as a whole being turned into a ‘queer space’, we might form new experimental forms of relationships through mutual cooperation. I suggest and believe it is through cooperation and understanding that we have a chance to survive as a humanity and/or the ‘world’. I described the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and tried to take it out of the biographical context, which ties the artwork mainly to its significance to the queer community. From a more universal point of view, we may see Untitled (Perfect Lovers) as a metaphor not only for themes of relationship, love and loss. The two clocks start as perfectly harmonised twins, forever in touch, belonging to each other, until the moment one of them wears down first and suddenly stops. Will it be ours or the ‘world’s’ batteries that will wear down first? We shall put our bets down.
Michel Foucault envisioned our future as a queer one. Today I say we are living the queer present. If the future is female (and I truly believe she is), then she’s a dyke.
“Having broken the filial chain that linked us to humanity, we live on. Men consider us to be happy; it is certainly true that we have succeeded in overcoming the forces of ego- tism, cruelty and anger which they could not. We live very different lives. Science and art are still a part of our society; but without the stimulus of personal vanity, the pursuit of Truth and Beauty has taken on a less urgent aspect. To humans of the old species, our world seems a paradise. We have even been known to refer to ourselves—with a certain humor—by the name they so long dreamed of – gods. History exists; it is elemental, it dominates, its rule is inexorable. Yet outside the strict confines of history, the ultimate ambition of this book is to salute the brave and unfor- tunate species which created us. This vile, unhappy race, barely different from the apes, which nevertheless carried within it such noble aspirations. Tortured, contradictory, indi- vidualistic, quarrelsome and infinitely selfish, it was sometimes capable of extraordinary explosions of violence, but never quite abandoned its belief in love. This species which, for the first time in history, was able to envision the possibility of its succession and, some years later, proved capable of bringing it about. As the last members of this race are ex- tinguished, we think it just to render this last tribute to humanity, an homage which itself will one day disappear, buried beneath the sands of time. It is necessary that this tribute be made, if only once. This book is dedicated to mankind.” [22]