Queer Nationality

Author(s): Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman

Source: boundary 2, Vol. 19, No. 1, New Americanists 2: National Identities and Postnational
Narratives (Spring, 1992), pp. 149-180
Published by: Duke University Press
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Queer Nationality

Lauren Berlant
Elizabeth Freeman

Now the skins felt powerfuland human.

They became lords of sounds and lesser things.
They passed nations throughtheir mouths.
They sat in judgement.
-Zora Neale Hurston, TheirEyes Were WatchingGod

We Are Everywhere.We Want Everything.

-Queer Nation,GayPrideParade,NewYork,1991

I Pledge Allegiance to the F(I)ag

At the end of Sandra Bernhard'sfilm WithoutYou I'm Nothing, the
diva wraps herself in an Americanflag. This act, which emblazons her in-

We thankourcollaboratrixes:ClaudiaL.Johnson,TriciaLoughran,DeborahN. Schwartz,
TomStillinger,AKSummers,MichaelWarner,the Gayand LesbianStudies Workshopat
the Universityof Chicago, and the CulturalForms/PublicSpheres study group at the
Centerof Psychosocial Research.
boundary2 19:1,1992.Copyright? 1992byDukeUniversityPress.CCC0190-3659/91/$1.50.

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150 boundary2 / Spring1992

terpretationof Prince's "LittleRed Corvette,"culminates her performance

of feminine drag, feminist camp. Staging not a cross-dressing that binarizes
sex but a masquerade that smudges the clarityof gender, Bernhardframes
woman within a constellation of sexual practices whose forms of publicity
change by the decade, by subculturalorigin,by genres of pleasure (music,
fashion, political theater), and by conventions of collective erotic fantasy.
Having sexually overdressed for the bulkof the film, Bernhardstrips down
to a flag and a sequined red, white, and blue G-stringand pasties, and thus
exposes a national body-her body. This nationalbody does not address a
mass or abstract audience of generic Americans, nor does it campily evoke
a "typical"American citizen's nostalgia for collective memory, ritual, and
affect. Bernhardflags her body to marka fantasy of erotic identificationwith
someone present, in the intimate room: it is a national fantasy, displayed
as a spectacle of desire, and a fantasy, apparently external to the offi-
cial national frame, of communion with a black woman whose appearance
personifies authenticity.
At the same time, also in 1990, Madonnaresponded to a civic crisis
marked by voter apathy among youth by performingin a pro-votingcom-
mercial strippeddown to a bikiniand wrappedalluringlyin an Americanflag.
In this commercial, the blond bombshell is flanked by a black man and a
white man, both of whom are dressed in the clone semiotic that flags a cer-
tain East Coast urbangay communitystyle. These men sing "Get Out and
Vote" in discordant comic harmony with Madonna, while they wave little
flags and she flashes her body by undulatinga big one.
On March24, 1991, the Chicago TribuneMagazine featured the Gulf
War as a fashion event. Adding to the already widely publicized rush by
citizens to own theirvery own gas masks and militaryfatigues, supplement-
ing the fad for patriotictee shirts and sweatshirts bearing American flags
and mottoes like "These Colors Won't Run,"this style section, titled "Red,
White, and You,"featured the new rage in feminine fashion: red, white, and
blue. Mobilizedby the patrioticfurorgenerated by the war,women en masse
were signifyingthroughthe color combinationand not the icon, capitalizing
on the capacity of the flag's traces to communicate personal politicswithout
explicit polemic. The dissolution of the flag intoflagness also protected the
consumer from being charged with desecrating the flag, should it become
stained with food or sweat, or singed withthe dropped ashes of a cigarette.
In 1991, RFD, a magazine for ruralgays with connections to the
Radical Faeries, featured the image of a naked young white man with an
erection on a pedestal, set against the backgroundof an Americanflag. Two

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 151

captions graced this portrait:"BRINGOUR BOYS HOMEAND WHOLE

THIS SOLSTICEPEACE NOW!"and "Whatcould be more Americanthan
young, hard man/boy flesh?"
A rhetoricalquestion? Having witnessed this rush to consume the
flag, fuse it with the flesh, we conclude that at present the nation suf-
to
fers from Americana nervosa, a compulsive self-gorging on ritualimages.
This grotesque fantasy structurewas paraded in the 1988 presidentialelec-
tion by the Republicanflap over whether citizens should be legally obliged
to say the Pledge of Allegiance. It was furtherextended from mass pub-
lic struggle into the Supreme Court by constitutionalbattles over whether
the flag should be exposed to mortality'scontagion in the form of its own
ashes or dirt, and it has recast national patriotism as a question not of
political identity but of proper public expression, loyal self-censorship, and
personal discipline. No longer is the struggle to secure national discursive
proprietylocated mainlyon the general terrainof "freedomof speech," state
policies against certain sexual practices, and the regulationof privatelycon-
sumed sexual images withinthe U.S. mail:The struggle is now also over
proper public submission to nationaliconicityand over the nation's relation
to gender, to sexuality, and to death.
If, in the wake of the election and the remilitarizationof America,
official patriotic discourse casts the American flag in an epidemic crisis
and struggles to manage its public meaning through a sublime collective
manufactured consent, the consumption of nationalityin the nineties ap-
pears motivated not by a satisfaction that already exists but by a collective
desire to reclaim the nation for pleasure, and specifically the pleasure of
spectacular public self-entitlement. Queer Nation has taken up the project
of coordinating a new nationality.Its relationto nationhood is multipleand
ambiguous, however, taking as much from the insurgent nationalisms of
oppressed peoples as fromthe revolutionaryidealism of the United States.
Since its inception in 1990, it has invented collective local rituals of resis-
tance, mass cultural spectacles, an organization, and even a lexicon to
achieve these ends. It aims to capitalize on the difficultyof locating the
national public, whose consent to self-expression founds modern national
identity.'

1. There is yet no anthology or full history documenting Queer Nation, and its redefini-
tions in the print media are ongoing. For some contemporary accounts of QN, see the
following articles: Allan Berub6 and Jeffrey Escoffier, "Queer/Nation," Outlook: National
Lesbian and Gay Quarterly 11 (Winter 1991): 13-15; Alexander Chee, "AQueer Nation-

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152 boundary2 / Spring1992

Queer Nation's outspoken promotionof a nationalsexuality not only

discloses that mainstreamnationalidentitytouts a subliminalsexuality more
official than a state flower or a national bird but also makes explicit how
thoroughly the local experience of the body is framed by laws, policies,
and social customs regulating sexuality. Queer Nation's tactics of inven-
tion appropriatefor gay politics both grass roots and mass-mediated forms
of counterculturalresistance from left, feminist, and civil rights movements
of the sixties-the ones that insisted that the personal is political, engag-
ing the complex relation between local and national practices. Also, in the
retro-nostalgia impulse of postmodernism, QN redeploys these tactics in
a kind of guerrilla warfare that names all concrete and abstract spaces
of social communication as places where "the people" live and thus as
national sites ripe both for transgression and legitimate visibility.2Its tac-
tics are to cross borders, to occupy spaces, and to mime the privileges of
normality-in short, to simulate "the national"with a camp inflection. This
model of politicalidentityimitates not so much the "one man one vote" cau-
cus polemic mentality of mainstream politics but the individualand mass
identities of consumers: Queer Nation, itself a collection of local affinity
groups,3has produced images, occupied publicspaces of consumption, like
bars and malls, and refunctionedthe culture of the trademark.Exploiting
the structures of identificationand the embodied and disembodied scenes
of erotic contact, substitution, publicity,and exchange so central to the

alism,"Outlook:NationalLesbian and Gay Quarterly11 (Winter1991): 15-19; Esther

Kaplan,"AQueer Manifesto,"in Guy Trebay'sarticle"InYourFace," VillageVoice 14
(August1990):36; KayLongcope,"BostonGay GroupsVowNew Militancyagainst Hate
Crimes,"Boston Globe, Wednesday,21 Aug. 1990:25, 31; MariaMaggenti,"Womenas
Queer Nationals,"Outlook:NationalLesbianand Gay Quarterly11 (Winter1991): 20-
23; DeborahSchwartz,"'QueersBash Back,'" Gay CommunityNews, Monday,24 June
1990: 14-15; RandyShilts,"TheQueeringof America,"TheAdvocate567 (1 Jan. 1991):
32-38; Guy Trebay,"InYourFace,"VillageVoice,14 Aug. 1990, 35-39.
2. Berub6and Escoffier,"Queer/Nation,"13-14.
3. These affinity groups include ASLUT,"ArtistsSlaving Under Tyranny";DORIS
SQUASH,"DefendingOurRightsin the Streets, Super Queers UnitedAgainstSavage
Heterosexuals";GHOST,"GrandHomosexualOrganizationto Stop Televangelists";HI
MOM,"HomosexualIdeologicalMobilization LABIA,"Lesbiansand
Againstthe Military";
Bisexuals in Action";QUEERPLANET,an environmental group; QUEER STATE,which
deals with state governments;QUEST,"QueersUndertakingExquisiteand Symbolic
Transformation"; SHOP,"SuburbanHomosexualOutreachProgram"; UNITEDCOLORS,
whichfocuses on experiences of queers of color.Forthe extended list, see B6rub6and
Escoffier,"Queer/Nation,"15.

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 153

allureof nationalismand capitalism,Queer Nationoperates precisely in the

American mode.4
In this article, we seek to understand the political logic of Queer
Nationalityand to trace the movement's spectacular intentionsand effects.
We will, in the next three sections, describe Queer Nation in its strongest
tactical moments, as when it exploits the symbolic designs of mass and
national culturein orderto dismantle the standardizingapparatusthat orga-
nizes all manner of sexual practice into "facts"of sexual identity,5 as when
it mobilizes a radicallywide range of knowledge-modes of understanding
from science to gossip-to reconstitute informationabout queerness, thus
transformingthe range of reference "queer"has by multiplyingits specifi-
cations.6 Whether or not Queer Nationsurvives as an organizationpast the
present tense of our writing,7the movement provides us with these discur-
sive political tactics not simply as fodder for history but also as a kind of
incitement to reformulatethe conditions under which furtherinterventions

4. Ourconstructionof the manifoldpublics,polities,and symbolicculturesthat traverse

Americanlife emanates froma numberof sources: BenedictAnderson,ImaginedCom-
munities(London:Verso, 1983);LaurenBerlant,TheAnatomyof NationalFantasy:Haw-
thorne, Utopia,and EverydayLife (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1991); Alice
Echols, Born to be Bad: Radical Feminismin America,1967-1975 (Minneapolis:Uni-
versity of MinnesotaPress, 1989); ElizabethFreeman,"Pitmarkson the Historyof the
Country:The Epidemicof Nationalismin Hawthorne's'LadyEleanore'sMantle'"(un-
published manuscript,Universityof Chicago, 1990); George Mosse, Nationalismand
Sexuality(Madison:Universityof WisconsinPress, 1986);LindaJ. Nicholson,ed., Femi-
nism/Postmodernism(New York:Routledge,1990);IrisMarionYoung,"Polityand Group
Difference:A Critiqueof the Idealof UniversalCitizenship,"
Ethics9 (January1989):250-
74, and ThrowingLikea Girland OtherEssays in FeministPhilosophyand Social Theory
(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1989).
5. Forthe politicalneed to postminoritize
culturalexperiencethroughthe manipulationof
representationalcodes, see DavidLloyd,"Genet'sGenealogy:EuropeanMinoritiesand
the Ends of the Canon,"in TheNatureand Contextof MinorityDiscourse, ed. AbdulR.
JanMohamedand DavidLloyd(New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1990), 369-93.
6. Threeessays thatargueforthe need to re-taxonomizesexual identityhave inspiredthis
essay: Esther Newtonand ShirleyWalton,"TheMisunderstanding: Towarda MorePre-
cise Sexual Vocabulary," in Pleasureand Danger,ed. CaroleVance(Boston:Routledge,
1984), 242-50; Gayle Rubin,"Thinking Sex,"in Pleasureand Danger,267-314; and Eve
KosofskySedgwick,Epistemologyof the Closet(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress,
1990), 1-63.
7. This death knellwas sounded as early as June 1991, in Toronto,accordingto Xtra!,
a Torontopublication.Cited in "Quotelines," Outlines5, no. 1 (June 1991): 7. We have
since heardthat reportsof its death have been greatlyexaggerated.

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154 boundary2 / Spring1992

into the juridical, policy, and popular practices of contemporary America

must be thought and made.'
This demands an expanded politics of description. We might say,
"an expanded politics of erotic description,"but crucial to a sexually radi-
cal movement for social change is the transgression of categorical distinc-
tions between sexuality and politics,withtheirtypicallyembedded divisions
between public, private, and personal concerns. The multiplicityof social
spaces, places where power and desire are enacted and transferred,need
to be disaggregated and specified. The abstract, disembodied networks of
electronic visual, aural, and textual communication,the nationalized sys-
tems of juridicalactivityand officialpubliccommentary,the state and local
political realms that are not at all simply microcosmic of the national: All
coexist with both the manifestly pleasuring or moneymakingembodiments
of local, national, and global capitalism, and with the randomor customary
interactions of social life-this sentence could, and must, go on intermina-
bly. These spaces are hard to describe, because they are all unbounded,
dialecticallyimagined, sometimes powerful,and sometimes irrelevantto the
theory, practice, and transformationof sexual hegemony. Whatever they
are, at the moment they are resolutely national.Queer Nation's nationalist-
style camp counterpoliticsincorporatesthis discursive and territorialprob-
lem, shifting between a utopian politics of identity,difference, dispersion,
and specificity and a pluralistagenda, in the liberalsense, that imagines a
"gorgeous mosaic" of difference withouta model of conflict. Our final sec-
tion, "WithYou Out We're Nothing,"supports and extends Queer Nation's
contestation of existing culturalspaces but seeks to reopen the question of
nationalism's value as an infidelmodel of transgression and resistance, for
the very naturalizingstereotypes of official nationalitycan inflect even the
most radical insurgent forms. In other words, this is an anti-assimilationist
narrativeabout an anti-assimilationistmovement. It must be emphasized,
however, that disidentificationwith U.S. nationalityis not, at this moment,
even a theoretical option for queer citizens: As long as PWAs requirestate
support, as long as the officialnation invests its identityin the pseudo-right
to police nonnormative sexual representations and sexual practices, the
lesbian, gay, feminist, and queer communities in the United States do not
have the privilege to disregard nationalidentity.We are compelled, then, to
read America's lips. What can we do to force the officiallyconstituted nation
to speak a new politicaltongue?

8. See AndrewRoss, No Respect: Intellectualsand PopularCulture(New York:Rout-

ledge, 1989), 135-70.

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 155

Recently, official America has sought to manage an explicit rela-

tion between national power and the vulnerable body by advertising an
unironic consecration of masculine militaryimages and surgical incisions
into the borders of other sovereign nations. Queer Nation, in dramaticcon-
trast, produces images in response to the massive violence against racial,
sexual, gendered, and impoverished populations withinthe U.S. borders,
a violence emblematized by, but in no way limitedto, the federal response
to AIDS. A brief history of the movement will help to explain the genesis
of its polymorphous impulses. Founded at an ACT UP New York meet-
ing in April 1990, Queer Nation aimed to extend the kinds of democratic
counterpolitics deployed on behalf of AIDS activism for the transformation
of public sexual discourse in general. Douglas Crimpand Adam Rolston's
AIDS DEMO GRAPHICS is to date the fullest and most graphic record
of ACT UP's interventioninto local, state, and national systems of power
and publicity.9This specification of mainstream sites of power was made
necessary by federal stonewalling on the subject of AIDS treatment, sup-
port, and education among institutionsin the politicalpublicsphere, where
the bureaucratic norm is to disavow accountabilityto vulnerable popula-
tions. ACT UP recognizes the necessity to master the specific functions of
political bureaucracies and to generate loud demands that these live up to
their promise to all of "the people." Among other strategies, it exploits the
coincidence between nationaland commercialspectacle by piratingadver-
tising techniques: An alliance with the politicalartists called Gran Fury has
produced a sophisticated poster campaign to transformthe passive public
space of New Yorkinto a zone of politicalpedagogy. Queer Nation takes
from ACT UP this complex understandingof politicalspace as fundamen-
tal to its insistence on making all public spheres truly safe for all of the
persons who occupy them, not just in psychic loyalty but in everyday and
embodied experience. To be safe in the nationalsense means not just safe
from bashing, not just safe from discrimination,but safe for demonstration,
in the mode of patrioticritual,which always involves a deployment of affect,
knowledge, spectacle, and crucially,a kind of banality,ordinariness, and
popularity:
Through its activism Queer Nation seeks to redefine the commu-
nity-its rights, its visibility-and take it intowhat's been claimed as
straight politicaland social space. "QUEERSREADTHIS"asks to
be read as the accompanying declarationof nationalism. It says: In
9. Douglas Crimpand Adam Rolston,AIDS DEMOGRAPHICS(Seattle: Bay Press,
1990).

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156 boundary2 / Spring1992

this culture, being queer means you've been condemned to death;

appreciate our power and our bond; realize that whenever one of us
is hurtwe all suffer;knowthat we have to fightfor ourselves because
no one else will. It says, this is why we are a nation of queers, and
why you must feel yourself a part.Its language seems to borrowfrom
other, equally "threatening"power movements-black nationalist,
feminist separatist.10
The key to the paradoxes of Queer Nation is the way it exploits in-
ternal difference. That is, QN understands the proprietyof queerness to
be a function of the diverse spaces in which it aims to become explicit. It
names multiplelocal and national publics; it does not look for a theoretical
coherence to regulate in advance all of its tactics: all politics in the Queer
Nation are imagined on the street. Finally,it always refuses closeting strate-
gies of assimilation and goes for the broadest and most explicit assertion
of presence. This loudness involves two main kinds of public address: in-
ternal, for the productionof safe collective Queer spaces, and external, in
a culturalpedagogy emblematized by the post-Black Power slogan "We're
Here. We're Queer. Get Used to It."If"I'mBlackand I'mProud"sutures the
first-person performativeto racial visibility,transformingthe speaker from
racial object to ascendant subject, Queer Nation's slogan stages the shift
from silent absence into present speech, from nothingness to collectivity,
from a politics of embodiment to one of space, whose power erupts from
the ambiguityof "here."Where?

Inside: I HateStraights,and Other"Queeritual"Prayers

Nancy Fraser's recent essay on postmodernityand identity politics
argues that counterculturalgroups engage in a dialectic with mainstream
publicculture,shiftingbetween internalself-consolidationand reinvestment
of the relativelyessentialist "internal"identityinto the normalizingdiscus-
sions of the mass public sphere." In this dialectic, the subaltern indeed
becomes a speaking player in her own public identity,for the public is an
intelligibly"dominant"space characterized by collective norms. Fraser's
model does not workfor Queer Nation,which neitherrecognizes a single in-
ternal or privatizedinterest nor certifies one mainstreamwhose disposition

10. See Kaplan,"AQueer Manifesto,"36; Kaplan'semphasis.

11. NancyFraser,"Rethinking to the Critiqueof Actually
the PublicSphere:A Contribution
ExistingDemocracy,"Social Text25/26 (1990):56-80.

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 157

constitutes the terrainfor counterpolitics.This distinguishingmarkof Queer

Nation-its capacity to include culturalresistance, opposition, and subcul-
turalconsolidation in a mix of tactics from identitypolitics and postmodern
metropolitan informationflows-will thus govern our inside narrative.We
will shuttle between a dispersed variety of Queer National events, falsely
bringing into narrativelogic and collective intentionalitywhat has been a
deliberately unsystematized politics.
If there is one manifesto of this polyvocal movement, defining the
lamination of a gay liberation politics and new gay power tactics, it is,
famously, the "I Hate Straights"polemic distributedas a broadside at the
Gay Pride parades in New Yorkand Chicago in the summer of 1990. "1
Hate Straights," printed (at least in Chicago) over the image of a raised
clenched masculine fist, is a monologue, a slave narrativewithoutdecorum,
a manifesto of rage and its politics. Gone, the assimilationist patience of
some gay liberation identity politics; gone, the assertive rationalityof the
"homosexual"subject who seeks legitimacyby signifying,through"straight"
protocols, that "civilization"has been sighted on the culturalmargin.12
"I Hate Straights,"instead, "proceeds in terms of the unavoidable
usefulness of something that is very dangerous."13 What is dangerous is
rage, and the way it is deployed both to an "internal"audience of gay sub-
jects and an "external"straightworld.The broadside begins with personal
statements: "I have friends. Some of them are straight. Year after year, I
see my straight friends. I want to see them, to see how they are doing ...
[and] [y]ear after year I continue to realize that the facts of my life are ir-
relevant to them and that I am only half listened to." The speaker remains
unheard, because straights refuse to believe that gay subjects are in exile
from privilege, from ownership of a pointof view that Americansocial insti-
tutions and popular cultural practices secure: "Insidersclaim that [gays]
already are" included in the privileges of the straight world. But gay sub-
jects are excluded fromthe privileges of procreation,of family,of the public

12. Identityis linkedto territorialization,

both geographicaland ideological.We mean to
offer an account of a subculturaltopology,a descriptionof how modernspace requires
negotiatinga complex relationbetween situatedidentitiesand mobilizedidentifications.
The shiftingterrainin the meaningof the phrasegay communitysymptomatizedin Queer
Nation'spracticeshas been splendidlyexplicatedby RichardHerrell's"SymbolicStrate-
gies of Chicago'sGay and LesbianPrideDay Parade,"in GilbertHerdt,ed., The Culture
of Gay Men (forthcoming).
13. GayatriChakravortySpivak,"Ina Word.Interview,"Differences1 (Summer1989):
129.

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158 boundary2 / Spring1992

fantasy that circulates throughthese institutions:Indeed, it seems that only

the public discipline of gayness keeps civilizationfrom "melt[ing]back into
the primevalooze."
In the face of an exile caused by this arrogant heterosexual pre-
sumption of domestic space and privilege, the speaker lights into a list of
proclamations headed by "Ihate straights":"I"hates straights on behalf of
the gay people who have to emotionally "take care" of the straights who
feel guilty for their privilege;"1"hates straightsfor requiringthe sublimation
of gay rage as the price of their beneficent tolerance. "'You'llcatch more
flies with honey,'" the speaker hears; "Now look who's generalizing,"they
say, as if the minoritizedgroup itself had invented the "crude taxonomy"
under which it labored.14 In response, the flyer argues, "BASHBACK...
LET YOURSELF BE ANGRY ... THATTHERE IS NO PLACE IN THIS
COUNTRYWHEREWE ARE SAFE."
The speaker's designation of "country"as the space of danger com-
plexly marks the indices of social identitythrough which this invective cir-
culates. "I"mentions two kinds of "we":gay and American subjects, all of
whom have to "thankPresident Bush for plantinga fuckingtree" in public,
while thousands of PWAs die for lack of politicalvisibility.Here, the nation
of the Bush and the tree becomes a figure of nature that includes the ma-
lignant neglect of AIDS populations, including,and especially (here), gay
men. Straights ask the gay community to self-censor, because anger is
not "productive":Meanwhile,the administratorsof straightAmerica commit
omissions of policy to assert that healthy heterosexual identity(the straight
and undiseased body) is a prerequisiteto citizenship of the United States.
The treatise goes on to suggest that the national failureto secure justice
for all citizens is experienced locally, in public spaces where physical gay
bashing takes place, and in even more intimatesites like the body: "Gotell
[straights to] go away untilthey have spent a month walking hand in hand
in public with someone of the same sex. Afterthey survive that, then you'll
hear what they have to say about queer anger. Otherwise, tell them to shut
up and listen."
The distributionof this document to a predominantlygay population
at Gay Pride parades underscores a fundamentalQueer Nation policy. Visi-
bility is critical if a safe public existence is to be forged for American gays,
for whom the contemporarynation has no positive politicalvalue. The cities
where Queer Nation lives already contain local gay communities, locales

14. See Sedgwick,Epistemologyof the Closet, 1-63.

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 andFreeman/ QueerNationality159
Berlant

thatsecure spaces of safe embodiment forcapitalandsexualexpenditures.

ForQueerNation,they also constitutesites withinwhichpoliticalbases can
be founded.This emphasison safe spaces, securedfor bodies by capital
and everydaylife practicesalso, finally,constitutesa refusalof the terms
nationaldiscourse uses to framethe issue of sexuality:"Beingqueer is
not about a right to privacy: it is about the freedom to be public . . . [i]t's
not about the mainstream,profit-margins, patriotism,patriarchyor being
assimilated.... Beingqueeris 'grassroots'because we knowthatevery-
one of us, every body,everycunt,everyheartand ass and dickis a world
of pleasurewaitingto be explored.Everyoneof us is a worldof infinite
possibility."Localness,heretransposedintothe languageof worldness,is
dedicatedto producinga new politicsfromthe energyof a sentimentally
anderoticallyexcessive sexuality.Theambiguities of thissexualgeography
are fundamentalto producingthe new referent,a gay communitywhose
erotics and politicsare transubstantial. Meanwhile,in the hybridQueer/
Americannation,orthodoxformsof politicalagencylinger,inmodifiedform:
Forexample,QueerNationproclaims,"Anarmyof loverscannotlose!"But
this militaryfantasyrefersin its ironyto a set of things:counterviolencesin
localplaces, sixties movementsto makelove,notwar,andalso the invigo-
ratedpersecutionof queersubjectsinthe UnitedStates military duringthe
Reagan/Bushyears.
Thus,too, the self-proclaimed "Queeritual" elementin some Queer
Nationproductionsexceeds secularAmericanproprieties,as in broadsides
thatreplace"Ipledgeallegianceto the flag"with"Ipraiselifewithmyvulva"
and"IpraiseGodwithmyerection."15 Althoughwe mightsay thatthisqueer-
reflectinga suprapolitical
itualityis reactionary, moveto spiritualidentity,we
might also say thatthis is an
conservative,
literally attemptto save space for
and
hope, prayer, simple human relations-a Queer Nation"NowI lay me
down to sleep."These pieties assert the luckthe prayingsubjectsfeel to
be sleepingwithsomeone of theirownsex, thus promotinghomosexuality
in the way Queer Nationwants to do, as a mode of ordinaryidentifica-
tion and pleasure.Butthese prayersalso parodythe narrativeconvention
of normativeprayerto finda safe space for eludingofficialand conven-
tionalcensorshipof publicsexuality:Thingmagazinereports,indeed,that

15. We cite the texts in theirentirety."IPraise Life":"Ipraise life withmy vulva. I thank
the gods forall the womenwho have kissed my lips. Ipraiselife.""IPraiseGod":"Ipraise
God withmy erection.IthankGodforallthe men I'vesleptwith.IpraiseGod."They were
created in 1990 by Joe Lindsayof QueerNationDenver.

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160 boundary

the broadsidehas come undercriticismfor seeming to promotepromis-

cuity.16Inourview,the prayerscounterthe erotophobia of gay and straight
publicswho wantto speak of "lifestyles" and notof sex. Finally,justas the
genreof the circulatingbroadsiderevealshowgay andstraightpopulations
topographically overlap,so does this use of prayeritselfavow the futility
of drawingcomprehensiveaffectiveboundariesbetweengay and straight
subjects. Queer Nation'semphasison publiclanguageand media,its ex-
ploitationof the tensionbetweenlocalembodimentand mass abstraction,
forfeitsthe possibilityof such taxonomicclarity.

Outside: Politics in YourFace

On February23, 1967, in a congressionalhearingconcerningthe
securityclearanceof gay men for service in the Defense Department,a
psychiatristnamed Dr.CharlesSocaridestestifiedthat the homosexual
"does not knowthe boundaryof his own body.He does not knowwhere
his body ends and space begins."17 Precisely,the spiritualand other mo-
ments of internalconsolidationthatwe havedescribedallowthe individual
bodies of QueerNationalsto act as visiblyqueerflashcards,in an ongoing
projectof culturalpedagogyaimed at exposingthe range and varietyof
boundedspaces uponwhichheterosexualsupremacydepends.Movingout
fromthe psychologicaland physicalsafe spaces it creates, Queer Nation
broadcaststhe straightnessof publicspace, andhence itsexplicitor implicit
dangerto gays. The queerbody-as an agentof publicity, as a unitof self-
defense, and finallyas a spectacleof ecstasy-becomes the locus where
mainstreamculture'sdisciplineof gay citizensis writtenandwherethe pain
caused bythisdisciplineis transformed intorageandpleasure.Usingalter-
natingstrategiesof menace and merriment, agents of QueerNationhave
come to see andconquerplacesthatpresentthe dangerof violenceto gays
them.
and lesbians,to reterritorialize
Twenty-threeyears afterDr.Socarides'mercifullybriefmomentof
fame, New Yorkers began displayon theirchests a graphicinterpreta-
to
tionof his fearforthe nationaldefense. The tee shirtthey woreportraysa
silhouetteof the UnitedStates, withthe redtintof the East Coast and the
bluetintof the WestCoastfadingandblendinginthe middle.Suddenly,the
heartlandof the countryis a shockingnewshade of Queer:Red,white,and

16. RobertFord,"SacredSex: ArtErectsControversy," Thing4 (Spring1991):4.

17. John D'Emilio,Sexual Politics,Sexual Communities(Chicago:Universityof Chicago
Press, 1983), 216.

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 andFreeman/ QueerNationality161
Berlant

blue makelavender.This,QueerNation'sfirsttee shirt,extendsthe project

of an earliergraphicproducedby AdamRolston,whichshows a placard
that reads "IAm Out, ThereforeI Am."But Queer Nation'sshirtlocates
the publicspace in whichthe individualCartesiansubject must be out,
transforming thatspace in orderto survive.QueerNation'sdesign maps a
psychicand bodilyterritory-lavenderterritory-thatcannotbe colonized
and expands it to include,potentially,the entire nation.This lamination
of the countryto the bodyconjoinsindividual and nationalliberation:
Just
as Dr.Socaridesdreaded,the boundariesbetweenwhatconstitutesindi-
vidualand whatconstitutesnationalspace are explicitlyblurred."National
Defense"and "Heterosexual Defense"become interdependent projectsof
boundarymaintenancethatQueerNationgraphically undermines,showing
thatthese colorswillrun.
Whilethe QueerNationshirtexploitsheterosexistfearsofthe "spread
of a lifestyle"throughdirtylaundryby publicizingits weareras both a
gay nativeand a missionaryservingthe spreadof homosexuality,not all
of theirtactics are this benign.The optimisticassertionthat an armyof
lovers cannot lose masks the seriousness withwhichQueer Nationhas
respondedto the need for a pseudo-militia on the orderof the Guardian
Angels. The PinkPanthers,initiallyconceivedof at a QueerNationmeet-
ing (theyare nowa separateorganization), provideda searingresponseto
the increasedviolencethathas accompaniedthe generalincreaseof gay
visibilityin America.The Panthers,a foot patrolthat straddlesthe "safe
spaces" describedinthe firstsectionandthe "unsafespaces"of publiclife
in America,not only defendotherqueer bodies butaim to be a continual
reminderof them.Dressedinblacktee shirtswithpinktrianglesenclosinga
blackpawprint,they moveunarmedingroups,linkedbywalkie-talkies and
whistles. In choosing a uniformthat explicitlymarksthem as targets, as
successors of the BlackPowermovement,and as seriocomicdetectives,
the Panthersbringtogetherthe abstractthreatimplicitin the map graphic
describedabove,the embodiedthreatimplicitin individual queerscrossing
theirsubculturalboundaries,andthe absurditythatfoundsthisconditionof
sexual violence.
The Panthers'slogan is "BashBack."Itannouncesthatthe locus of
gay oppressionhas shiftedfromthe legalto the extralegalarena,and from
to ordinaryeverydayforms.18
national-juridical The menaceof "BashBack"
reciprocatesthe menaceof physicalviolencethatkeeps gays and lesbians
18. John D'Emilio,"Capitalism in ThePowersof Desire,ed. AnnSnitow,
andGay Identity,"
ChristineStansell,and SharonThompson(NewYork:MonthlyReviewPress, 1983), 108.

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 2 / Spring1992
162 boundary

invisibleand/orphysicallyrestrictedto theirmythically safe neighborhoods.

But ratherthan targetingspecificgay bashers or lashingout at random
heterosexuals,the Pantherstraininself-defensetechniquesand travelun-
armed:"BashBack"simplyintendsto mobilizethe threatgay bashers use
so effectively-strengthnotin numbersbutinthe presenceof a few bodies
who representthe potentialforwidespreadviolence-against the bashers
themselves. Inthis way,the slogan turnsthe bodies of the PinkPanthers
intoa psychiccounterthreat, expandingtheirprotectiveshieldbeyondthe
confinesof theirphysical"beat."Perhapsthe most assertivebashingthat
the uniformedbodiesof the PinkPanthersdeliveris mnemonic.Theirspec-
tacularpresence countersheterosexualculture'swillnot to recognizeits
own intenseneed to reignin a sexuallypureenvironment.
Whilethe rageof "BashBack"respondsto embodiedand overtvio-
lence, QueerNation's"QueerNightsOut"redressthe morediffuseand im-
plicitviolenceof sexual conventionality by mimicking the hackneyedforms
of straightsocial life.QueerNights Out are moments of radicaldesegrega-
tionwithrootsinthe civilrightseralunchcountersit-ins;whereasthe sixties'
sit-insaddressedlegalsegregation,these queersortiesconfrontcustomary
segregation.Invadingstraightbars,forexample,theystage a productionof
sentimentalityand pleasurethatbroadcaststhe ordinarinessof the queer
body.The banalityof twenty-five same-sex couplesmakingout in a bar,the
sillinessof a groupof fags playingspinthe bottle,effacethe distancecrucial
to the ordinarypleasuresstraightsociety takes in the gay world.Neither
informational nor particularly spectacular,QueerNightsOut demonstrate
two ominoustruths to heterosexual culture:(1) gay sexual identityis no
longera reliablefoilforstraightness;and (2) whatlookedlikeboundedgay
subculturalactivityhas itselfbecome restlessand improvisatory, takingits
pleasures in a theater near you.
QueerNightsOuthave also appropriated the modelof the surprise
attack,whichthe policehave traditionally used show gays and lesbians
to
that even the existence of theirsubcultural spaces is contingentuponthe
goodwill of straights. Demonstrating thatthe boundednessof heterosexual
spaces is also contingentupon the (enforced) willingnessof gays to re-
maininvisible,queers are thus using exhibitionism to make publicspace
psychically unsafe for unexamined heterosexuality. one reportfromthe
In
field,two lesbianswere sightedsendinga straightwomanan oyster,add-
ing a SapphicAppetizerto the menuof happyhourdelights.The straight
womanwas not amused.19Embarrassment was generated-the particular

19. Trebay,"InYourFace,"36.

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 Berlant
andFreeman/ QueerNationality163

embarrassmentliberalssufferwhenthe sphereallottedto the toleratedex-

ceeds the boundaries"weall agree upon."Maneuverssuch as this reveal
thatstraightmatingtechniques,supposedto be "Absolutly Het,"are sexual
lures availableto any brandof pleasure:"Sorry,you lookedlikea dyketo
me."20This politicaltransgressionof "personalspace" can even be used
to deflectthe violenceit provokes.Confrontedby a defensiveand hostile
drunk,a QN gayboyaddresses the room:"Yeah,I had himlast night,and
he was terrible."
Inthis place of eroticexchange,the armyof loverstakes as its war
strategies"somegoingdownandbutt-fucking andothertheatricals."'21
The
genitalsbecome notjustorgansof eroticthanksgiving butweaponsof plea-
sure againsttheirown oppression.These kindsof militant-erotic interven-
tions take theirmost publicformin the QueerNationkiss-in,in whichan
officialspace, such as a cityplaza,is transfusedwiththe juicesof unofficial
enjoyment:Embarrassment, pleasure,spectacle, longing,and accusation
interarticulateto producea publicscandalthatis, as the followingsection
willreveal,QueerNation'sspecialty.

Hyperspace:"TryMeOn, I'mVeryYou"22
In its most postmodernmoments,QueerNationtakes on a corpo-
ratestrategyin orderto exploitthe psychicunboundednessof consumers
who depend upon productsto articulate,produce,and satisfy theirde-
sires. QueerNationtacticallyuses the hyperspacescreatedby the corpo-
real trademark,the metropolitan parade,the shoppingmall,printmedia,
and, finally,advertisingto recognizeand to take advantageof the con-
sumer's pleasurein vicariousidentification. Inthis guise, the groupcom-
mandeerspermeablesites, apparentlyapoliticalspaces throughwhichthe
publiccirculatesina pleasurableconsensualexchangeof bodies,products,
identities,and information.Yet, it abandonsthe conciliatorymode of, for
instance, Kirk and Madsen's planto market"positive" (read"tolerable")gay
images to straightculture.23Instead,it aims to producea series of elabo-

20. The "AbsolutlyHet"series, parodiesof the ads forAbsolutvodka,were producedby

the anonymousgroupOUTPOST.
21. Trebay,"InYourFace,"39.
22. FromDeee-Lite'ssong, "TryMeOn, I'mVeryYou,"on the albumWorldClique.Elektra
Entertainment,1990.
23. MarshallKirkand HunterMadsen,Afterthe Ball:HowAmericaWillConquerits Fear
and Hatredof Gays in the '90s (New York:Doubleday,1989). Kirkand Madsen advise
the gay communityto presentnonthreatening images of homosexualityto straightculture,

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164 boundary
2 / Spring1992

rate blue-lightspecials on the queer body.The QueerNationalcorporate

strategy-to revealto the consumerdesireshe/she didn'tknowhe/she had,
to makehis/heridentification withthe product"homosexuality" bothan un-
settlingand a pleasurableexperience--makesconsumerpleasurecentral
to the transformation of publicculture,thus linkingthe utopianpromisesof
the commoditywiththose of the nation.
One particularcelebrityoscillatesbetweenlocal/embodiedand cor-
porate/abstractsexual identification: "QueerBart"starson a tee shirtpro-
duced by Queer Nationin the summerof 1990. Queer Bartreconfigures
MattGroening'sbrattywhitesuburban"anykid," BartSimpson,intothe New
Yorkgay clone: He wears an earring,his own QueerNationtee shirt,and
a pinktrianglebutton.The ballooncomingout of his mouthreads, "Get
used to it,dude!"Likeallbodies,QueerBart'sbodyis a productthatserves
a numberof functions.Inthe firstplace, he providesa countertextto the
apparentharmlessnessof the suburbanAmericangeneric body: Queer
Nation'sBartimplicitly pointsa fingerat anotherbootlegtee shirt,on which
Bartsnarls,"Backoff,faggot!"andat the heterosexuality thatNormalBart's
generic identity assumes. In the second place, the originalBart's"clone-
ness," when inflected with an "exceptional" identity-Black Bart,Latino
Bart,and so on-not only stages the abilityof subculturesto fashioncul-
turalinsiderhoodfortheirmembersbutalso reinscribessubcultural identity
intomainstreamstyle. The exuberantinflectionof BartSimpsonas queer
speaks to the pleasuresof assumingan officialnormativeidentity,signified
on the body,forthose whomdominantcultureconsistentlyrepresentsas
exceptional.
QueerNation'sreinflection of Bart'sbody,which,preciselybecause
it is a body,readilylends itselfto any numberof polymorphously perverse
identities,graphically demonstratesthatthe commodityis a centralmeans
by which individualstap into the collectiveexperienceof publicdesire.
Queer Bart,himselfa trademark,is a generic body stampedwithQueer
Nation'sown trademarkedaesthetic,whichthen allowsthe consumerto
publiclyidentifyhim-herselfas a memberof a trademarked 24Thus,
"nation."

a "marketingcampaign"designed to win mainstreamapprovalforthe bourgeoishomo-

sexual at the cost of eliminatingdrag queens, butch lesbians, transsexuals, etc., from
visibility.
24. For a discussion of the relationshipbetween the trademark,commodityidentifica-
tion, and the colonized Americanbody, see LaurenBerlant,"NationalBrands/National
Body:Imitationof Life,"in ComparativeAmericanIdentities:Race, Sex, and Nationality
in the ModernText,Selected Papers fromthe EnglishInstitute,ed. HortenseJ. Spillers
(Boston:Routledge,1991), 110-40.

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 andFreeman/ QueerNationality165
Berlant

Bartembodiesthe non-spaceswe willdiscuss inthe followingparagraphs:

His own unboundednessas a commodityidentityexploitsthe way thatthe
fantasyof being somethingelse merges withthe stereotypeto conferan
endlesslyshiftingseries of identitiesuponthe consumer'sbody.25
The genealogy of the Queer Bartstrategyextends fromthe Gay
Prideparadesof the 1970s, when,forthe firsttime,gay bodies organized
intoa visiblepublicritual.Inadditionto offeringgays and lesbians an op-
portunityto experiencetheirprivateidentitiesin an officialspectacle, the
paradesalso offeredflamboyant andordinaryhomosexuality as something
the heterosexualspectatorcould encounterwithouthavingto go under-
ground-to drag shows or gay bars-for voyeuristicpleasureor casual
sex.26Inthe last twentyyears, the representation of "gayness"in the Gay
Prideparadehas changed,forits marchingpopulationis no longerdefined
by sexual practicealone. Rather,the currentpoliticizationof gay issues in
the metropolitan and civic publicspheres has engenderedbroadlybased
alliances,such thatprogressive"straights" can pass as "queer"intheircol-
lectivepoliticalstruggles.27
As a result,the GayPrideparadeno longerpro-
duces the ominousgustof an enormousclosetdooropening;its roleincon-
solidatingidentityvarieswidely,dependingon whatkindof communication
participantsthinkthe paradeinvolves.WhileGay Prideparadeshave not
yet achievedthe status in mainstreamcultureof, forinstance,St. Patrick's
Day parades (in whichpeople "go Irishfor a day"by dressing in green),
they havebecomepluralistic andinclusive,involvingapproval-seeking,self-
consolidating, and saturnalianand transgressivemomentsof spectacle.28
AlthoughQueer Nationmarchesin traditional Gay Prideparades, it has
updatedand complicatedthe strategyof the parade,recognizingthatthe
planned,distanced,and ultimately containednatureof the formoffersonly
momentarydisplacement of heterosexual norms:Afterall,one can choose
notto go to a parade,or one can watchthe scene go by withoutbecoming
even an imaginaryparticipant.
25. A powerfuland extensive explorationof the role of this "stereotypedfantasy body"
in the blackgay voguingsubcultureis providedby Jenny Livingston'sdocumentaryfilm,
Paris is Burning.See also Berlant,"NationalBrands/National Body."
26. On the historyof the Gay Prideparade,see D'Emilio,Sexual Politics,Sexual Com-
munities.
27. See Ross, No Respect.
28. See RichardHerrell,"SymbolicStrategies."Herrelldiscusses how Chicago politi-
cians annuallyassume at the paradepseudo-Irishlast names, such as "MayorRichard
O'Daley."The stigmaattachedto variousculturalgroupsmightwell be discernedby such
a litmustest: The unthinkableprospectof "MayorRichardGayley"suggests thatthere is,
as yet, no such thingas "honorary"symbolichomosexuality.

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 2 / Spring1992
166 boundary

In parades throughurbanAmericandowntowns,Queer Nationals

oftenchant,"We'rehere,we'requeer,we'renotgoingshopping."Butshop-
pingitselfprovidesthe formof a tacticwhenQueerNationenters another
context:The Queer ShoppingNetworkof New Yorkand the Suburban
HomosexualOutreachProgram(SHOP)of San Franciscohave takenthe
relativelyboundedspectacleof the urbanprideparadeto the ambientplea-
sures of the shoppingmall."Mallvisibilityactions"thus conjointhe spec-
tacularlureof the paradewithHareKrishna-style conversionand prosely-
tizingtechniques.Stepping intomallsin hair-gelledsplendor,holdinghands
and handingoutfliers,the queerauxiliariesproducean "invasion" thatcon-
veys a differentmessage: "We'rehere,we'requeer,you'regoingshopping."
These miniatureparadestransgressan erotically,socially,and eco-
nomicallycomplexspace. Whereaspatronsof the straightbar, at least,
understandits functionin termsof pleasureand desire, mall-goersinvest
in the shoppingmall'scredentialsas a "family" environment,an environ-
mentthat"createsa nostalgicimageof [the]towncenteras a clean, safe,
legibleplace."29Indressingup and steppingout queer,the Networkuses
the bodies of its membersas billboardsto create what MaryAnn Doane
calls "thedesireto desire."30As QueerShoppersstareback,kiss,andpose,
they disruptthe antisepticasexualsurfaceof the malls,exposingthem as
sites of any numberof explicitlysexualizedexchanges-cruising, people-
watching,window-shopping, tryingon outfits,the purchasingof commodi-
ties, and havinganonymoussex.31
Theinscription of metropolitansexualityina safe space forsuburban-
style normative sexual repression justone aspectof the Network'scritical
is
pedagogy. addition,mallactionsexploitthe utopianfunctionof the mall,
In
whichconnects information aboutcommoditieswithsensual expressivity
and whichpredictsthat new eroticidentitiescan be suturedto spectacu-
larconsumingbodies.The QueerShoppingNetworkunderstandsthe most
banalof advertisingstrategies:sex sells. Inthiscase, though,sex sells not

29. See Anne Friedberg,"Flaneursdu Mal(l),"PMLA106 (May1991):419-31. Whereas

Friedberganalyzes the mallas theater,an illusoryand ultimatelynonparticipatory realm,
we would argue that "mallerotics"extend beyond the consumer/commodityexchange
she describes to includevisualconsumptionof otherpeople as products.
30. MaryAnnDoane, TheDesireto Desire(Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 1987).
31. A letterin Raunch reveals that SouthglennMallin Denver,Colorado,where guess-
which-one-of-ushungout every Saturdayforherentireadolescence, also used to contain
one of the best arraysof gloryholes in the country.Imaginemy delight.BoydMcDonald,
Raunch (Boston:FidelityPublishing,1990).

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 andFreeman/ QueerNationality167
Berlant

substitutionsfor bodilypleasures-a car,a luxuryscarf-but the capacity

of the bodyitselfto experienceunofficialpleasures.Whilethe Networkap-
pearsto be merelyhandingoutanothercommodityintheformof broadsides
abouthomosexuality,its ironicawarenessof itselfas beingon displaylinks
gay spectacle withthe windowdisplaysthatalso entreatthe buyers.Both
say "buyme";butthe QueerShoppingNetworktemptsconsumerswitha
commoditythat,ifthey couldrecognizeit,they alreadyown:a sexuallyin-
flectedandexplicitlydesiringbody.Ultimately, the mallspectacleaddresses
the consumer'sown "perverse" desireto experiencea differentbodyand
offersitselfas the moststylishof the manyattitudeson sale in the mall.
Queer Nationexploitsthe mall'scouplingof things and bodies by
transgressivelydisclosingthatthisbounded,safe commercialspace is also
an information system wheresexual normsand culturalidentitiesare con-
solidated, thus linkingit withQueerNation'sfinalfrontier,the media.As it
enters the urbanmediacacophony,QueerNationscattersoriginalpropa-
ganda in the formof graffiti,wheatpastedposters,and fliersintoexisting
spaces of collective,anonymousdiscursiveexchange.Whilethe mallcir-
culatesand exchanges bodies,printmediacirculatesandexchanges infor-
mationinthe mostdisembodiedof spaces. QueerNationcapitalizeson the
abstract/informational apparatusof the mediain a few ways, refunction-
ing its spaces foran ongoing"urbanredecoration project"on behalfof gay
First,
visibility.32 it the
manipulates power of modern mediato create and
to disseminateculturalnormsandotherpoliticalpropaganda:QN leeches,
we mightsay, onto the media'ssocializingfunction.Second, QN's abun-
dant interventionsintosexual publicityplayfullyinvokeand resist the lure
of monumentality, the tendencyof sexualsubculturesto convert
frustrating
images of radical into
sexuality new standardsof transgression.
In additionto manufacturing its own information, Queer Nation's
mass mediationtakeson a moreironic"Madison Avenue"mode,"queering"
advertisementsso thatthey become vehiclesof protestagainstand arro-
gationsof a mediathatrendersqueernessinvisible,sanitary,or spectacu-
larlyfetishized.Moreambiguousthanthe traditionof politicaldefacement
fromwhichit descends-feminist spray-painting of billboardswithphrases
like"thisoffendswomen,"forexample33-QueerNation'sglossy pseudo-
advertisementsinvolvereplication,exposure,and disruptionof even the

32. We firstheardthis phraseat QueerNationChicago,Spring1991.

33. See JillPosener's photoessay on the Britishand Australianfeministbillboardspray-
paintingmovement,in Louderthan Words(NewYork:PandoraPress, 1986).

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 2 / Spring1992
168 boundary

semioticboundariesbetweengay and straight.The group'sparodiesand

reconstructions of mainstreamads inflectproductswitha sexualityandpro-
mote homosexualityas a product:Theylaybarethe queernessof the com-
moditiesthatstraightculturemakesand buys,eithertranslatingit fromits
hiddenformin the originalor revealingand ameliorating its calculatedera-
sure. Inshort,the most overtlycommercialof QueerNation'scampaigns,
trueto the Americanway,makesqueergood by makinggoods queer.
One formthis projecttakes is an "outing"of corporateeconomic
interestin "market segments"withwhichcorporations refuseto identifyex-
plicitly.The New YorkGap series changes final inthe logo of stylish
the P
ads featuringgay, bisexual,and suspiciouslypolymorphous celebritiesto
a Y. Forthe insider,these acts "out"the closetedgay and bisexualsemi-
celebritiesthe Gapoftenuses as models.Butthe reconstructedbillboards
also addressthe company'spolicyof usinggay style to sell clotheswithout
acknowledgingdebts to gay streetstyle:Style itselfis "outed,"as are the
straighturbanconsumerswho learnthatthe clothestheywearsignifygay.
Whereasthe Gap ads confrontboththe closetedness of a corpo-
ration and the semioticincoherenceof straightconsumerculture,another
series addresses the class implicationsof advertising'scomplicityin the
nationalmoralbankruptcy. A series of parodyLottoads exposes the simi-
laritiesand differencesbetweenthe nationalbetrayalof poor and of gay
citizens.The"straight" versionsof a series of advertisements forNewYork's
of
Lottodepict generic citizens various assimilated genders and ethnici-
ties, whovoice theirfantasiesaboutsuddenwealthunderneaththe caption
"AllYou Need is a DollarBilland a Dream."The ads conflatecitizenship
and purchase,suggestingthatworking-class orethnicAmericanscan real-
ize the American dream throughspendingmoney.One of QueerNation's
parodyads shows an "ordinary citizen"in one of the frank,casual head-
and-shouldersposes thatcharacterizethe realads. The captionreads,"I'd
startmy own cigarettecompanyand call it Fags."The QueerNationlogo
appears, along withthe slogan "AllYouNeed is a Three-Dollar Billand a
with
Dream."Again,the ads linkcitizenship capitalistgain, but the ironized
Americandreamcliche also establishesthe group'sresistanceto a liberal
"gaybusiness"approachto social liberation, inwhose viewcapitalistlegiti-
mationneutralizessocial marginality. QN recognizesthatthe three-dollar
billremainsnonnegotiabletender.Thetransformed captionrevealsthatthe
lottery'sfundamental promise does not hold truefor the nation'sgay citi-
zens in termsof the freedomto pursuesexualpleasure,whichcosts more
than any jackpot or bank account has ever amassed.

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 BerlantandFreeman/ QueerNationality 169

In posing as a countercorporation,a business with its own logo, cor-

porate identity,and ubiquity,Queer Nationseizes and dismantles the privi-
leges of corporate anonymity.34It steals the privilege that this anonymity
protects, that of avoiding painful recriminationfor corporate actions. As it
peels the facade of corporate neutrality,Queer Nation reveals that busi-
nesses are people with politicalagendas, and that consumers are citizens
to whom businesses are accountable for more than the qualityof their spe-
cific products: Abstracting itself, Queer Nation embodies the corporation.
The Lottoad finallypromises an alternativeto the capitalistdream machine:
Its Queer Nation logo, juxtaposed against the "AllYou Need is a Three-
Dollar Bill and a Dream"caption, appeals to the consumer to invest in its
own "corporate"identity.
The Queer Nation logo itself, then, becomes a mock twin to existing
national corporate logos: Just as red, white, and blue "Buy USA" labels,
yellow ribbons, and flag icons have, by commodifyingpatriotism,actually
managed to strengthen it, so does the spread of Queer Nation's merchan-
dise and advertising expand its own territoryof promises.35Because Gap
clothes and lotteryfantasies confer identities as much as flag kitsch does,
Queer Nation has the additionalpower to expose or transformthe meaning
of these and other commodities-not simply through the reappropriation
that camp enacts on an individuallevel but throughcollective mimicry,rep-
lication, and invasion of the pseudo-identities generated by corporations,
includingthe nation itself.
Queer Nation's infusion of consumer space with a queer sensibility
and its recognition of the potential for exploiting spaces of psychic and
physical permeabilityare fundamentalto its radicalreconstitutionof citizen-
ship. For in the end, an individual'sunderstandingof himself as "Ameri-
can" and/or as "straight"involves parallel problems of consent and local
control: Both identities demand psychic and bodily discipline in exchange

34. Paradoxically,actualcorporationshave in turnexploitedQueer Nation's/GranFury's

recognizablestyle to producemockgay ads, such as the Kikitbillboard,which portrays
two "lesbians"-actuallyan androgynousheterosexualcouple-kissing.
35. The New YorkTimesdevoted a fullsection to paid advertisementssupportingthe
Persian Gulfinvasionand to commercialads linkingpatriotismwithpurchase. Included
were an ad for a Steuben glass flag paperweight,a Bloomingdale'sspread saluting
fathers'"devotionto familyand countryalike,"and-in the most sinisterpunof ourtimes
(apartfrom,perhaps, "SaddamizeHussein")-a Saks FifthAvenuead withthe caption
"Awoman'splace is in the home of the braveand the landof the free"(New YorkTimes,
Sunday,9 June 1991).

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 2 / Spring1992
170 boundary

for the protection,security,and powerthese identitiesconfer.If the offi-

cial nationextractspubliclibidinalpleasureas the cost of politicalidentity,
queer citizenshipconfersthe rightto one's own specificpleasures.Inthe
finalanalysis,America,understoodnotas a geographicbutas a symbolic
locus in which individualsexperiencetheirfundamentallinkto 250 mil-
lionotherindividuals,is the most unboundedof the hyperspaceswe have
been describing.The officialtransformation of nationalidentityintostyle-
of flagintotransvestite"flagness"-offersQueerNationa seamless means
of transforming "queerness"intoa campcounternationality, whichmakes
good on the promise thatthe citizenwillfinallybe allowedto own, in addi-
tionto all the othervicariousbodiesQueerNationhas forsale, his mighty
real,his veryown nationalbody.

With You Out We're Nothing, and Beyond

Wehaveterritorialized QueerNationanddescribedthe production of
a queercounterpublic nationalicons,the officialanduseful
outof traditional
spaces of everydaylife,the ritualplacesof typicalpublicpleasure(parades,
malls, bars, and bodies), and the collectiveidentitiesconsumersbuy in
the mode of mass culture.The effect of castinggay urbanlife and prac-
tices as ongoingandscandalouslyordinaryis simultaneously to consolidate
a safe space for gay subjects and also to dislocateutterlythe normative
sexual referent.Ifnationalityas a formof fantasyand practiceprovidesa
legal and customaryaccountof whyAmericancitizensin the abstractare
secure as heterosexuals,QueerNationexploitsthe disembodiedstructure
of nationalityby assertingthatxenophobiawouldbe preciselyan inappro-
priateresponsefora straightcommunity to havetowardgay Americans.By
assertingthat straight gay publics coextensivewithAmericansat
and are
large,QNshows thatthe boundariesthatmightsecuredistinctionsbetween
sexual populationsare local (likeneighborhoods), normative(liketaxono-
mies), and elastic (likelatex).Butthese inany event, mustnot
distinctions,
be considerednational,and in this sense Queer Nation'srelaybetween
everydaylifeand citizens'rightsseems fitting.
Yetif QueerNationtacticallyengages the postmodernity of informa-
tioncultures,cuttingacross localanddisembodiedspaces of social identity
and expressivityto revealthe communication thatalreadyexists between
apparently bounded sexual and textualspaces, the campaignhas notyet,
in our view, left behindthe fantasiesof glamourand of homogeneitythat
characterizeAmericannationalismitself.We mightcommenton the mas-

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 Berlant
andFreeman/ QueerNationality171

culineapriorithatdominateseven Queerspectacle;we mightfurthercom-

ment on the relativeweakness withwhicheconomic,racial,ethnic, and
non-American cultureshave been enfoldedintoqueercounterpublicity.36In
short, insofaras it assumes that "Queer"is the only insurgent"foreign"
identityits citizenshave, QueerNationremainsboundto the genericizing
logic of Americancitizenshipand to the horizonof an officialformalism-
one thatequates sexual objectchoicewithindividual We con-
self-identity.
cede the need to acknowledgethe namespeopleuse forthemselves,even
whenthey originateinthe serviceof juridical and medicaldiscipline.Popu-
larformsof spectacle and self-understanding are crucialforbuildingmass
culturalstruggle.Butit is not enoughto "include" women,lesbians,racial
minorities,and so on in an ongoingmachineof mass counternationality.
Achievingthe utopianpromiseof a QueerSymbolic37 willinvolvemorethan
a storyof a multiculturalsewing circlesewing scrapsof a pinktriangle
the
onto the Americanflag,or turningthatflag,withits fiftytimesfive potential
smallpinktriangles,intoa newdesecratedemblem;morethana spectacle
of younghardgirl/womanfleshoutingthe pseudo-abstraction of masculine
politicalfantasy. Queer consent
culture's to nationalnormativity mustitself
be made moreprovisional.
We have arguedthat Americahas alreadybecome markedby a
camp aestheticinthe nineties.CampAmericaenrages,embarrasses,and
sometimes benignlyamuses officialnationalfiguresand gives pleasureto
the gay, the AfricanAmerican,the feminist,andthe left-identified commu-
nitieswho understandthatto operatea travestyon the nationaltravestyis
to dissolvethe framethatseparatesnationalfantasyfromordinarybodies.
But the verb dissolve is a temporalfantasy,of course:Tacticalinterven-
tions, such as DredScott'sflag doormatin Chicago'sArtInstituteor Kelly

36. CharlesFernandez,"Undocumented Aliensinthe QueerNation,"Out/Look12 (Spring

1991):20-23.
37. Ourreferenceto a "QueerSymbolic"followsBerlant'sanalysisof the official"National
Symbolic,"whichcoordinatespoliticalaffectin Americanlifeand extends the notionof a
politicalcounter-lexiconto the currentpracticesof QueerNation.The NationalSymbolic
is defined as "theorderof discursivepracticeswhose reignwithina nationalspace ...
transformsindividualsintosubjects of a collectivelyheld history.Itstraditionalicons, its
metaphors, its heroes, its rituals,and its narrativesprovidean alphabetfor a collec-
tive consciousness or nationalsubjectivity;throughthe NationalSymbolic,the historical
nation aspires to achieve the inevitability of the status of naturallaw, a birthright. This
pseudo-genericconditionnot only affects profoundlythe citizen'ssubjectiveexperience
of her/hispoliticalrights,butalso of civillife,privatelife,the lifeof the bodyitself"(Berlant,
TheAnatomyof NationalFantasy,20).

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172 boundary
2 / Spring1992

and RonnieCutrone'stransformation of the flag intoa sheet for polymor-

phous lovemaking in New York,have momentarily disintegratednational
abstractnessbyturningbodiesintonationalartandactuallymakingcensor-
ship law looksilly.These gestureswere potentiallydangerousand legally
scandalous:But containedin museums/galleries,they depended on the
usual protectionsof free high"artistic" expressionto purchasethe rightto
scandalizenationaliconography. Ata timewhenexistinglawsagainstpub-
lic and privatesex are beingnewlyenforced,the class distinctionbetween
sexual artand sex practicesmustbe replacedby an insurgentrenamingof
sexualitybeyond spectacle.
Inotherwords,the exhibitionof scandalousdirectcontactbetween
oppositionalstereotypesof iconicAmericaand its internallyconstructed
Others-say, betweenthe "body"andthe "nation"--solvesas spectacle a
problemof representationand powerthat is conceptuallymuchharderto
solve. Butthe indeterminate "we"fromwhichwe are writing,comfortable
on neitherside of mosttaxonomies,seek to occupya space of a morecom-
plexlydimensionalsexualityandpoliticalidentitythanthese simplesutures
suggest. Thisis, as MoniqueWittigcontends,notsimplya questionof "de-
dramatiz[ing] these categoriesof language.... Wemustproducea political
transformation of the key concepts,thatis of the conceptswhichare stra-
tegic for us."38As a gesturetowardmappingthis unsanctionedterrain,let
us returnto the problemof SandraBernhard:her pasty bodywrappedin
the flag, her extremely(c)little"redcorvette,"and her desire to seduce
cathartically an AfricanAmericanwomanthrougha lesbianeroticsthatma-
nipulatessentimentality, nationalparody,and aestheticdistance.Thisfinal
seductivemoment,whenBernhard "accidentally"stutters,"Without me/you
I'mnothing,"is framedby the "you"she addressesto the audiencein the
film'sopening monologue.There,Bernhardwishes the impossible-that
"you,"the disembodied,autoeroticspectator,wouldtraversethe space of
aesthetic and celluloiddistanceto kiss her right"here,"on a facial place
whereshe pointsherfinger;no such contactwiththe audiencehappensin
the frameof the film.Inthe end, afterthe masquerade,the racial,regional,
ethnic,and class drag,andduringthe Americanstriptease,the filmstages
a responsethatgoes beyondthe star'soriginalrequest:the genericblack-
woman-in-the-audience aboutwhomthe filmhas periodically fantasizedin

38. MoniqueWittig,"TheStraightMind,"in Out There:Marginalizationand Contempo-

rary Cultures,ed. Russell Ferguson,MarthaGever,TrinhT. Minh-ha,and CornelWest
(Cambridge:MITPress, 1990), 51-57.

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 andFreeman/ QueerNationality173
Berlant

nonnarrative, naturalistic
segmentswriteson the cafe tablewitha lipstick,
"FUCKSANDRABERNHARD." This syntacticallycomplexstatement-a
request, a demand, and an expletive-situates the blackwomanas an
objectof desire,as an authorof femininediscourse,andas an imageof the
film'shopelesslyabsentaudience:Herproximity to Bernhard'sfinallesbian-
nationaliststripteasethussuggests neithera purelysentimental"essential-
ist"lesbian spectacle, nor a postmodernconsumerfeminineautoerotics,
nora phallocentrically inspiredlustforlesbian"experience," butallof these,
and more.
In this encounter,Bernhardtries to mergenationalcamp withles-
bian spectacle.39She producesscandalouseroticpleasureby undulating
betweenthe impossibility of laminating the flagontoherbodyandthe equal
impossibility of ever sheddingthe flagaltogether:As she peels off herflag
cape, she revealsthreemoreinthe formof a red,white,and bluesequined
G-stringand patrioticpasties, leavingus no reason to thinkthat this ex-
ponentialmultiplication of flags wouldever reachits limits.Thisundulation
of the body and the flag, whicheroticizesthe latteras it nationalizesthe
former,is coterminouswiththe tease and the denialof the cross-race,
homoeroticaddress to her consumer-the black-woman-in-the-audience.
Thatis to say, the politicalliberationthe flag promisesand the sexual lib-
erationits slippingoff suggests makes a spectacle of the ambiguitywith
whichthese subjectsliveAmericansexuality.
Bernhard'srefusalto resolveherfeminineand sexual identitiesinto
a lesbianlove narrative also illustrateshowthe eroticization
of femalespec-
tacle inAmericanpublicculturefrustratesthe politicalefficacyof transgres-
sive representationsfor straightand lesbianwomen.The filmimaginesa
kindof liberalpluralisticspace for Bernhard's cross-margin,cross-fashion
fantasyof women,butshows how lesbophobicthatfantasycan be, inso-
faras it requiresaestheticdistance-the straightnessof the genericwhite
woman-identified-woman-asa conditionof national,racial,and sexual
filiation.Herdesire for acceptancefromthe black-woman-in-the-audience
perpetuatesthe historicburdenblackwomenin cinemahave borneto rep-
resent embodiment,desire, and the dignityof sufferingon behalfof white
39. We have been orallyinstructedon the genealogy of camp counterpoliticsand its
intersectionwith radicalsexualityby RichardHerrelland Pam Robertson.For textual
support, see Esther Newton, MotherCamp: Female Impersonatorsin America (Chi-
cago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1979); Ross, No Respect; and Pamela Robertson,
"GuiltyPleasures:Campand the FemaleSpectator"(unpublishedmanuscript,University
of Chicago, 1990).

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174 boundary2 / Spring1992

women,whoaretoo frightenedto stripthemselvesof the privilegesof white

heterospectacle.Thus,inaddition,the rejectionBernhard receivesfromthe
black-woman-in-the-audience demonstratesthe inabilityof cinematicpub-
licspectacleto makegood on itsteasingpromiseto dignifyfemininedesire
in any of its forms.Bernhard'sinability to bridgethe negativityof anyone's
desire focuses the lens on femalespectacle itself,stagingit as a scene of
negativity,completewithproducer,consumer,audienceresistance,andthe
representation of multipleand ambiguousidentifications.
The failed attemptto representand to achieve a lesbian/national
spectacle foregroundsthe oxymoronicqualityof these twomodelsof iden-
tification.Inthe remainderof thisessay, we meanto explainhowthisfailure
to conflatesexual andpoliticalspectaclecan providematerialto transfigure
Queer as well as AmericanNationality-notto commandeerthe national
franchisefor our particularhuddledmasses but instead to unsettle the
conventionsthat name identity,frameexpressivity,and providethe taxo-
nomicmeans by whichpopulationsand practicesare defined,regulated,
protected,andcensoredbynationallawandcustom.Lesbiannationalspec-
tacle emerges here as the measureof a transitoryspace, a challengeto
revise radicallythe boundariesof the normativepublicsphere and its his-
amongwhichare malehomosociality,a very
toricalmodes of intelligibility,
narrowlydefinedset of public"political" interests,andgarbledrelationsbe-
tween politicsandaffect.40Weunderstand thatto definesexualexpressivity
as publicpoliticalspeech, andto resistcensorshipby expandingthe range
of eroticdescription,is simultaneously to exercisea fundamentalprivilege
of American and
citizenship to riskforsakingthe refugeof camp.These are
risksthatqueers/Americanscannotaffordto pass on. Indeed,the question
of whetherfemale/lesbiansexualitycan come into any productivecon-
tactwiththe politicalpublicsphereis a foundingproblemof lesbianpolitical
writingof the last fifteenyears,and this problemis a problemforus all, by
whichwe referto "us"Queersand "us"Americans.
Femalesubjectsarealwayscitizensinmasquerade: Themoresexual
they appear,the less abstractablethey are in a liberalcorporealschema.
Lesbiantheory'ssolutionto thisdilemmahas been to constructimaginable
communities,whichis to say thatAmerica'sstrategiesfor self-promotion
have not workedforlesbians,who have historically and aestheticallyoften

40. Foran alignedproject,see Scott Tucker,"Gender,Fucking,and Utopia,"Social Text

27 (1991):3-34.

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 175

embraced the "space-off" in expatriate expression of their alienation from

America.41 The female body has reemerged in the safe spaces of lesbian
politicaltheory outside of the politicalpublicsphere, in tribalstructures that
emphasize embodied ritualand intimatespectacle as a solution to the in-
dignities women, and especially lesbians, have had to endure. The blinking
question mark beside the word nation in JillJohnston's separatist Lesbian
Nation; the erotogenic metamorphoses of the body, sex, and knowledge
on the island of Monique Wittig's The Lesbian Body; and even the per-
sonal gender performances centralto JudithButler'ssexual self-fashioning
in Gender Troubleall reveal an evacuation of liberalnationalityas we know
it.42But for what public?
Separatist withdrawalinto safe territoriesfree from the male gaze
secures the possibility of nonpornotropicembodiment in everyday life and
aesthetic performance by emphasizing intimacy,subjectivity,and the liter-
ally local frame.43We do not mean to diminishthe benefits of separatist ex-
patriation:Inits great historicalvariety,separatistwithdrawalhas expressed
a condition of politicalcontestation lesbians and gays already experience in
America and has used the erotics of communityto create the foundationof a
differentfranchise. However,by changing the locus of spectacle-transport-
ing it over state lines, as it were-lesbian theory has neglected to engage
the political problem of feminine spectacle in mass society. Even Butler's
metropolitan polymorphous solution to the politics of spectacle limits the
power of transgression to what symbolic substitutionon the individualbody
can do to transformcustom and law. And as Queer Nation has shown us,
no insistence on "the local"can secure national intimacyand nationaljus-
tice, where spectacle is intimacy'svehicle, and the vehicle for control. Ifthe
spectacle of the body's rendezvous with the flag has seemed to yoke un-
like things together, the distance between persons and collective identities
must also be read not only as a place to be filled up by fantasy but as a

41. See Teresa de Lauretis,Technologiesof Gender (Bloomington:IndianaUniversity

Press, 1987), and BerthaHarris,"TheMoreProfoundNationalityof Their Lesbianism:
LesbianSociety in the 1920's,"inAmazonExpedition:A LesbianFeministAnthology,ed.
PhillisBirkyet al. (New York:Times Change, 1973), 77-88.
42. JudithButler,Gender Trouble(New York:Routledge,1990); JillJohnston,Lesbian
Nation(New York:Simonand Schuster,1973);MoniqueWittig,TheLesbianBody, trans.
DavidLe Vay (Boston:Beacon Press, 1986).
43. Hortense J. Spillers,"Mama'sBaby/Papa'sMaybe:An AmericanGrammarBook,"
Diacritics17 (Summer1987):65-81.

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176 boundary2 / Spring1992

negative space, a space where suddenly the various logics of identitythat

circulate through American cultureenter into relationsof contradictionand
not simple analogy.
Along this axis, the negativity of national life for nonwhite and/or
nonmale queers has reemerged in a more radicaldiacritic,the queer fan-
zine.44We move away fromthe wordlesbian and towardthese descriptions
of negative identity because it is this space-the space of nonidentifica-
tion with the national fantasy of the white male citizen-that is both the
symptom of even "queered" Enlightenmentnationalityand also the ma-
terial for its refunctioning.As a rule, undergroundfanzines make explicit
their refusal of a property relation to informationand art, repudiating the
class politics of mainstream gay for-profitjournals, like The Advocate and
Outweek, and shunning the mock Madison Avenue production values of
Queer Nation, Gran Fury,and ACTUP.45BIMBOXwrites that the magazine
is free because "the truthis, you have already paid for BIMBOX.We have
all paid for it-dearly. We have paid for it in blood and we have paid for
it in tears. Unrelenting pain is our credit limit,and we are cursed with in-
terminable overdraftprotection."46 Xerox collage, desktop publishing, and
other phototechniques have combined in a medium of comic and political
communication, whose geographically isolated examples have converged
into the infoculturalversion of the tribe, a network.47Thus, the contest over
the territoryof the Queer Symbolic has resulted in what Bitch Nation, a
manifesto in the Torontofanzine BIMBOX,calls a civil war.
The fanzines' only shared identityis in their counterproductivity-a
multifoldmission they share withother sexual radicalismsto counter Ameri-
can and Queer National cultures' ways of thinkingabout political tactics

44. Citationalproprietiesin the "University

of ChicagoStyle"are both inappropriate and
virtuallyimpossible with regardto the zines. Here is a selected list of those we con-
sulted to make these generic observations:BIMBOX2 (Summer1990);Don't TellJane
and Frankie (undated); Dumb Bitch Deserves to Die 2 (Winter 1989); The Gentlewomen
of California 6 (undated); Holy Titclamps 6 (Fall 1990); Homoture 2 (undated); Manhattan
Review of Unnatural Acts (undated); Negativa 1-3 (March-May 1991); No World Order
(1990); Screambox 1 and 2 (November1990, May 1991);Sister/MyComrade(Winter
1991); Tasteof Latex4 (Winter1990-1991); Thing4 (Spring1991).
45. See Crimp and Rolston, AIDS DEMO GRAPHICS.
46. BIMBOX 2 (Summer 1990).
47. In May 1991, the RandolphStreet Galleryof Chicago hosted the firstinternational
queer fanzineconferencecalled "SPEW:The HomographicConvergence."

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 Berlantand Freeman/ QueerNationality 177

Inthe firstplace, the zines show that "obscenity"

and sexual intelligibility.48
itself is political speech, speech that deserves constitutional protection:
Transforming"the American flag into something pleasant," Sondra Golvin
and Robin Podolsky's "Allegiance/Ecstasy"turns "ipledge allegiance" into
an opportunityto add "mycunt helplessly going molten,""herclit swelling
to meet my tongue," "my fist knocking gently at her cunt" to the national
loyalty oath.49 Additionally,the zines have widened the semantic field of
sexual description, movingsexual identityitself beyond knownpracticaland
fantastic horizons-as when BIMBOXimagines "fags, dykes, and USO's
(UnidentifiedSexual Objects)."But they are also magazines in the military
sense, storehouses for the explosives that will shatter the categories and
the time-honored politicalstrategies through which queers have protected
themselves. Queer counterspectacle might well be read as a means for
aggressively achieving dignityin the straightworld;in the zine context, how-
ever, these spectacles are also icons that requiresmashing. The suspicion
of existing tactics and taxonomies runs deep: "Dykesagainst granola lesbi-
ans. Fags against sensitive gay men. And bitches against everyone else."5o
Along with joining queer culture's ongoing politics of dirty words,
then, some zines engage inwhat wouldseem to be a more perverse activity:
the aggressive naming and negation of their own audience. Ifcitizenship in
the Queer Nation is voluntaryand consensual, democratic and universalist
in the way of many modern nationalisms, the applicationfor citizenship in
the Bitch Nation,for example, repudiatesthe promise of communityin com-
mon readership, the privileges of a common language, and the safety of
counteridentity."And-don't even bother tryingto assimilate any aspect of
Bitch Nation in a futile attemptto make your paltrycareers or lame causes
appear more glamorous or exciting. We won't hesitate to prosecute-and
the Bitch Nation court is now in session!!"''51As Bitch Nation endangers
the reader who merely quotes, abstracts, and appropriates zine culture,
many zines engage in a consumer politics of sexual enunciation, forcing

48. Rubin,"Thinking Sex";and LisaDuggan,"Sex Panics,"in Democracy:A Projectby

GroupMaterial,ed. BrianWallis(Seattle:Bay Press, 1990), 209-12.
49. Sondra Golvinand RobinPodolsky,"Allegiance/Ecstasy," Screambox 1 (November
1990):20-21.
50. Don't TellJane and Frankie,no page number.
51. We understandthe riskwe take in citingBitchNationagainstits stated will.We look
forwardto our punishmentat the hands of editrixG. B. Jones, who "takesher girls like
Tylenol-2 at a time"(see Don'tTellJane and Frankie).

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178 boundary2 / Spring1992

the reader to see where she is situated, or to resituate herself politically

and culturally:Thus, when the cover of Thingmagazine proclaimsthat "She
Knows Who She Is,"it mobilizes the common gay use of the feminine pro-
noun in the ventriloquizedvoice of the woman's magazine to categorize
"insiders"by attitude rather than by gender or sexual identity,disarming
many differentkinds of essentialism througharch indirectaddress.
This move to materialize the spectator as different from the spec-
tacle withwhich she identifies has powerfulpoliticalforce forwomen, whose
collective and individualself-representations are always available for em-
barrassment, and most particularlyfor lesbians, whose sexual iconography
has been overdetermined by the straight porn industry.By reversing the
direction of the embarrassment from the spectacle toward the spectator,
the zines rotate the meaning of consent. In severing sexual identity from
sexual expressivity, the spectacle talks dirtyto you, as it were, and you no
longer have the privilege to consume in silence, or in tacit unconscious-
ness of or unaccountabilityfor your own fantasies. As Negativa, a Chicago
lesbian fanzine, puts it, "Whatyou lookingat, bitch?"(see figure 1).
Linkedcomplexly to the enigma of consensual sex is that of consen-
sual nationality,which similarlyinvolves theories of self-identity,of intention,
and of the urge to shed the personal body for the tease of safe mutual
or collective unboundedness. Americanand Queer National spectacle de-
pend upon the citizen's capacity to merge his/her private, fractured body
with a collectively identified whole one. Uncle Sam points his finger and
says he wants you to donate your whole body literallyand figurativelyto
the nation, and Queer Nation uses the allure of commercial and collective
embodied spectacle to beckon you towarda differentsort of citizenship. But
the fanzines' postnational spectacle disruptsthis moment of convergence:
Just as you, the desiring citizen, enter the sphere of what appears to be
mutualconsent, an invisiblefinger points back at you. Itunveils your desire
to see the spectacle of homoculturewithoutbeing seen; it embarrasses you
by making explicit your desire to "enter"and your need for "permission"to
identify;and it insists that you declare your body and your goods and that
you pay whatever politicaland erotic duty seems necessary.
Thus, like Queer Nation, the zines channel submission and bitter-
ness into anger and parody. Queer Nation and allied groups struggle to
reoccupy the space of nationallegitimation,to make the nationalworldsafe
forjust systems of resource distributionand communication,to make it safe
for full expression of difference and rage and sexuality. Parody and camp
thus become the measure of proximity to the national promise, as well as

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 Berlantand Freeman / Queer Nationality 179

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Figure1. FromNegativa,by AKSummers

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180 boundary2 / Spring1992

the distance from access to its fulfillment.Gestures of anger, parody, and

camp in the zine network,by contrast, represent a disinvestment in authen-
ticity discourse that moves beyond the intelligibilityof gender, of sexual
object choice, and of nationalidentityby cultivatinga passionate investment
in developing the negative for pleasure and politics. Intheirdriveto embody
you, the citizen/spectator/reader/lover, by negating your disembodiment,
the zines represent the horizonof postpatriarchaland postnationalfantasy.
Even in their most parodic manifestations, gestures of sexual and
national intelligibility-both oppressive and emancipatory-are part of a
process of making norms. The zines acknowledge the necessity, and also
the reality,of stereotypical self-identityand at the same time try to do vio-
lence to normativeforms that circulatein America. Instaging the process by
which stereotypes become hybridforms, their clarifyingfunction as sites of
identityand oppression exhausted, the zines do more than deconstructively
put the icon "undererasure."52The negated stereotype remains available:
Mass politics requires a genuinely populist currency. But the stereotype
is expensive. The fanzines' gestures in countering national politicalsover-
eignty, then, lead us in another direction.They suggest a space of politics in
which to be "out"in publicwould not be to consent parodicallyto the forms
of the political public sphere but to be out beyond the censoring imagi-
nary of the state and the informationculturethat consolidates the rule of its
names. We support Queer Nation and ACTUP's commitmentto occupy as
many hegemonic spaces as possible in their countering moves. What we
seek to describe, in addition, is the value in convertingthe space of nega-
tivity that distinguishes Queer American identity into a discursive field so
powerfulthat the United States will have to develop a new breed of lexical
specialists to crack the code of collective life in a hot war of words about
sex and America, about which the nation alreadyfinds itself so miserably-
and yet so spectacularly-archaic.

52. On the nationalstereotype and hybrididentities,see HomiK. Bhabha,"TheOther

Question: Difference,Discriminationand the Discourse of Colonialism,"in Out There,
71-87.

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