Fetishism, perversion and the Gay Identity

Fetishism, perversion and the Gay Identity

The contemporary Euro-American idea of identity as coherent, seamless, bounded and whole is indeed an illusion. On the contrary, the self carries many internal contradictions and nuances as a reflection of the many roles that a person plays in various social circles. Identity is partially post-social and socially constructed though rituals and disciplinary acts. In turn Delany challenges the concept of a Gay Identity, an entity of being that could be defined as referential. "The point to the notion of Gay Identity is that, in terms of a transcendent reality concerned with sexuality per se (a universal similarity, a shared necessary condition, a defining aspect, a generalizable and inescapable essence common to all men and women called 'gay'), I believe Gay Identity has no more existence than a single, essential, transcendental sexual difference" (Delany 1991:131). The meaning of Gay Identity does not carry over across all time, sharing itself in a congruent way to every gay community to encompass an irreducible gayness. In fact, the very notion of the existence of any gay properties characterizing the Gay Identity is seriously questioned and refuted, as is the concept of a universal, timeless sexual difference (Delany 1991).

According to Sedgwick, even the language used to identify the gay identity "queer" is non-referential. Queer describes the gay identity in as many uncharacteristic ways that fail to overlap certain individual homosexual experiences as it does in describing characteristic ways that overlap other homosexual experiences. Queerness is not always translatable just as being queer means different things to different gays. "'Queer' seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filiation" (Sedgwick 1993:9). Sedgwick contends that there always exists a performative aspect of the self in all the roles that people play, including the queer role. Thus queer is not outside of the performance. This description of performance as identity suggests that the retrospective act of interpreting performance constructs personhood. During moments of cultural misunderstanding and differences that cause personal stress and strains in individual access to self-representation of identity, a social actor has the ability to alter identity. By experimenting with who they are through sexual performance, people shape their sexual identities (Sedgwick 1993).

Building critically upon Delany, I call into question the accuracy of perversion belonging in marginal spaces. I specifically seek to analyze fetishism as a kind of perversion.