Space and Place

Like the rhizome - a category Deleuze and Guattari borrowed from the font makers - that goes beyond the three-dimensional and so catches the outside of the outside, the questions at hand are indeed part and parcel of that fourth dimension to which I refer. The questions on my lips have everything and nothing at all to do with one another. And this is precisely my point. Where is the space in queer studies for a feminist who still believes that state-sanctioned marriage is one of the most insidious forms of institutionalized racism? Where is the place for the atheist at the table where (black) queer studies meets African American studies and they agree that the church is an important and necessary center for a discourse on the politics of black bodies, black subjects, black lives? Unlike the relentless Iago, I have ceased whispering at the ear of colleagues and friends, phrases like "God is dead" or "God doesn't exist." It is no longer funny. And finally, when is the appropriate time to have a discussion about all of these things that surely have their parallel in the principles of connection and heterogeneity that describe the (Deleuzian) fourth dimension. OUT THERE, our nation chases a phantom menace called terrorism that is a cover for a "holy war." And if you wonder what I'm talking about, just check out Jerry Falwell's latest missive on his website: "At this critical time in our nation's history, it is imperative that Christians join together in prayer for our troops who wage war against a merciless enemy." Under cover of the first menace, fundamentalists everywhere are waging (an)other war against another menace - the queer, the freak, the one who sits at the outside of the outside.

As you can see, I have little patience in these warring times for silence, for as Toni Morrison reminds us, this is serious and dangerous work. And in order to do it, we must change the way we think about the initial question(s) and their relations, literal or figurative.

Works Cited

Wendy Brown and Janet Halley, eds. Left Legalism/Left Critique. Durham: Duke UP, 2002.