Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

32 Rory du Plessis
poses also such a problem to border policing in that according to
Dollimore, 68 the male homosexual is also described as ‘the other
within’, as a ‘proximate other’, whose threat is that he has the ability
to pass unnoticed through borderlines. Rousseau 69 elaborates on this
ability of homosexuals to pass unnoticed in society, in stating:
... homosexuals have the remarkable ability to conceal themselves as
well as come out of hiding: to ‘pass’ in the sense of assuming different
protean shapes according to the needs of the social situation.
Thus the homosexual, like the Jew, is depicted essentially as a secret
and subversive presence deteriorating social stability from within. In
response to this, Cohen’s use of the personas of the Jew and
homosexual in his work, are both a metaphor for the ‘other within
society’ and the ‘internal, personal otherness of the hybrid self’. 70
The double burden of ‘otherness’ that Cohen represents, that of both
the Jew and homosexual, is transformed into empowerment through
the reference to hybridity. Bhabha 71 sees that hybridity has liberating
potential in that it is no longer viewed as something impure but rather
as a mixture of cultures and identity that empowers subjects in the
postcolonial context. Cohen’s embrace of hybridity allows him to play
with identity, reconstruct himself and destroy stereotypes governing
‘the other’.
Through the policing of borders, the construction of gender operating
through exclusion is realised. Esposito 72 argues that the policing of
borders occurs on two levels. The first level is material, which
involves most often violence against unwanted border crossers. 73
Cohen, in Patriotic drag, is verbally assaulted and expelled from Fort
Klapperkop by the neo-Nazi ‘border police’. Weeks 74 describes such
actions by the supporters, maintaining that hegemonic masculinity
‘... is achieved by the constant process of warding off threats to it. It
is precariously achieved by the rejection of femininity and
homosexuality’.
The second level of the policing of borders occurs on a theoretical
level in which identities are predefined in structures that frame ‘Us’
versus ‘Them’ discourses. 75 This level operates through symbolic
violence, as articulated above whereby the identity of white
hegemonic masculinity depends and is constituted by its distance and
68
In S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 18.
69 Rousseau ‘Foucault and the fortunes of queer theory’ (2000) 5 The European
Legacy 401 405.
70
S de Waal & R Sassen in Carman (n 7 above) 18.
71 G Doy ‘Objectified bodies or embodied subjects?’ in Doy (n 28 above) 126.
72 Esposito (n 64 above) 355.
73
As above.
74 In ‘Searching for the gay masculinity’ http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/lib/s01/
lib397-01/ReStructuring_Masculinities/documents/gaymasc.pdf (accessed 5 July
2005).
75 Esposito (n 64 above) 355.