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108 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY
of referring to what only a few years ago used to be simply “gay”…or, just a
few years earlier still, “homosexual.”
(iv)
The political struggle reflected in this careful development of names and
protocols, historical and present-day struggles with homophobia,
misogyny, and separatism cannot and should not be forgotten. However, as
de Lauretis points out, the ascendance of the politically correct twin terms,
gay and lesbian or lesbian and gay, while reflective of the need for
solidarity between lesbians and gay men, can also encourage taking
“differences” (i.e. gender, race, class, ethnicity) for granted among lesbians
and gay men, and between queers and heterosexuals. The term queer
allows for a greater register of difference (there seems to be no limit to the
expression of queerness) while at the same time it resists the sanitizing
effects of status quo politics.
13 See, for example, the use of the term “cross-dressing” in Showalter.
14 I am using the term “presence” to mark the opposition against queer “absence” in
un-queer, dominant representation. This usage does not correspond with Derrida’s
idea of presence as a transcendental signified that acts as the ultimate point of
reference in Derrida 49.
15 See Babuscio.
16 The beginnings of the gay and lesbian civil rights struggle are described in
Faderman.
17 Bredbeck observes in “B/O” how Barthes’s hermeneutic presents the text as
feminine and in the service of heterosexual masculine needs, wants, and desires; he
writes: “Like woman in western culture, the text [for Barthes] remains an inert tabula
rasa waiting to be given significance by the acts of others” (269).
18 The presentation of realist film narratives follows strict cinematic rules with regard
to editing and camera work. One of these prohibitions is the thirty degree rule that
works to avoid presenting jump cuts, causing the spectator to experience the
unpleasant sensation of a jerk or hiccup in the unfolding of narrative space. Each
time the camera is moved, the angle of movement must not exceed thirty degrees so
that the spectator’s experience of the unfolding of the mise-en-scène maintains its
coherence. A jump cut causes the spectator to lose her place in the shot-to-shot
progression of the film’s narrative. In other words, she suddenly and momentarily
drops out of the film’s mapping of narrative space. The employment of jump cuts
in the service of destabilizing the film spectator has a long tradition in independent
cinema and has been occasionally employed in dominant cinema when it searches
for a “non-Hollywood” style or ambience.
19 But this is not to say that queer desire is performed phallogocentrically.
20 Unfortunately, Freud’s explication of humor depends, in part, upon his notion of
the super-ego. Given that Freud argues elsewhere that those individuals who
cannot “satisfactorily” resolve their Oedipal complexes suffer the consequences of
underdeveloped or undeveloped super-egos—an inability found in lesbians, gay
men, and heterosexual women—it would seem that only a very few have access to