Does Queer Political Theory Have a Future?

In this final chapter I reflect upon the possibilities unleashed by recent scholarship in queer political theory. First, I discuss the future of queer political thinking by insisting that the act of interpretation has to draw on how one becomes both irritated by and surprised by scholarly arguments. As an affective practice, irritation offers the incentive to challenge what is already known while the surprise opens up a new territory for investigation. Second, to enact my interpretative method, I critically engage with the work of Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, José Esteban Muñoz, and Lauren Berlant to argue that queer practices can articulate an equality-oriented vision of politics.

How to do Queer Genealogy with J. S. Mill

In this chapter I show that queer genealogy helps us rethink nineteenth-century feminist activism. By drawing on Judith Butler and Jacques Rancière’s ideas, I develop a conception of queer genealogy that mobilizes the performativity of shame to identify practices that challenge the police. The method of queer genealogy illuminates Mill’s unconventional relationship with Harriet Taylor as a creative intervention that disrupted Victorian sexual norms. In developing a genealogical method, I draw on Mill’s concept of experiments in living, which points to the sexual and affective value of relationships that take place outside marriage. Also, I investigate Mill’s use of silence as a politician and his deployment of humiliating language to resignify the shame associated with his sexual and political transgressions.

Queer Practices, or How to Unmoor Feminism from Liberal Feminism

This introductory chapter clarifies the goals and the method of the book. My claim here is that a genealogical approach pushes political theory away from traditional liberal models about politics. In doing genealogy, I put Jacques Rancière’s work in conversation with queer theory and challenge a liberal feminist conception of shame, which understands shame as being primarily negative and dangerous for politics. In turn, I conceptualize shame as a political act which interrupts a given hierarchy of power and social roles.

Performative Slurs: Political Rhetoric in Feminist Activism

In this chapter I discuss performative slurs as a tactic deployed by feminist activists in England in the 19th century. During debates about the Contagious Diseases Acts in England, feminists’ radical and humiliating rhetoric resignified exclusionary political conventions such as prostitution laws and prohibitions against voting. While Josephine Butler chastised upper-class men who were part of the political elite for being hypocrites and sadistic villains, Mill used shaming and humiliation strategically in his articles and public interventions. Humiliating language can be a radical democratic act when it represents a risky intervention that imagines new possibilities of living for sex and gender marginals.

Disturbing Silence: Mill and the Radicals at the Monthly Repository

In this chapter I criticize Martha Nussbaum’s theory of shame by drawing on Wendy Brown’s argument that silence offers a “shelter” for sexual radicals against the judgment of public opinion. A performative silence is important not only to protect eccentrics from the tyranny of social conformity but also to imagine possibilities for living in transformative relationships. I examine the early stage of Mill’s relationship with Harriet Taylor, discuss Mill’s relationship with a group of radical Unitarians, and analyse his carefully planned interventions. I show that Mill’s silences, rather than lacking feminist value, challenge the liberal feminist conception about political action.

Shame as a Line of Escape: Victoria Woodhull, Dispossession, and Free Love

This chapter shows that Judith Butler’s concept of mode of dispossession and Jacques Rancière’s concept of line of escape reframes a traditional understanding about shame's political potential. Shame has the capacity to dispossess, that is, to expose one as defective and vulnerable to critical judgment. On the other hand, shame dispossess not only because it restricts but also because it produces innovative political interventions. To show this potential of shame, I investigate the actions of a nineteenth-century U.S. feminist radical, Victoria Woodhull. Although Woodhull was shamed for her advocacy of free love, she imagined bold and provocative political interventions. Her tactic of political exposures was an innovative tool to contest conventional gender norms in the context of nineteenth-century United States.