30 January 2001

From: "irana lucas" <gherai@hotmail.com>
To: <rhizome85@home.com>
Cc: <deleuze-guattari-digest@lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 7:33 PM
Subject: Re: homosocial nathan

Dear Nathan - the word homosocial refers to an idea which originated, as far as I know, in the work of Eve Kososfsky Sedgewick. She is a literary critic.

She has written about how men trade women for power under the guise of heterosexual interest; she claims that that hetero desire is a ruse that men use to bargain and jockey for power; any power and any discourse requires the trading of the weaker members of the social structures of patriarchy.

So what appeared as men fighting for women was really men fighting for each other's desire and power. And this included the sexual displacement of homosexual desire. But this when displaced became homo-social as the sexual was eliminated. It seemed to me that your ideas and that some of the ideas being expressed in various dialogues you were pursuing were of that nature.

I hope you or any of the others involved in this debate are not offended by the comment. I am, as you may have already guessed, a lurker most of the time in the deleuze list.

Sincerely, Irana

30 January 2001
Nathan Goralik wrote:

Irana (and Chris Jones!)~

That's what I thought homosocial meant -- I'm still not sure of what it has to do with what I've said on the list (although I might be able to apply the idea to my personal life). Honestly, the ideas I express on the list aren't my own (and I don't mean this in the way that post-structuralists deploy this statement--they're simply not ideas that I necessarily hold). When I post, I mostly do it just to see how people respond to certain ideas in order to get a better grasp of what they're saying. I participate in order to spectate.

I'm not offended at all - can you be more specific? Perhaps Chris Jones will have some interesting perspective on the issue...

~Nate

From: Chris Jones <ccjones@turboweb.net.au>
To: deleuze-guattari@lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: homosocial nathan
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:07:01 +1100

Hi Nate

I very much agree with Irana's summary of homosociality. Sedgewick, so far as I know, first used this term and possibly introduced it to literary criticism and academic writings as well as political talk on the streets. The critique also has currency in both feminist and gay movement politics. In Australia, a great deal of critical thinking has been done on what is called Australian mateship. A close friendship between men which is precisely homosocial. Mateship is defined by the exclusion of women and gay males from this friendship between men. This exclusion acts (in part) to define masculinity and heterosexuality. Heterosexuality is then defined in terms of masculinity, by men. Mateship is also  used to define the Australian Nation and nationalism in masculine terms. (To define both draws the boundaries and  endows a vertical form to masculinity, which is why there can be no becoming man for Deleuze and Guattari.)

An outstanding theorist of homosociality in recent Australian fiction is Best Mates by Paul Radley (I think that is the correct title and author?) In this novel the two main characters, young men, are best mates, of course. In one episode they go to town and get rotten drunk when they are 16 years old. A rite of passage on the way to being men. One of them doesn't make it home and is picked up by the local cop and raped in the police cell. As a result the police station is later burnt down with the cop in it by the local men, in retribution for this rape. The point I want to pick up here is that homosociality cannot rely simply on the forces of law and order but must depend on the eternal vigilence of the homosocial bond to both ensure the homosocial patriarchal order is maintained and also that any hint (even) of a crossing of that line, such as a homosexual cop, must be excluded from the boundaries that are established. In this case burnt like a faggot and a traitor to mateship. The symbolism of this is also essential to homosociality. Here is also an Hegelian-like logic of sacrifice operating. Homosociality must both uphold and rely  on state philosophy. To borrow a slogan from Feminism -- Hegel is the theory, homophobia the practice. Homosociality is homophobia. The homosocial fears homosex and defines the line  which it must not cross. Gay men are of course excluded at the threat of death from this formal definition. This knife edge must be ever guarded against, for the exchange of body fluids between men is death, in the logic of the homosocial. In this case the death of Man. (Hence Gothic themes of the death of man and sodomy, for example.) Homosocial is Oedipal.

Another interesting critical article on homosociality is Foucault, "On Friendship" (first published in Le Gai Pied but availbale in English in Semiotexte, I think?) Also see Foucault's discussion on soldiers in Discipline and Punish. D&G's Anti Oedipus is a thorough critique of the homosocial. As soon as the line is crossed from the homosocial to explicit homosex the structure of patriarchal homosociality can no longer be sustained. It is not simply a matter of cross dressing, for example. Cross dressing can be tolerated within a homosocial structure and can act to build and maintain that structure. (D&G also make short work of cross dressing in the becoming plateau, writing on becoming woman.)

I have probably said enough for now.  Hope that helps answer the question, although it certainly does not exhaust the question. Homosociality assigns a particular role to women and gay men (lesbians are lumped in with women here since homosociality does not recognise women as having a sexual potential ouside of the masculine) which feminism and gay rights understand as oppressive. A new type of friendship between males is also suggested.

best wishes

chris Jones