Final Thoughts

I enrolled in the FYSEM class Telling the Story Queer, because queer literature happens to be one of my favorite topics; whether the text is queer theoretically, sexually, or philosophically I enjoy writings which seek to annihilate limitations, “the arts, whatever their materials, pressed forward by the aesthetics of the sublime in search of intense effects, can and must give up the imitation of models that are merely beautiful, and try out surprising, strange, shocking combinations. Shock is, par excellence, the evidence of something happening, rather than nothing, suspended privation,” (Jean-François Lyotard). Although I don’t appreciate a lot of conceptual art (concept>aesthetic), I have come to be able to appreciate and respect it, for the vitality of art is dependent upon its ability to thwart a stagnant nature. Queer art does not imitate models; it divorces itself from what is thought to be “the best way of doing things” or a normative idea of “beauty”. And I want to suggest only queer art can be sublime, in accordance with Immanuel Kant’s idea of the “sublime”.

The detonation of the word sublime isn’t entirely foreign to Kant’s interpretation and connotation; sublime according to the Webster dictionary is “tending to inspire awe usually because of elevated quality (as of beauty, nobility, or grandeur) or transcendent excellence. A work of art is subjective; some works of art may inspire awe (or sublimity) in only a select few. But personally I do not think a literary work of art is of “transcendent excellence” if it stays within an archetypal story model or doesn’t suggest anything unfamiliar.

Parroting Lyotard, I want to be shocked and surprised; I want to feel my idea(s) of what and what doesn’t constitutes art, not belittled but disputed and altered.

Kant’s interpretation of the sublime is as follows: (when)… the mind feels agitated, while in an aesthetic judgment about the beautiful in nature it is in restful contemplation. This agitation (above all at its inception) can be compared with a vibration, i.e. with a rapid alternation of repulsion from, and attraction to, one and the same object. If a thing is excessive for the imagination (and the imagination is driven to such excess as it apprehends the thing in intuition), then the thing is, as it were, an abyss in which the imagination is afraid to lose itself,” (Critique of Judgment).

Why do I think (in accordance with Kant) only queer literature can be sublime? For me to feel inspired, be in awe of, or describe something with a quality of transcendent excellence I cannot simply be appreciative of a common aesthetic. It is only through a relationship between attraction and initial repulsion this can occur. If I am confronted with something beautiful (Kant’s definition) it does not press against my imagination.

For his audience, Kant writes a formula able to define the sublime, “The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense” and when one experiences the sublime, “ a feeling comes home to him of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the idea of a whole within which that imagination attains its maximum, and, in its fruitless efforts to extend this limit, recoils upon itself, but in so doing succumbs to an emotional delight”. Sublimity is relative and ephemeral but differs from the beautiful in that our imagination cannot fully comprehend the extent of its nature; the feelings produced from this experience are sublime.

I’ll leave this idea with a quote, “A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader” (Nabokov).

I particularly enjoyed some of the short stories and Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. And although I initially disliked Shiga’s Meanwhile I came to be able to appreciate it; perhaps I should read it again as it certainly provoked my imagination and ability to imagine. I enjoyed the blogs because in writing I can express with more lucidity what I intend to convey than I can in informal discourse. I am able to develop ideas more thoroughly than while talking, because I can see my thoughts recorded on paper and continue to build upon them while increasing the quality of them through editing. And thirdly I can better draw upon ideas from people across the world and across time; people who were and are more diverse and intelligent than I: people who have experienced things I have not yet experienced and am incapable of experiencing. I also enjoy reading the blogs from everyone on the same text I read, as not every idea a person has or wants to develop is shared within the time confines of class. Some of the most brilliant things I have heard, often come from people who do not usually speak, “A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something” (Plato perhaps).

I know there was some opposition expressed towards Valente’s In the Night Garden but rather than solely criticizing it, I would like to suggest, for those were not fond of the text, to recommend different texts they think manifest better a “queer text”.

I would personally like to recommend Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin; it delves into controversial issues with brutal honesty and outstanding insight while remaining queer as an epistolary novel (contained in or carried on by letters). And while some may have read epistolary books prior to the class, the book remains queer in plot as the writer of the letters is the mother of Kevin, a boy who commits massacre in a shooting at his high school. The very thought of being a mother to such a person, I think constitutes with the idea of Kant’s sublime; it is alluring, repulsive and incomprehensible. Here is but a small taste of Shriver: ““It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness” (We Need to Talk about Kevin).

What does it mean to tell a story queer? Simply stated, I think telling a story queer is telling a story well.