『欲望問題』とネオ・リベラリズム

まだ考察途中での発表だったのだけれども、一応関係する節だけ部分的にアップ。日本語バージョンをきちんと書いていないので、英語バージョンだけです。ところで、英語アップしようとすると禁則処理がうまくいかなくて、単語を平気で途中でぶちきって行が変わるのですが、これって日本のシステムだから仕方がないのでしょうか。
「承認」とネオ・リベラリズムとの関係という考察の方向性を与えてくださったＲ大のＮ氏にココロよりの感謝を。そして憧れを＜こら。

追記
これは、"Surviving the misrecognition; how to un/do identity　politics"というタイトルにて、清水晶子が行った発表の一部です。
この発表は、6/16-17日に上海大学において開催された、"2007 Shanghai Conference: Conditions of Knowledge and Cultural Productions"という学会の、"Translocality and Inter-regionalism：The Queer Praxis of Inter-Asia"というパネルにて、行われました。*1

The Issue of Desire
　　In the past few years, the backlash against feminist and other progressive politics, including the demand for recognition of non-normative genders and sexualities, has intensified in Japan. Unfortunately, mainstream feminism and other progressive political organizations in Japan have so far mostly failed to stand up point-blank against the homophobic , biphobic or transphobic sentiments mobilized by the backlash discourses, which may be part of the reason why the recent LGBTQ activisms have not seemed too keen on raising their voices against the backlash, whose most conspicuous target is feminist politics rather than a demand for LGBTQ (especially gay and GID) acceptances. A recent book by Fushimi Noriaki, titled Yokubou Mondai (The Issue of Desire), can be seen as clearly registering this reluctance on the part of gay activisms to side with both politically vulnerable and unreliable mainstream feminism. The more important characteristic of the book is, however, its distinctively neoliberal inclination.
　　The whole second chapter, out of three chapters of the book in all, deals with the political discussion surrounding the ｊenda-furii (gender-free) movement in Japan. This movement, which was at first supported and led by the government and aimed at relaxing the constraints on the existing norms of gender, has turned out to be one of the easiest targets for backlash discourses. In this book, Fushimi distances himself both from some of the moral conservatives who attack homosexuality as a threat to ‘traditional’ Japanese family values, and from what he grossly generalizes as ‘feminist claims’, which are ‘overtly irresponsible(62)’ claims that negate the entire society as less than ideal. It is a typical ‘third way’　political tactic of describing its own position as a sound and moderate political middle ground, against what is defined as the extreme political bigotry of the right and the naive and unrealistic naysaying of the left.
　　However, the neoliberal inclination of Fushimi’s argument can be seen not so much in the way he situates himself as the reliable ‘third way’ in the volatile political debate over genders and sexualities, as in the way he argues for the shift of focus in gay politics from ‘the issue of discrimination to that of desire’. Defining the issues of discrimination as inspired by the notion of justice, Fushimi argues that the notion of discrimination can only be summoned with the ‘justice’ always already given to those who are discriminated against. Nevertheless, he continues, this ‘justice’ is based and ‘justified’ merely on the grounds of the ‘pain’ of the discriminated, and therefore can only be ‘a feeling of one person, a personal justice (58)’. According to Fushimi, the ‘pain’ of a discriminated person is an issue of desire just as much as the pleasure or convenience of another person is, and therefore should be justified through a negotiation with other forms of desire. He thus redefines discrimination not as a public and social issue of injustice regarding a structural and institutional inequality, but as a matter of personal feelings. Claims against discrimination will be understood, in this context, as obtrusive demands that impose personal and private feelings of ‘justice’ and ‘pain’ that have nothing to do with those to whom the demands are made.
　　The reduction of the issue of discrimination to that of personal ‘pain’ has in itself a strong resonance with the rhetoric of U.S. neoliberal gay activists that attacks progressive politics against social and economical injustice as obsessed with victimhood (Duggan, 55). When he goes on to argue that one should better attempt to negotiate between various interests than to protest against discrimination(Fushimi, 54-6), in other words, when he calls for individual effort of negotiation without contesting the existing social, political, or economical structures and institutions that may make negotiation on an equal basis extremely difficult, or sometimes impossible, however, the argument unquestionably reveals its neoliberal ‘equality’ principles that advocate equal personal autonomy and responsibility within the uncontested existing system of inequality. It is no wonder, then, that while Fushimi claims that he would not discard the identity term Gei (gay), he proposes to use the term as a sign of desire effective in finding a sexual partner, not as a sign to mobilize gay identity politics in the conventional sense.
　　This is precisely what Duggan calls the ‘rhetorical remapping of public/private boundaries’ in the neoliberal brand of gay activisms in the United States. Taking examples from the writings of an online group, IGF (Independent Gay Forum), Duggan demonstrates how the new neoliberal form of gay politics ‘does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption (Duggan, 50)’. While the U.S. gay rights activism has had a relatively consistent political goal of simultaneously expanding the right to sexual privacy against the powers of the state and expanding ‘gay public life through institution building and publicity (Duggan, 51)’, Duggan argues, the new third-way gay activism attempts to ‘shrink gay public spheres (Duggan, 50)’, in accordance with the neoliberal principle of privatization and personal responsibility, into ‘a miniaturized state and constricted public life, confined to a very few policy decisions, coupled with a vast zone of “private” life dominated by “voluntary” economic and civic transactions (Duggan, 62)’. Both the U.S. neoliberal gay activism and Fushimi in his new book are effectively depoliticizing the politics of sexualities by shifting it from the public to the private sphere, and redefining it as an issue of free, personal endeavour rather than that of structural/institutional discrimination. [Here you can see some of the principles they advocate on their website.]
　　As can be observed in the IGF’s principles, not only do the U.S. neoliberal gay activisms advocate free market and small government, but they also uphold these values as part of ‘the American system’. In their argument, the call for political recognition does not motivate the criticism of the existing public institutions. Instead, it serves to endorse the very ‘American’ institutions as that which have the authority to secure the freedom and autonomy of the ‘private’ sphere, and, therefore, as Duggan argues, sits very comfortably with the post 9/11 rise of patriotism in the United States. Here again, a striking similarity can be detected between their politics and the argument developed in Fushimi’s new book with its fundamental affirmation of the existing public institutions, which easily connects with a fundamental affirmation of the national. Answering his own question whether ‘this society is worth maintaining’, Fushimi says he would like to think so, and continues : ‘Surely one can endlessly keep pointing out what is wrong about this country, Japan . . . but my experience and my gut reaction tell me that this society can get so close to my ideal (63)’. Following this casual rhetorical replacement of the social and the national is the affirmation of ‘Japan’ as that which should be maintained as it is: ‘Overall, not everything about this country is getting worse (64)’; ‘Enabling the desires of the others as much as possible, while trying to accommodate them so they will not contradict the formation and sustenance of this country… I would like to share this country with others as the forum for such endeavours (64, emphasis mine)’. Considering how many backlash discourses also promote ‘patriotism’, we could argue that Fushimi is trying in this book to secure gay existence by upholding the kind of gay politics that not only reformulate the sphere of the public and the political according to neoliberal principles but are also accommodated to national orders, thereby contravening the kind of gay politics that have endeavoured both to secure and expand the right to sexual privacy against the powers of the state and to open the question of sexuality to the sphere of public interference to the existing institutions.
　　In fact, already in an interview conducted in the year 2000, a leading Japanese sociologist, Miyadai Shinji, argues that attempts at social reorganisation through liberation movements could, in Japan, only serve to establish what is to be liberated as what is disturbing to, and therefore is to be excluded from, the community. Therefore, he maintains, and Fushimi argrees, it often turns out to be more effective in bringing about reorganisation of society, to gradually turn various queer existences into an accomplished fact in society by ‘making friends with your enemy’ than being confrontational and thus making enemies through, for example, having recourse to identity politics. One may consider Fushimi’s attempt in The Issue of Desire to survive under the backlash by discarding ‘un-Japanese’ identity politics and by endorsing the national as an incontestable precondition, as following this observation. The crucial difference is, however, that while in this interview Fushimi still talks of possible social reorganisation through ‘non-typical forms of activisms’, seven years later in The Issue of Desire the search for possible public forms of intervention and reorganisation has been replaced with neoliberal and nationalistic gay ‘politics’, if they can be still termed as such, that are reduced to the personal effort to ‘make friends’ without radically questioning the existing social structures.

*1:大会サイトをチェックしてもこの発表のタイトルは出てきませんが、これは大会オーガナイザーがミスを訂正しないままに大会が終わってしまったことによります。この点については伏見さんにもご説明申し上げてあります