The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies

Author(s): VALERIE TRAUB

Source: PMLA , January 2013, Vol. 128, No. 1 (January 2013), pp. 21-39
Published by: Modern Language Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23489260

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 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies

VALERIE TRAUB

For David Halperin

s
INCE AROUND 2005 A SPECTER HAS HAUNTED THE FIELD IN WHICH

I work: the specter of teleology. In attempting to promote a

queerer historiography, some queer studies scholars of French
and English early modern literature have charged other queer studies
scholars with promoting a normalizing view of sexuality, history, and
time. This normalization allegedly is caused by unwitting imprison
ment within a framework of teleology. A teleological perspective views
the present as a necessary outcome of the past—the point toward which
all prior events were trending. The antiteleologists challenge any such
proleptic sequence as a straitjacketing of sex, time, and history, and
they announce their critique as a decisive break from previous theories
and methods of queer history (especially Foucault-inspired genealogy).
Given the high profile of the scholars involved, as well as the high oc
tane of their polemics, it is not surprising that their assessment has
been embraced enthusiastically by many other scholars, inside and out
side early modern literary studies, who aim "to free queer scholarship
from the tyranny of historicism."1 Whereas there are other hot topics
Valerie traub, the Frederick g. L. Huet- in queer studies right now—including the question of whether queer
well Professor of English and Women's theory should "take a break" from feminism, whether it should "just
Studies at the University of Michigan, say no" to futurity, whether it is impervious to racial and class diversity,
Ann Arbor, is the author of The Renais- and whether the moment of queer theory is over—these are all subject
sanee of Lesbianism in Early Modern to ¿g^g ¡n various forums, from conferences and blogs to books and
England (Cambridge UP, 2002), Desire journals. What is curious about this queer teleoskepticism is that no
and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in . , , , , , , . . . . .,
Shakespearean Drama (Routledge, 1992), one has ^ponded to the
and the forthcoming Making Sexual teleological-and thus th
Knowledge: Thinking Sex with the Early It thus seems impo
Moderns (u of Pennsylvania p). of teleology consist? How

> 2013 VALERIE TRAUB

PMLA 128.1 (2013), published by the Modern Language Association ot America

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 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies | PMLA

are being proposed, and what is their analytic disturbing developmental and pro
and political purchase on the relations among schémas whether such schémas are c
sex, time, and history? Using the accusation in psychological, narratological,
of teleology as an analytic fulcrum, I parse in historical terms. Nonetheless, the th
what follows some of the assumptions regard- rationales, specific methodologies, a
ing temporality, representation, periodization, cal payoff of this bending of time are fa
empiricism, and historical change implicit in clear. Indeed, even to speak of a turn
the alleged relation of teleological thinking to duly homogenize scholarly projects
what has been called "straight temporality." keyed to different disciplinary regi
Ascertaining the conceptual work that the that display varying investments in t
allegation of teleology performs, I reconsider tory of sexuality, in literary criticis
the meanings and uses of the concept queer, cultural studies. Some scholars work
as well as homo and hetero, in the context of queer temporality seem motivated
historical inquiry. I also assess some of the tance to narratives of the history of se
unique affordances of psychoanalysis and de- while others seem interested in time
construction for the history of sexuality. At history. Some are speaking to deba
stake, I hope to show, are not only our emerg- historical method in their historica
ing understandings of the relations between while others are speaking primarily
chronology and teleology, sequence and con- queer studies scholars. The relation b
sequence, but also some of the fundamental studies of queer temporality and "th
purposes and destinations of queering. ary"—as a source for accessing histo
The scholarship I review here is part of temporality—varies as well. Despite it
a broader trend in queer studies. Variously erogeneity, teleoskepticism is pro
called the turn toward temporality or the much of this work as a potent cha
elucidation of queer time, a range of work heteronormativity and "straight time
across disciplines and periods has focused on To my mind, the broad claims of
time's sexual politics. Shifting away from the however intrinsically interesting or
spatial modes underwriting much previous are best assessed in their applicability
scholarship (e.g., theories of intersectionality cific historical contexts and fields of
and social geography), important books have For this reason, I scrutinize the argu
explored backward emotional affects, lateral of three early modernists who main
queer childhoods, and reproductive futurism teleological thinking present in quee
(Love; K. Stockton; Edelman, No Future).3 cism undergirds a stable edifice of
Although diverse in topic and method, this normativity. The intense critique
scholarship argues that temporal and sexual ogy that has arisen in early modern
normativities, as well as temporal and sexual is partly due to scholars' efforts to
dissonance, are constitutively intertwined. with the force of historicism, which
Queer temporality, in the words of Anna- the field's dominant (but by no means
marie Jagose, is "a mode of inhabiting time sive) method since the 1980s. Further
that is attentive to the recursive eddies and pre- and early modern studies have b
back-to-the-future loops that often pass un- site of vigorous debate about histori
detected or uncherished beneath the official method since volume 1 of Michel Fo
narrations of the linear sequence that is taken The History of Sexuality upped th
to structure normative life" (158). This cur- ante on understandings of sexual mo
vature of time has fueled epistemological and The arguments described in these pag
methodological innovations, productively emerge from a distinct temporal an

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 Valerie Traub 23

sional frame, and I leave to others the task of ously with their polemics and acknow
assessing whether my perspective generates the value of certain hermeneutic strateg
questions pertinent to the explanatory poten- which they are eloquent advocates,
tial of queer temporality more generally.
Many of the recent writings of Carla In many respects, the projects of t
Freccero (who works mainly in French litera- early modernists reiterate familiar que
ture and culture) and Jonathan Goldberg and retical investments. They share with c
Madhavi Menon (whose expertise is in En- others a desire to promote the analytic c
glish literature and culture), including some ity of queer to deconstruct sexual ident
of their assertions regarding temporality, are illuminate the lack of coherence or fi
trenchant and thought-provoking. The quick erotic relations, and to highlight the
uptake of their interventions bespeaks enor- indeterminacy and transitivity of both
mous enthusiasm among a diverse range of desire and gender. Like many other
scholars. What follows unavoidably involves find their warrant in Eve Kosofsky Sedg
some generalization that elides differences assertion that "one of the things that '
among them (especially on the role of gen- can refer to" is "the open mesh of poss
der and psychoanalysis) and fails to convey ties, gaps, overlaps, dissonances an
the insight and verve with which they read nances, lapses and excesses of meaning
particular texts and cultural phenomena. the constituent elements of anyone's
My impetus for treating them as a collec- of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can
tive stems from the fact that they have vig- made) to signify monolithically" (Tend
orously published on this theme and, despite 8). Drawing on Sedgwick as well to pr
their differences, share a common line of ar- the universalizing over the minoriti
gumentation regarding teleology, a subject pect of sexualities,5 these critics maintai
about which they regularly and approvingly we should not "take the object of queer
cite one another's views. Furthermore, they granted" (Goldberg and Menon 1616). I
are treated by other scholars as providing a cero's words, her own "work has been
unified perspective on this subject. The point about advocating for queer's verbally
is not to attack individual scholars, delin- jectivally unsettling force against claims f
eate strict methodological camps, or propose definitional stability, so theoretically an
a single way of doing the history of sexual- can queer something, and anything, g
ity. Indeed, some recent pronouncements certain odd twist, can become queer"
by Freccero, Goldberg, and Madhavi run Times" 485). In historiographie terms
against the grain of their previous work and critics refuse to countenance the emp
thus might be best approached as knowledge on historical difference often attribu
in the process of formation.4 My aim, then, is historicists. In their PMLA article "Q
to advance a more precise collective dialogue History" (2005), for instance, Goldber
on the unique affordances of different meth- Menon call for "acts of queering that
ods for negotiating the complex links among suspend the assurance that the only
sexuality, temporality, and history making. of knowing the past are either those
If I answer critique with critique and, in the gard the past as wholly other or those t
end, defend genealogical approaches to the assimilate it to a present assumed ident
history of sexuality—arguing that we can itself." They also share a resistance to th
read chronologically without straitjacketing ventional historical periodizations that
ourselves or the past—I hope to do justice to cally organize the disciplines of histo
these scholars' innovations by engaging seri- literature: "We urge," Goldberg and M

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24 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies | PMLA

say, "a reconsideration of relations between Menon give to their count

past and present that would trace differential mohistory," defined as a
boundaries instead of being bound by and to be invested in suspending
any one age" (1616). and chronological differences while expand
Although similar statements appear in ing the possibilities of the nonhetero, with all
the historical work of other scholars, includ- its connotations of sameness, similarity, prox
ing some they critique, Freccero, Goldberg, imity, and anachronism" (1609). In sum, they
and Menon charge these scholars with a fail- call for a queering of history that would be an
ure to deliver. According to Menon, "the ideal "unhistoricism"—or, to use Freccero's term,
of telos continues to shape even the least ho- an "undoing" of the history of homosexuality
monormative studies of Renaissance sexual- (in ironic homage to David Halperin's How to
ity" ("Spurning" 496). According to Freccero, Do the History of Homosexuality, a main tar
"what most resistfs] queering in my field ... get of her critique [Queer 31-50]).
[is] a version of historicism and one of its
corollaries, periodization" ("Queer Times" This critique of queer historicism has a
485). And, according to Goldberg, other history of its own. Although the question of
queer-historicist scholars "remain devoted teleology in organizing historical understand
to a historical positivity that seems anything ing has long vexed historians,6 this question
but the model offered by queer theory" ("Af- gained momentum in queer studies by means
ter Thoughts" 502). In the view of Freccero, of Sedgwick, who, in Epistemology of the
Goldberg, and Menon, the alleged "ideal of Closet, proposed as her axiom 5 that "[t]he
telos"—and its reputed corollaries, periodiza- historical search for a Great Paradigm Shift
tion and positivism—underwrites work gov- may obscure the present conditions of sexual
erned by a genealogical intent that treats any identity" (44). Directed at the work of several
earlier figures (e.g., the sodomite, the tribade, gay male historians, Sedgwick's critique fo
the sapphist) as precursors of, in Freccero's cused not only on the work of Foucault but
words, a "preemptively defined category of also on Halperin's One Hundred Years ofHo
the present ('modern homosexuality')" (Queer mosexuality, with its social-constructionist
31). Stating that they find a lingering attach- effort to differentiate premodern forms of
ment to identity that unduly stabilizes sexual- sexual desire and behavior from a distinc
ity and recruits earlier sexual regimes into a tively modern homosexual identity. Compar
lockstep march toward the present, they ad- ing Halperin's work to Foucault's, Sedgwick
duce in others' work a homogeneous fiction of observed that "[i]n each history one model of
"modern homosexuality" that inadvertently, same-sex relations is superseded by another,
and through a kind of reverse contamina- which may again be superseded by another,
tion, conscripts past sexual arrangements to In each case the superseded model then drops
modern categories. And although certain de- out of the frame of analysis." Sedgwick's cri
constructive tendencies motivate much queer tique of the "birth of the homosexual" and the
historical scholarship, these critics are further model of supersession to which it was joined
distinguished by the manner in which they had as its ultimate goal the recognition of the
champion the capacities of formal textual "unrationalized coexistence" of incommensu
interpretation—especially the techniques of rate models of sexuality: "the most potent ef
deconstruction and psychoanalysis—to pro- fects of modern homo/heterosexual definition
vide a less teleological, less identitarian, and, tend to spring precisely from the inexplicit
in their view, less normalizing historiographie ness or denial of the gaps between long
practice. The alluring name that Goldberg and coexisting minoritizing and universalizing,

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 Valerie Traub 25

or gender-transitive and gender-intransitive, ing Sedgwick's objection regarding su

understandings of same-sex relations" (47). session, while also integrating her p
Concerned with what she termed the "un- insight about synchronic incoheren
fortunate side effect" created by historical perin writes:
studies (despite their "immense care, value,
and potential"), she noted that whereas "'ho- A genealogical analysis of homosexuali
mosexuality as we conceive of it today..has gins wit^ our contemporary notion of h
provided a rhetorically necessary fulcrum sexuality, incoherent though it may be,
point for the denaturalizing work on the past onl>'because such a notion inevitably f
done by many historians," such formulations a11 inquir>r int0 same sex sexual exPres
. 1 j « • c ■ j f the past but also because its very incoherence
risked reinforcing a dangerous consensus of , '
, . . , . , , », registers the genetic traces of its own historical
knowingness about the genuinely unknown , . T ° . ... .
f ' evolution. In fact, it is this incoherence at the
in modern discourses of sexuality (45). ril_ , ri_
' v ' core of the modern notion of homosexuality
Sedgwick's critique had two conceptual that furnishes the most doquent indication of
targets: narratives of supersession, in which the historical accumulation of discontinuous
each prior term drops out, and the conceptual notions that shelter within its specious unity,
consolidation of the present (or the modern). The genealogist attempts to disaggregate those
A third target—the perceived emergence of notions by tracing their separate histories as
the homosexual locatable in a specific histori- well as the process of their interrelations, their
cal moment—can be inferred from the irony crossings, and, eventually, their unstable con
that limns her use of the descriptive terms vergence in the present day. (107)
birth and Great Paradigm Shift. Compelling
as her critique was, however, Sedgwick did °ther words, Halperin s genealogy is com
not endorse a particular form of historiog- mitted t0 the view that modern sexual catego
raphy. She did not assert the likelihood of ries provide not just an obstacle to the past
transhistorical meanings, make arguments but a^so a window onto it. In positioning the
about historical continuity and change, or present in relation to the past, a queer geneal
advocate synchronic over diachronic meth- ogist might adduce similarities or differences,
ods. Despite other scholars' characterization continuities or discontinuities, all in pursuit
of her critique as a "refusal of the model of of the contingency of history,
linearity and supersession" (Goldberg, "After In the decade between Sedgwick's critique
Thoughts" 503), she did not address temporal and Halperin's response, skepticism about the
linearity or chronology per se, much less ad- functions of historical alterity and periodiza
vance a standard of total chronological sus- tion grew among pre- and early modernists,
pension. By attending to the "performative In 1996 Freccero and Louise Fradenburg
space of contradiction," Sedgwick deployed challenged queer historicists to "confront the
deconstructive strategies in her encounter pleasure we take in renouncing pleasure for
with the past not as a way of doing history the stern alterities of history." Rejecting as es
but rather "to denaturalize the present" (48). sentialist the insistence on the radical incom
In How to Do the History of Homosexual- mensurability of past and present sexualities,
ity, Halperin responded to Sedgwick's discus- they proposed a historiographie practice
sion of the "Great Paradigm Shift," offering a conscious of the role of desires and identifica
pluralist model of four distinct paradigms of tions across time. Echoing Sedgwick in ask
male gender and eroticism, all of which, he ing, "Is it not indeed possible that alteritism
argues, are subsumed by or conflated with the at times functions precisely to stabilize the
modern category of homosexuality. Answer- identity of 'the modern'?," they argued that

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26 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies [ PMLA
"it might, precisely, be more pleasurable and the desire to defamiliarize modern identity
ethically resonant with our experience of the categories while finding new affiliations be
instabilities of identity-formation to figure a tween the past and the present, the emerging
particular historical 'moment' as itself frac- field of queer historiography did not, at this
tured, layered, indeed, historical" (xix). Re- point, directly engage with, but rather side
lated motives animated the work of Carolyn stepped, this central issue.
Dinshaw, who sought to "show that queers Only after queer historiography adopted
can make new relations, new identifications, the postcolonial critique of an imperialist
new communities with past figures who elude Western history did teleology per se gravi
resemblance to us but with whom we can be tate to the center of discussion. In addition
connected partially by virtue of shared mar- to confronting Eurocentrism and its geo
ginality, queer positionality" (39). Dinshaw's political exclusions, postcolonial histori
"sensible" historiography, which depended on ans and historians of non-Western cultures
a "process of touching, of making partial con- followed Johannes Fabian in querying the
nections between incommensurate entities" ideological fit between spatial and temporal
such as the medieval and postmodern, also alterity, whereby spatially othered cultures
privileged a view of sexuality as indetermi- are judged as inhabiting a time before West
nate, constituted as much by disidentification ern modernity. Metanarratives emanating
and misrecognition as by identification and from the métropole have, indeed, inscribed
mimesis (54). a version of history as developmental telos,
Work by scholars like Freccero, Fraden- whereby a tight conceptual link e
burg, and Dinshaw forged an implicit alliance modernity, progress, and enlight
between two forms of queerness: one directed inversely, between premoderni
at subjectivity—affirmatively courting the Anjali Arondekar terms "the time
contingency of desire and rejecting identity's primitive in a postcolonial worl
stabilizations—and one directed at historiog- Among those working on sexuali
raphy, aiming to resist alterity and periodiza- tique of Western time lines focu
tion in favor of similitude, resemblance, and on debating the applicability
identification. Yet none of these scholars set models of sexual identity to non
themselves the task of writing a historical ac- contexts. Troubling the Foucauld
count that traversed large expanses of time. between a supposedly Eastern ars
Even as they challenged periodization, their a Western, Christian scientia sexu
own analyses remained bounded in one or, ans of India, China, and the Middle
in Dinshaw's case, two time frames. By of- refuted the discursive constru
fering either a synchronic analysis or one Western sexualities as anterior,
that paratactically juxtaposed and connected primitive, and inevitably develop
modernity with premodernity, they could Western models (Babayan and
bracket the question of any intervening time Sang; Cuncun). Resisting the "se
span—indeed, the point was to bracket it. politics of time" that "often rep
This move enabled affective relations with the jects, critical genealogies, and m
past to come powerfully to the fore. But this habits that duplicate the very hist
innovation also allowed these and subsequent we seek to exceed" (124), these sc
scholars to avoid all matters associated with striving toward a decolonization t
chronology, including how to explain the val, methodological, and tempor
endurance or recurrence of some of the very In part because the Middl
similarities that interested them. Propelled by been treated as the abject other o

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 12 8.1 J Valerie Traub 27

medievalists were quick to adopt the postc

nial critique of historical time lines for
qu
studies. In 2001 Glenn Burger and Steven
Kruger emphasized the politically fraug
relations among the premodern, primitivit
and sexual positioning, calling into ques
tion "straight (teleological) narration, cau
explanations, and schemes of periodization
(xii). Since then, more scholars working o
Western cultures have begun to look beyo
sexual identity to ask questions about con
cepts in the history of sexuality that d
do not cross cultural and historical bor
Querying what such differential presence
and absences tell us about culturally distin
modes of comprehending and organizing se
uality, they are exploring how our recognitio
of them might promote alternative genea
gies of sexual modernity. By the middle of
last decade, then, the various strands eme
ing out of queer theory, pre- and early m
ern literary studies, and postcolonial histo
had converged in a critically conscious que
historicism that not only brought the pas
into provocative relation to the present bu
also provided powerful incentive for schol
recognition of the role of similarity and
tification in the act of historicizing.7 t
plinarization in the West—
- , .11 in their time- and context-bound specificity.
So why do I part company with the new — . . . u. . . . T i r *
1 r r / This is the historicism I speak or, the one that,
unhistoricism? The unhistoricists implicit in the nam£ of difference; smuggles
query of genealogy what might be occluded caj periodization in the spirit of m
by it?—is vital and no doubt speaks to a more pirical" claims about gender and s
general fatigue regarding the injunction "al- the European past. ("Queer T
ways historicize!" Furthermore, I appreciate
the critical methods, psychoanalysis and de- Freccero correlates a prior, appar
construction, that the unhistoricists employ cipled, commitment to alterity (
to oppose the hegemony of historicism.8 I cism") with periods (time- and cont
agree that "[psychoanalysis, as an analytic, is Western confections), while also
also a historical method" (Freccero, Queer 4), that periodicity becomes the vehic
and I would point to increased appreciation scholars make "empirical" claims. F
for its utility as one of the more appealing formulation "in the spirit of
trends in early modern queer criticism (Ham- biguous whether periodization n
mill; Gil; Sanchez; W. Stockton, "How to Do," empiricism or empiricism necess
Playing, and "Shakespeare"; Traub, "Joys," odization, but her point seems t
"Making," and "Present Future"). I share, as tericists pass off periodization as

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28 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies | PMLA

empirical, whereas it actually is something Less devoted to a psych

conceptual and metaphysical. Whichever way of fantasy but equally in
it works, empiricism and periodization are tarian modes of thought, G
judged to be inimical to queer. I will return to cero, construes temporal
the status of periods and empiricism later, but noncontinuous, and no
for now I simply offer Freccero's own descrip- since his 1995 essay "Th
tion of her project Queer/Early/Modern, which Be," he has attempted t
"set itself the task of critiquing historicisms odization, arguing that "
and troubling periodization by rejecting a no- must depend upon mobi
tion of empirical history and allowing fantasy be unthinkable if histo
and ideology an acknowledged place in the across uncrossable divide
production of 'fantasmatic' historiography" Striving to keep "temp
("Queer Times" 488). Approaching histori- play>" he objects that rec
cal affects as persistence and repetition and history of sexuality may "h
situating subjects in a synchronic and more present draws upon variou
"promiscuous" relation to temporality, she strands, [but they] have te
fashions a historiographie method she calls divide these strands among
"[qjueer spectrality—ghostly returns suffused moments and to draw the
with affective materiality that work through a consolidated present" ("A
the ways trauma, mourning, and event are 502). "Discrete moments"—
registered on the level of subjectivity and are defined by Goldberg
history" (489). As a historiographie method, boundedness but also by t
queer spectrality is a flexible, alluring, and of- "consolidated present." P
ten moving hermeneutic. For instance, Free- is identified with "ideolo
cero's recent application of spectral (or, as she which "can imagine the p
also calls it, figurai) historiography charts the of difference, but not the
"transspecies habitus" of dogs and humans "Sedgwick's insistence that
through their manifestations of violence in characterized by the 'u
colonialism and the contemporary prison- tence of different models'"
industrial complex; this reading implicates ized coexistence of "differe
racism, transnational capital, virile masculin- he maintains that "the r
ity, queer heterosexuality, and lesbian domes- queer theory and the histo
tic relations in a complex affective network remains an unresolved terr
that is "comparatively queer relative to any resolutions, fastening eith
progressive, ameliorative rational accounts absolute alterity or on the
of historical process" ("Figurai Historiogra- identity, have yet to imagin
phy" 48, 61). Rejecting progressive narratives writing a history that atte
as well as remedy and rationality, Freccero of the non-self-identity of
maintains that she is motivated by an ethical ment" ("After Thoughts"
impulse to produce queer time by means of a spectral haunting that se
"a suspension, a waiting, an attending to the lation with the past, Gold
world's arrivals (through, in part, its returns), multitemporality, nonid
not as a guarantee or security for action in the respondence of the early
present, but as the very force from the past nition of which can expo
that moves us, perhaps not into the future, but of alternative possibiliti
somewhere else" ("Queer Spectrality" 207). sexualities" ("Margaret" 4

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12 8.1 J Valerie Traub 29

Things, Goldberg seeks the queer with

hetero by exploring, as he puts it in a r
essay, the "multiple materialisms to be
in early modernity," extending the m
of queer to a consideration of physics b
"queer theory is not and never was just
sex in itself" ("After Thoughts" 504
Menon makes many of the same theo
retical and rhetorical moves as Frecc
Goldberg, but her special interest is in
ing against all forms of desire's confin
whether that termin of sexual identity,
literary form, chronological boundarie
historical method. Because desire, in h
always exceeds identity and is "synonym
. . . with queerness," she "insists that w
frain from identifying sexuality, and r
in pursuing the coils of a desire that c
not be contained in a binary tempo
(Unhistorical Shakespeare 22, 25). In
torical Shakespeare: Queer Theory in S
spearean Literature and Film, Menon b
by arguing that "our embrace of differ
as the template for relating past and p
produces a compulsory heterotemporali
which chronology determines identity
In other words, scholarly attention to
torical difference produces a relation t
in which sexual identity is causally
to chronological explanations; correlati
queer studies scholars who do not susp
all chronology are not only normativiz
but also, in her words, "governed by d
("Period Cramps" 233). Subjection to th
lines of chronological time is then tran
into teleology: "Defined as the doctri
ends or final causes, teleology depend
sequence leading to an end that can
spectively be seen as having had a begi
(Unhistorical Shakespeare 28). Disru
this purported causal chain through "h
history, in which desires always excee
titarian categories and resist being cor
into hetero-temporal camps," Menon e
what she sees as the tight congruence
ary form with historical and political

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30 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies ^ PMLA

demonstrate the stresses and fractures in the and proximity, multiplicity

normative, as well as the distinctive ability of change and stasis, disiden
literary texts to solicit our awareness of such mesis. These close cognate
productive contradictions and indeterminacy. abstract theoretical princi
Readings, however, are not the same thing material realities. Yet drawn
as history; and deconstructive and psychoan- different epistemological r
alytic interpretations of literary texts, while social, temporal, formal, h
they contribute importantly to historical un- and abstracted from context
derstanding, do not necessarily conduce to a they are rhetorically deploy
historical explanation. For all the utility of de- lessly from one conceptual
construction, in particular, as an interpretative In this unmarked analog
protocol, these critics overestimate its analytic on one link of the métony
capacity and explanatory power. Although movement in another. Howev
deconstruction exposes the contingency of— analogies are forged presum
and thus implicitly historicizes—truth claims, than argued and are sustain
the extent to which its largely synchronic her- metaphors rather than by
meneutic can succeed as a full-scale historio- rial connections, when the
graphic method remains unresolved. Whereas or difference between these
deconstruction may be an extraordinary tech- inconvenient, they are sile
nique for elucidating queerness in time, it has lowing great latitude for eq
not, at least not yet, demonstrated a satisfy- It remains unclear wh
ing facility for analyzing temporality in all its mentation—familiar to re
dimensions, including elucidating queerness and Renaissance texts as
across time. of reasoning (Foucault, Order)—might be
So how do these scholars make their ar- especially suited to queer anal
gument with such persuasive force? To under- clear why the mode of an
stand this, we need to attend to the rhetorical signified by the rhetorical fi
maneuvers and conceptual conflations that heralded by Freccero and Men
underlie their indictments of difference, chro- plary queer analytic tool. M
nology, periodization, and empiricism. First, when a present effect is attrib
an associational logic pervades their work, cause; it links A to D but o
wherein historical difference, chronology, and C. Since several steps inte
periodization, and empirical facts are posi- the cause and effect, metaleps
tioned in an endlessly self-incriminating and "compressed chain of metap
disqualifying feedback loop. These maneuvers ing" (Lanham 99). Metalepsi
and conflations reflect a general tendency to- cally powerful, but it is vuln
ward analogical argumentation. As should be as fuzzy logic. Freccero sugg
clear from their own words, Goldberg, Menon, sis is particularly queer and
and Freccero's rejection of "straight temporal- reversal signified by the rhe
ity" forges a tight métonymie chain among the lepsis could be seen to emb
alleged operations of sex, time, and history. queer analysis in its willful p
They link these operations through rhetorical tions of temporal propriety
maneuvers whereby difference and sameness tive order of things. To rea
are constellated with concepts that stand in then, would be to engage
as near cognates: not only hetero and homo ing" (Queer 2). More intereste
but also difference and similitude, distance of metalepsis as a repressed o

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12 8.1 j Valerie Traub 31

cal device, Menon uses it to read ab

scenes in Shakespearean drama, s
implied consummation that, despit
failure to be staged, nonetheless li
cause to tragic effect (Wanton Wor
there is much to admire in the way
icsdemonstrate that "the 'far-fetc
of metalepsis telescopes time so th
appears near, and vice versa" (Wan
85),their willingness to "embrace
tion of metalepsis" (Freccero, Queer
translate into a cogent defense of m
as a mode of queer argument
On the contrary, a metaleptic slei
hand enables the ground of criti
shifting. At times it seems that th
of teleology is directed against scho
invoke any form of sexual identit
located in the present or construed
terminate and internally riven. At
the accusation appears aimed at sch
tempts to track terms, concepts,
of intelligibility by means of the
frame of chronology or diach
times the complaint is that scholar
treat sex solely as representation,
pretative choice that renders them
to charges of empiricism and posit
indictment sometimes widens to e
the entire discipline of history and
cerns and methods of historians. T
on-again-off-again associational r
dedicated to the wholesale rejection
ity cum heterotemporality, these in
mingle, merge, and sometimes f
Recognizing that such rhetorica
neuvers underpin the charge of
we might be justified in asking wh
of similarity are being celebrated,
kinds of difference are discarded.
point is the talismanic invocation
homo." Despite the catchy term ho
it is unclear how expanding the po
the homo, "with all its connotation
ness,similarity, proximity, and ana
automatically enacts resistance to

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32 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies | PMLA

complacency and complicity in its arbitrary We thus need to ask whic

application. Indeed, it has become com- rial processes make histor
mon to refer to the act of periodization as phy teleological, heterotem
"not simply the drawing of an arbitrary line History is heterotem
through time, but a complex practice of con- cause each synchronic m
ceptualizing categories, which are posited as with multiple, and someti
homogenous and retroactively validated by asynchronicities but als
the designation of a period divide" (Davis language, operates simu
3). Periodization produces some unfortunate chronic and diachronic axe
effects, including tendentious misrecogni- true, as Menon argues, that
tions of the exemplarity or novelty of one's necessarily move from pa
chosen purview and falsely universalizing ward to forward" ("Perio
claims that ignore what scholars who study also is true that time moves
other periods do. But conventional periods might wish to derive from
are only one means of slicing and dicing the temporality must conten
past; time can be segmented in multiple ways, ible force of time's move
the concept of the period changing according our species, and the plan
to the question and time frame considered not, we remain in many re
(Blackbourn). To periodize is not to advocate alytics dedicated to charti
a particular method, and the identity that logics can be organized thro
periodicity imposes need not be inevitably mash-ups, and juxtaposi
problematic—as long as it is understood to be writing the history of s
contingent, manufactured, invested, and not of asynchronicities locate
produced by othering what came before. The frame or by vaulting ove
wholesale characterization of periodization time may enable one to
as a straightening of the past races over such but it generally fails to bre
issues while making light of historical contin- of "then" and "now" that
gency—that is, the ways in which practices, tuted queer studies' engagem
representations, and discourses happen to The sequential process
gather in specific places and times. organizes diachrony is, I w
Although certain problematic allegiances cial and often tendentious
among sexuality, temporality, and histori- texts, and history. Sequenc
ography exist—as when invocations of the ration, made possible by a s
future are enrolled in the service of reproduc- ment, used to imply conn
tive generation (Edelman, No Future)—these manage disconnections, an
links, far from being immanent in either sex movement along. But sequ
or time, are historically and discursively pro- sive domain—like narrativ
duced. If temporality has been harnessed to may not equate to, or even
reproductive futurity, this link is di e to an another domain, such as t
operation of ideology, not to the formal pro- of foreplay or consumm
cedures of diachronic method (which, while relation between unconven
not exempt from ideology, is not the same as cinematic form and quee
ideology). However coimplicated, mutually and why might the oper
reinforcing, and potentially recursive, the re- and form be coincident,
lations of sex to time are the effects of a histor- in apprehending them
ical process, not the preconditions to history. mechanism or process—a

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 Valerie Traub 33

litical, historical—enables their equation? Are to contemporary queer life. Opines M

all "points," consummations, and closures "[A] homosexuality that is posited as
(textual, erotic, political, historical) coimpli- logically and sexually identifiable
cated, and do their relations all possess the to the strictures of heterohistoricism a
same degree of necessity? therefore not, according to the logic of
Absent investigation of these questions, argument, queer at all" (Unhistorical Sh
the presumptive metonymies of sexuality, speare 25). Although Goldberg and Frec
temporality, and historiography confuse have no doubt that sexual identities
chronology and consequence with teleologi- ate real effects, they tend to interpret
cal progress. In binding such disparate phe- as exclusively pernicious. If, as Lee Ede
nomena into a single unitary ontology, the maintains, "queerness can never de
advocates of homohistory assert, ironically, identity; it can only ever disturb one"
a new essentialism. To invoke Sedgwick once ture 17), queerness today nonetheless ov
more, "What if the richest junctures weren't with and is tethered to a range of iden
the ones where everything means the same in complex relations of support, tensio
thing?" (Tendencies 6). That these conflations contest. However problematic, regula
occur under the banner of queer should not and incoherent modern identity categ
go unnoticed. Queer's free-floating, endlessly may be, they are palpable and power
mobile, and infinitely subversive capacities cursively, socially, personally, and poli
may be strengths—allowing queer to ac- That we remain under modernity's s
complish strategic maneuvers that no other clear from contemporary debates abou
concept does—but its principled imprecision globalization of gay identity,12 as well
imposes analytic limitations. At the level of the pervasive institutionalization of se
politics, for instance, queer's congeniality identities in laws, social policies, and clin
with neoliberalism has been well documented therapies. For this reason, a queer histo
(Alderson). However mutable as a horizon of that refuses, on principle, to countenan
possibility, queer is a position taken up in re- existence of the category of "moder
sistance to specific configurations of gender sexuality" invests too much descriptiv
and sexuality. If queer is intelligible only in racy in the truth value of queer theory
relation to social norms, and if the concept of Rather than devolve into a zer
normality itself is of relatively recent vintage game of identity versus nonidentity,
(Lochrie), then the relations between queer studies could gain some analytic pu
and these changing configurations of gender by recognizing that the material, soc
and sexuality need to be defined and rede- psychic conditions of queer life may
fined. To fail to specify the terms of queer's ways be served by the presumption o
historicity is to ignore desire's emergence exclusive queerness: perhaps at leas
from distinct cultural and material arrange- of us, and the worlds in which we liv
ments of space and time, as well as from what queer and gay, queer and bi, queer and
psychoanalysis calls libidinal predicates. It is queer and lesbian, queer and hetero
to celebrate the instability of queer by means This is a matter of recognizing not on
of a false universalization of the normal. import of social emplacements and e
The analytic capacity of queer can only be ied desires—or even the contingency of
elevated to ontology if it is abstracted and de- theory itself—but also the give and t
historicized. One of the more dubious forms psychic processes. Identities may be fic
its abstraction and dehistoricization take is or, in Freccero's term, "phantasm[s
the insistence that sexual identity is irrelevant they are weighty ones and still do im

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34 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies j PMLA

work. That they also break down, become tique of the traditional h
unhinged, is understood in psychoanalysis proffered in Metahistory
as part of a lifelong process of formation and White, whose work is the
deformation, not an either-or proposition. for Freccero as well ("Q
To clarify this tension in less psychoana- Their adoption of Whi
lytic terms, let us return to the theorist who "History" writ large im
has done more than anyone to render ex- have ignored his critique, wh
plicit the stakes of a queer hermeneutic. Fol- been widely discussed and
lowing her description of the "open mesh of integrated into cultural h
possibilities" with a long list of possible self- history, gender history, t
identifications that queer might encompass, ity, and queer historiogra
Sedgwick notes that "given the historical historians. The fact that disc
and contemporary force of the prohibitions has witnessed a sustained
against every same-sex sexual expression, time and temporality in
for anyone to disavow those meanings, or to elided in their polemics,
displace them from the term's definitional The un of unhistoricis
center, would be to dematerialize any pos- these engagements in or
sibility of queerness itself" (Tendencies 8). nary for the sake of decons
Sedgwick's queer is positioned in relation to over, this project bespeaks
universalizing and minoritizing axes; its radi- empirical inquiry that, vi
cal potential is relative to the political work of tool of the historian, is
identity, which is apprised as simultaneously to acts of queering—as if q
enabling and disabling, self-empowering and live in the details of emp
disciplinary. As is usual with her caveats, less to say, plenty of scholar
something important is at stake here, politi- do practice various form
cally and ethically. Intent on promoting the quiry—not only historian
universalizing over the minoritizing aspects pologists, sociologists,
of eroticism, those who would celebrate "the theorists, critical race theo
homo in us all" seem unaware of, or perhaps erary critics—and some of
untroubled by, the asymmetrical disposition astute analyses of the rel
of privileges and rights attached to sexual- methods and those of queer
minority status. Furthermore, to argue, as delving into that bibliograp
Menon does, that sexual-identity categories ply ask, Where would quee
are themselves an effect of a misguided queer out the anthropology of E
historicism is to misrecognize the processes history of George Chaunce
by which identities are produced, as well as Steven Epstein, and the lega
the political force of their application and dis- Halley? Where would qu
semination (Unhistorical Shakespeare 3). out Gayle Rubin's "Thinki
Only by failing to attend to historicism as Rejecting out of hand th
it is actually practiced can an accusation such by most social scienti
as Menons stand. But unhistoricism seems hostility to empiricism ador
interested more in refiguring abstract tempo- resurgent prestige of "th
rality than in engaging with history or histo- poses not to "take seriousl
riography. Posing unhistoricism against what discipline that would req
they call "hegemonic history," Goldberg and even dour, marshalling of
Menon take as "axiomatic" (1615-16) the cri- (Queer 3), while Menon

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 Valerie Traub 35

grafting chronological history onto theory, Re- literary and historical studies (ther
naissance queer theorists confine themselves tributing to the mutual disciplinary est
to being historians of sexuality" ("Period ment that in the past produced some
Cramps" 234; my emphasis). Rendering ex- problems of historical practice so abhor
plicit the hierarchical division of labor inform- the unhistoricists) but also to deflect atte
ing their critique, these scholars' elevation of from the substantive methodological
(sexy) theory over (dour) history is never fully lenges still faced by those intent on craft
explained, nor are key practitioners of the his- queer historicism (Doan; Lanser, "Ma
tory of sexuality—those trained as historians, "Political Economy," and "Sexuality"; T
those who identify as historians, and those "Joys," "Making," and "Present Future
working in history departments—cited and Demeaning the disciplinary meth
directly engaged. Indeed, one might probe ployed to investigate historical continui
what history stands for in this body of work. change does not advance the cause o
For many scholars, history is on the one hand ness; nor does the charge of normaliz
an academic discipline, a knowledge commu- For those of us committed to nonnorm
nity, and a professional locus from which to modes of being and thought, the derisi
investigate the past and on the other hand the plicit in this accusation can only be co
collective, highly mediated understandings of as an attempt to foreclose any possibi
material, ideational, and discursive "events" of resistance.16 While proclaiming a un
past cultures, achieved through various meth- queer openness to experimentation a
ods.15 But for the unhistoricists, history stands determinacy, the unhistoricists dis
in for a specific, self-delimiting, and ultimately others' ways of engaging with the past, s
caricatured set of methods, becoming an ab- in the effort to account for similarit
ject emblem crowned with a capital letter—in change over time only a hegemonic,
other words, a cliché. funct, disciplinarity. Paradoxically, unhistor
It is not my purpose to mount a defense icism arrogates to itself the only appropriate
of the work of historians. Their discipline is model of queer history even as its practition
as varied and contentious as any literature ers imply that history is not something they
department's, and its internal debates regard- are interested in making. The categorical
ing the "cultural turn," "narrative," "teleol- quality of their polemic, which implicitly
ogy," "evidence," "objectivity," and "theory" installs queer as a doctrinal foundation and
are complex, nuanced, and ongoing. Others ideological litmus test, goes to the heart of
are doing a better job thinking through the historiographie and queer ethics. It goes to the
affordances of disciplinary history, including heart of academic and queer politics. It goes to
its methods and protocols, for queer endeav- the heart of interdisciplinarity and its future,
ors than I ever could (Doan; Clark). And his
torians of sexuality are more than capable of Rather than practice "queer theory as
explaining their own investments and meth- that which challenges all categorization"
ods (Puff; Flerzog). I doubt, however, that his- (Menon, "Period Cramps" 233), there remain
torians will direct their explanations to the ample reasons to practice a queer histori
unhistoricists, for the latters' lack of genuine cism dedicated to showing how categories,
interest in the discipline of history assures however mythic, phantasmic, and incoher
that most historians will feel free to ignore ent, came to be. To understand the arbitrary
them. The unhistoricists' mischaracteriza- nature of coincidence and convergence, of se
tion of the historians' enterprise threatens quence and consequence, and to follow them
not only to stall productive exchange between through to the entirely contingent outcomes

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36 The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies PMLA

to which they contributed:

we retain, whatthis
we omit, is not
and what a his
we finally
toricism that createsacknowledge
categoriesas our debts—these are no less
of identity
than history in the it
or presumes their inevitability; making.
is one that
seeks to explain such categories' constitutive,
pervasive, and persistent force. Resisting un
warranted teleologies while accounting for
resonances and change will bring us closer to
Notes
achieving the difficult and delicate balance of
I thank Ellen
apprehending historical Armour, Crystal Bartolovich,
sameness and Gina Bloom,
differ
Sean Brady, Dympna Callaghan, Peter Cryle, Laura
ence, continuism and alterity, that the past,
Doan, Ari Friedlander, Melissa Hardie, Annamarie Ja
as past, presents to us. The more we honor
gose, Kate Lilley, Karma Lochrie, Jeffrey Masten, Peggy
this balance, the more complex
McCracken, andKathryn
Helmut Puff, Mark Schoenfeldt, circum
spect will be our comprehension ofLeethe
Schwarz, Stephen Spiess, Will Stockton, Wallace, rela

tive incoherence and Amanda Winkler, and Patsy Yaeger for their thoughtful
relative power of past
engagements with this argument.
and present conceptual categories, as well as
1. Nardizzi, Guy-Bray, and Stockton, "Queer Renais
of the dynamic relations among
sance Historiography" subjectivity,
1. See also Eisner and Schachter;
sexuality, and historiography.
See; W. Stockton, "How" and Playing. For the current in
Such a queer historicism need
terest in temporality not
in early modern studies, seesegre
Harris.
Judging from publications and references at conferences,
gate itself from other methods, such as psy
endorsement of the critique has been nearly universal. One
choanalysis, with its muted
crucial recognition of
exception is Dinshaw and Lochrie, whose letter to
the role of the unconscious
the editor of PMLA in historical
in response to Goldberg and Menons life,
and its aim may wellessaybe the
"Queering further
History" accepts decon
the general critique of
teleology but resists the substitution of early modern for
struction of identity categories. But any such
Renaissance and inquires what it might mean to reconsti
rapprochement with other methods would re
tute scholarly periodization for scholars trained in periods.
quire enhanced discernment of
2. Dissenting murmurs aboutthe ways
the politics of unhistor our
bodies remain in time, as well as of the
icism have begun to be articulated in reviews (DiGangi; use
to which different theories and theorists of Radel; W. Stockton, "Shakespeare").

sex, time, and history are put. In this regard, 3. See also Freeman, "Theorizing" and Time; Halber
stam; Rohy; Muñoz. South Atlantic Quarterly and GLQ
the exchange I have attempted to advance
have dedicated special issues to queer temporality (Hal
in these pages cannot help touching on the ley and Parker; Freeman, "Theorizing"). Queer temporal
generative legacy of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. ity was the central topic at Manchester University's 2011
In its citational circulations, that legacy has Sexuality Summer School.
become ever more diffuse, and at times at 4. Goldberg's prior work, e.g., did not eschew all re
lations of early modern to modern categories: "I have
tenuated or diluted—thus raising the stakes wanted to see how relations between men (or between
on the question of how we utilize the multiple women or between men and women) in the period pro
"Sedgwicks" we have known. No less at stake vide the sites upon which later sexual orders and later
is how this debate bears on David Halperin's sexual identities could batten" (Sodometries 22).
5. In Epistemology, Sedgwick argues that homo
evolving contributions to queer theory and
hetero definition hinges on a synchronic tension between
queer history. That this is so gives sufficient
minoritizing and universalizing axes: homosexuality can
reason to pause over the prospect of yoking be viewed simultaneously as a matter of importance to
the future of queer so tightly to unhistori a small, distinct minority or to all people, regardless of
cism. What we create out of the copia be perceived sexual orientation.
6. Hunt discusses historians' problems with teleology.
queathed by Sedgwick—and by those with
7. My elucidation of "cycles of salience" enacts my ap
whom she was in dialogue—merits some preciative measure of this body of work, to which I tried
thing more precise, more scrupulous. After to add more-sustained attention to female-female desire

all, what we remember, what we forget, what ("Present Future").

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 12 8.1 Valerie Traub 37

8. The studies mainly dynamic,

ongoing, refers to literary criticism that focuses
and o
among on historically distant periods,psychoanal
historicism, while historians almost
as well as queer
never use the termtheory's indeb
(which for them refers to a "scientific"
deserve theirconception
own of history genealogy.
as an objective account of the past). It
argument to anatomize
16. these
This is not to say that we might not want to re cr
sis and deconstruction, which
think the stakes of queer theory's self-constellation di
cal source, and in synthesis
around antinormalization (Wiegman). attai
to pigeonhole them according t
These scholars do, however, con
tion and psychoanalysis and do
ceptual tensions
Works Citedbetween them. F
programmatic, announcing its
Alderson, David. "Queer Cosmopolitanism: Place, Poli
and poststructuralist dimension
tics, Citizenship and Queer as Folk." New Formations
2) and regularly citing Jacques
55 (2005): 73-88. Print.
min. Menons persistent focus o
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Medita
disrupts identity cleaves closel
tions on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the
ings, but her readings general
Sacred. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. Print.
aim. Goldberg's theoretical rep
Arondekar, Anjali. "Time's Corpus: On Sexuality, His
eclectic; his touchstones in The S
Michel toriography,
Serres, and the Indian Penal Code." Deleuze,
Gilles Hayes, Hi L
gonnet, and Spurlin 113-28.
9. This phrase appropriates B
Babayan, Kathryn, and Asfaneh Najmabadi, eds. Islami
for an "anticommunal mode of connectedness" that
cate Sexualities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008. Print.
would not assimilate queers "into already constituted
Bersani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.
communities" (10). Bersani's meaning of "homos," how
Print.
ever, is invested in social specificity.
Blackbourn, David. "'The Horologe of Time': Periodiza
10. Retheorizing anachronism is of broad interest
tion in History." PMLA 127.2 (2012): 301-07. Print.
(Harris; Rohy) and is partially fuelled in early modern
Bredbeck, Gregory. Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe
studies by the long-standing critique by new historicists
to Milton. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991. Print.
of psychoanalysis. Here I can only point out that these
Burger,
critics' treatment of anachronism is paradoxical. On the Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger. Introduction.
one hand, they resist the anachronistic impositionQueering
of the Middle Ages. Ed. Burger and Kruger.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001. xi-xxiii. Print.
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Clark, Anna. Desire: A History of European Sexuality.
remarks that the early modern period "does not operate
under the aegis of the homo/hetero divide" (Introd.New
2). York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
On the other hand, they celebrate the way in which
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China. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.
anachronism breaks with the niceties of temporal order.
Davis, Kathleen. Periodization and Sovereignty: How
11. Positing analogies between literary (or cinematic)
form and sexual (and political) positions has a long Ideas
his of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the
Politics of Time. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P,
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2008. Print.
modern-sexuality studies, this strategy informs studies
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Modern Sexualities." Rev. of Queer/Early/Modern, by
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a in Elizabeth's England, by Maureen Quilligan,
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Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and
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121.3 (2006): 837-38. Print.
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discipline), historicism (a particular method, both oldLaura. Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and
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