Reheated (127)

In the nightmare, I’m held at gunpoint and for 24 hours am forced to read aloud works of “queer theory.” I begin with W. Benjamin Myers’ thoughts on “straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity” – and which allegedly reveal the “uninterrogated Whiteness” of routine dental hygiene and its role in maintaining “arrogant and ignorant straight and White identities.”

While you marvel at the naff, strained metaphor – teeth-brushing as an expression of “Whiteness,” an allegedly pathological state – and the irrelevant, space-filling anecdotal rambling, and the unearned,  predetermined conclusion, and the invocation of Judith Butler – this Judith Butler – do spare a thought for your gracious host. As I poke at the smouldering wreckage of academia. 

Because when you look at a sixteenth-century mirror salvaged from a warship belonging to Henry VIII, the first thing you want to know is how it might induce psychological crises in the sexually dysmorphic.

We’re told – indeed, assured – by Hannah McCann, of the museum’s collections and curatorial staff, “From the Tate Britain and the Wellcome Collection, to the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, museums are reinterpreting and Queering their objects.” A comfort, I know.

Exactly why such “queering” is underway – what its relevance might be – is not, however, made clear. An explanation for this bolting-on of irrelevant, flimsy tat – in the name of “queer theory” – was not, it seems, deemed necessary. Nor is it entirely obvious how such “queering” of museum contents benefits those who wish to know more about Henry VIII’s favourite warship.

Regarding the mysterious purpose of all this “queering” of sixteenth-century objects, Rafi adds, drily, “It justifies the employment of lecturers in ‘Queer Theory’…” Indeed. That does seem to be the primary objective. That, and the modish tactic of identifying a thing that people find interesting and then inserting one’s own rather narrow and tedious politics, and by extension oneself.

Looking through the catalogue notes, no other obvious benefit, for visitors, springs to mind. Unless we include the exercising of eyebrows by moving them up and down. And the effect, the incongruity – the sheer cack-handedness of it – is quite bizarre. It reminded me of the ‘adverts’ in The Truman Show, in which Truman’s wife and neighbours suddenly, rather desperately, and often mid-sentence, draw attention to some cleaning product or chicken dinner.

Welcome to the world of queered history. It’s like actual history, but less so.

Other questions generated by means of Queer Theorising include, “Do I think I’m having sex with my dogs when they kiss my face?” Apparently, for Dr Kathy Rudy, a Professor of Women’s Studies, being licked by a dog is difficult to distinguish from kissing grandma on the cheek or being lost in a full-on erotic fever. And thus, we’re told, “The line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is non-existent.”

The, um, research in question – by Mr Karl Andersson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester – was not without its challenges and frustrations: “I had hit a wall in my research. Semi-structured interviews can only take you so far,” we’re told. “I had a persistent feeling of only having traced the surface of my topic, and of wanting to go deeper.” And the hence the masturbation, of course.

Further, annotated and fairly graphic, details of Mr Andersson’s paedophilic self-pleasuring project – sorry, “ethnographic fieldwork” – can be perused via the link above. Should that be your thang.

As to the “embodied understanding” mentioned above, it remains unclear what exactly was achieved – beyond the obvious, I mean. Mr Andersson tells us that during three months of, er, research, and 30 notebook entries, his mind often wandered to thoughts of other gentlemen doing much the same thing with the same publications, including the copies he’d acquired second-hand.

This is described as a “feeling of intimacy.” Dozing off afterwards is described as “self-care,” which is apparently important. And we’re informed that the Cellophane wrappers of his pornography collection “signalled luxury and investment in myself.” It’s Earth-rumbling stuff.