Queer Forgetting AND Cultural Renewal Essay Examples

Summary

The Queer Ecology has been influenced by dominant paradigms of patriarchy and procreative culture. Procreative culture is based on reproductive biology and how culture is passed on to the next generation. Cultural forms exists within this procreative culture one being the inherited cultural form with a mother, father and children. This form producing queer children in turn produces the second form which is the novel form but creates disturbances within the environment. These two forms interact in an environment that can be very problematic. Inheritable Cultural Form is mainly resistant to the novel form and seeks to maintain imminent social structures.
Queers have a history of different environments. The 1950s and 1960s have not been very accepting of queers. The McCarthyism and a harsh criminal justice system that imprisons and subjects queer to chemical castration had made sure that remain as nonentities. The 1970s have afforded a brief reprieve with the start of the sexual revolution but the 80s saw the resurgence of inherited cultural form and the emergence of AIDS. This continued on in the 90s with the queers remaining hidden behind the closet doors. In the 2000s, however, with the change in the criminal justice system and with Massachusetts recognizing gay marriages, paved the way to heritable cultural renewal that allowed the novel form to push against the inherited cultural form towards a more interactive environment. This environment has given birth to the Heritable Cultural Forms who are emergent and responding readily to the novel forms. They are shaped by their interaction with their environment rather than the less interactive behavior of the inheritable cultural form.

Queer theorist, Judith Halberstam, has postured how rigid inherited cultural forms incorporate novel forms and how it affects selective memory. The memorial to the murdered Jews in Berlin, Germany is a worthy example. This creative art work of Peter Eisenman is a tribute to the 27,000 Jews who were persecuted and murdered during World War II and within that number are 11,000 homosexuals. The memorial stands without any information and tourists can visit and take photographs among the numerous nameless tombstones.
It is may seem irreverent and inconsiderate to be taking pictures or laughing or running around in a place that should be a hallowed remembrance of those who have suffered and yet, spontaneity and rigid cultural practice exist side by side in this place. Eisenman’s artistic work and novel cultural forms interact to produce a type of forgetting. The question here now is, “Is it bad to forget?”
Halberstam said that the queer’s use of time and space develop in opposition to the family, heterosexuality and reproduction. Cultural change happens slowly because of the institutional controls leaning against patriarchy and capital accumulation especially with the prevention of the novel forms’ existence. Therefore, it can be said that Eisenman’s art design serves to interact with the novel cultural forms and causes a sort-of forgetting. Halberstam positions that too much remembrance of the past too much of the time dooms us to repeat it.
Nietzsche and other great minds also postures that forgetting provides a clean slate for the unconscious to provide a time of cultural renewal. Queer lives are constantly encouraged to create different worlds populated by different people.
Eisenman’s art is a testament of the atrocities that happened during a time of darkness and yet it also stimulates a different, albeit controversial, reality of how novel forms pushes against the dominant paradigms that still exist. It enables to transcend the tragedy into a cultural change with the transmission of different knowledge, norms and values.

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxRnC5B6SU8&feature=youtu.be. n.d.