Dollimore

Abstract

Critical theory instituted a continuous demand to retheorise from the ground up. In Sexual Dissidence (1991) Jonathan Dollimore rethinks the traditional social and religious condemnation — and often brutal persecution — of homosexuality and, particular in Dollimore’s concern, male same-sex activity, as what he terms ‘the perverse dynamic’ (the equation between homosexuality and perversion is his). I will have to ask later what this new theorisation can do which we could not do already. For the basic effect of the perverse dynamic is already familiar as the psychoanalytic mechanism of projection and displacement. Dollimore quotes James Baldwin as saying, ‘Straight cats invent faggots so they can sleep with them without becoming faggots themselves’ (cited 1991: 219). Desire denied in one subject is projected onto another object, who can then be held responsible for its origin, promotion and very existence. Unconsciously, of course, this would not take place unless the straight cats were not as straight as they thought.