The Affective Performance of State Love

Abstract

Sue-Ellen Case analyses federally and state-sanctioned same-sex marriage laws as an emerging rite of lesbian rights. In the neoliberal US context, the performance of sexual and emotional commitment in the offices of registrars and of joy on the sidewalks compose the rite of civil sex. Such performances do not proceed from LGBT subcultural practices or from the history of lesbian feminist critique. While the performance of sanctioned marriage signals the granting of equal rights of citizenship to lesbian and gay people, it also incorporates a sexual minority—a perversity—into the heteronormative social and economic order. Case argues that affective performances of same-sex desire and love have been assimilated into a neoliberal agenda, namely a state formation of feeling and the religious sanctification of sex.