Perhaps The Promise Of Phallus Is Always

Intersectionality Has Made An Important Contribution To Social And Political Analysis, Asking All Of Us To Think About What Assumptions Of Race And Class We Make When We Speak About "women" Or What Assumptions Of Gender And Race We Make When We Speak About "class." It Allows Us To Unpack Those Categories And See The Various Kinds Of Social Formations And Power Relations That Constitute Those Categories.

Gender Is A Kind Of Imitation For Which There Is No Original; In Fact, It Is A Kind Of Imitation That Produces The Very Notion Of The Original As An Effect And Consequence Of The Imitation Itself.

Where Is Democratic Process Or Popular Sovereignty For The Endangered Population? It Cannot Be "given" Or "allocated" By Some Other Power Without That Same Power Claiming The Right To Withdraw What It Gives.

What Does It Mean Then To Live With One Another? It Can Be Unhappy, It Can Be Wretched, It Can Be Ambivalent, It Can Even Be Full Of Antagonism, But All Of That Can Play Out In The Political Sphere Without Recourse To Expulsion Or Genocide. And That Is Our Obligation, To Stay In The Sphere With Whatever Murderous Rage We Have, Without Acting On It.

It Seems To Me That "gender Trouble" Will Always Be Important To Try And Open Up Our Ideas Of What Gender Is. So, I Don't Know If It's Revolutionary, But Maybe It Still Has Something To Say To Those Issues.