【文／Lisa Duggan，曾浚赫翻譯，何春蕤校訂 中央大學性／別研究室】
As the global economy of neoliberal capitalism has emerged, grown, and ricocheted from boom to crisis over the past four decades, its logics have acquired the status of mainstream common sense and inevitability, as asserted by the slogan, “there is no alternative.” But resistance has nonetheless flourished, from the rain forests and nations of South America to the anticorporate globalization movement to the uprisings of the Arab Spring. In the United States beginning in 2011, the Occupy movement has spread from Wall Street to cities in the United States and around the globe, drawing from and merging with existing global protests. All of this resistance has opened significant ground for questioning politics and economics as usual. For those of us on the broadly defined political left, this is our time, our chance. During the next decade or two, we may be able to end the brutal reign of neoliberalism, and expand alternative forms of social, cultural, political, and economic life.
As queer leftists look toward our participation in building possible new futures, we need to attend to the most important thing: our constituencies need to become fully literate in economic policy. During the past two decades, mainstream lesbian and gay organizations have increasingly supported rather than opposed neoliberal modes of governance. But how can we provide an effective critique when many of us, in the United States in particular, don’t understand what neoliberalism is? We need to understand what the Federal Reserve is doing, how Wall Street works, how interest rates affect employment rates, how different health care systems really work, and so much more. Economic policy and basic vocabulary have been mystified—we aren’t supposed to understand it. We’re supposed to think that economics is a highly complex problem of technical management. It isn’t. The economy as such does not even exist as a fully concrete and discrete object of analysis. It is a historical invention, falsely abstracted from the operations of culture and politics more broadly. Under neoliberal dominance, more and more of the functions of collective life have been assigned or transferred to private corporate control, removed from the democratic accountability of the public sphere of our common life. As public life in the United States has been increasingly, deliberately impoverished by the underfunding of government agencies, we’ve been encouraged to believe that the private economy is more efficient and reliable than public action. We have seen the result of those policies, from Katrina to the 2008 collapse of the minimally (and badly) regulated financial industry. In the global South, Western support for neoliberal dictators from Pinochet to Mubarak has worked to identify the state with the racial imperialism of the West. But this support has also generated significant and increasingly widespread resistance. The legacy of empire has generated highly class-stratified, gendered, and racialized societies. Neoliberalism has extended that legacy to leave us with minimal social service and high national security states in much of the world, combined with low-wage and low-benefit economies. These legacies are increasingly being exposed. It is time for regime changes and for major transformations of our networked communities.
So what might we on the queer left do to participate in, shape, and create the new worlds that appear increasingly possible? Here are some suggestions:
- Work to organize LGBT constituencies, by creating networks to link the grassroots organizations that are already doing astonishingly creative and productive work. Existing queer-of-color organizations, and those involved with poverty issues, are models for expansion and networking. Groups in New York City, including Queers for Economic Justice, The Audre Lorde Project, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and FIERCE, are expanding their communications and connections. The more these connections expand nationally and transnationally, through newly established networks, and via the Occupy movement and the World or US Social Forum and other sites, the more effective queer progressive voices can be. We need sites to circulate new ideas and to plan actions.
- Underwrite research into and analysis of the needs and dreams of the LGBT/queer population, not only within the United States but also across borders. LGBT movement leaders and organizations have too often collaborated in some of the mistakes of the nonprofit world in general—emphasizing the practical skills needed to forward an already set agenda, while deploying an anti-intellectual discourse, denigrating the analytic and imaginative labor required to create and transform one. Right now, we need all of our sharp minds in full gear analyzing abstract concepts and vocabularies as they come at us, as well as our practical strategic and tactical sense. We need as much knowledge as we can collect, and we need to understand everything that’s being said and done in our name. Some data on the LGB population of California, collected and analyzed by Gary J. Gates and Christopher Ramos of the Williams Institute at UCLA (2008), is highly instructive.[1] The researchers creatively combined results from the 2005/2006 American Community Survey compiled by the US Census Bureau with data from the 2003 and 2005 California Health Survey to create a very useful and illuminating picture of the LGB demographic in California (they had no existing data on the transgender or intersex population). Though the data is interpreted to support the campaign for marriage equality, the numbers actually show that the majority of LGB individuals in California are not coupled, and that white and highly educated gay men and lesbians are the most likely to be partnered. If we take their data at face value, and derive a set of truly democratic policy priorities from them, we would come up with a very different vision for LGB and transgender, intersex, and other queer action—child care, health care, progressive immigration reform, more egalitarian and democratic employment practices, affordable housing, and social support provisions, for instance, would come out ranked highly. Creating and proposing forms of relationship and household recognition designed for diverse living arrangements (including nonconjugal households) might replace “marriage only” as a policy priority. Thinking of alternatives to neoliberal capitalist economic organization might even come up quite clearly on our to-do list.
- Continue to generate and press forward with a friendly critique of the agenda of the mainstream LGBT organizations. The emphasis on the 3M’s—inclusion in the major neoliberal institutions of marriage, the military, and the market—reflects the priorities of a neoliberal era. During the 1990s, this agenda developed in direct relation to the rhetorical requirements of recognition in an economically conservative era. After neoliberalism, we need to emphasize transforming these institutions in ways that meet the needs of more of us, rather than simply plead or settle for inclusion in the status quo.
Footnotes
- The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, Gary J. Gates and Christopher Ramos, Census Snapshots: California Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Population, October 2008 (PDF). Accessed November 13, 2011.
Our time is now. Let’s not waste it.
中文翻譯
過去40年裡，新自由主義全球資本主義經濟興起成長，經歷了景氣的大好也崩跌到經濟危機，在此同時，其思考邏輯已經取得了無法挑戰的主流常識地位，就像目前流行的口號所言：「沒有別路可走」。然而抗爭仍然持續延燒，從南美雨林原住民族的抗爭，到反跨國企業、反全球化運動，甚至阿拉伯之春（Arab Spring）的起義。在美國，從2011年開始，佔領華爾街運動（Occupy movement）已經從華爾街蔓延到美國其他城市甚至全球，與各地原有的抗議行動合流，相互學習。這些抗爭打開了重要的空間，以質疑大家習以為常的政治經濟情勢，對於像我們這樣屬於廣義左翼政治的人，現在正是我們行動的時刻和機會。在下個10年或者是20年裡，我們或許可以結束新自由主義的蠻橫統治，擴大另類形式的社會、文化、政治、與經濟生活。
酷兒左翼份子思考如何參與建立可能的新未來時最重要的工作就是：我們的群眾必須徹底理解經濟政策。過去20年，主流同性戀組織越來越支持（而不是反對）新自由主義形式的治理，，要是我們大多數人都不了解新自由主義是什麼，又將如何形成對它有力的批判呢？我們需要了解美國聯邦儲備在做什麼，華爾街如何運作，利率如何影響就業率，各種醫療健保體系實際上如何運作，還有很多很多其他問題。過去相關經濟的政策和基本字彙都籠罩在神祕的氛圍裡，好像我們就不該懂似的，搞得大家以為經濟是高度複雜的技術管理問題。但是事實上並不然。所謂「經濟」並不是什麼具體的、獨立的研究對象，而是歷史的發明產物，是從更寬廣的文化和政治操作中無中生有的抽象出來的。在新自由主義的主導下，集體生活的各種功能逐步被轉移或歸屬到私營企業的掌握之下，也就是從我們日常生活公領域的民主究責體制中移除。於是美國的公共生活越來越因為政府單位的經費不足而蓄意的被貧瘠化，而且還宣傳經濟的私有化比公共行動來得更有效率，更可靠。從卡翠娜颶風（Katrina）後的災情處理，到2008年管制很少很差的金融體制崩解，都看到這些政策的後果。在南半球，西方國家所支持的新自由主義獨裁者，從智利的皮諾契特（Pinochet）到埃及的穆巴拉克（Mubarak），都把國家等同於西方的種族帝國主義，因此也引發重大而廣泛的反抗。帝國統治的後遺症形成了高度階級分化、性別化、種族化的社會，新自由主義則擴大了這個遺產，留給我們極少的社會服務，卻在很多地區形成國家高度警戒的狀態，更形成了低工資和低福利的經濟。這些後遺症正在逐漸明顯化，現在是時候改變政權，改變我們所處的社區了。
那麼我們酷兒左派能做些什麼來參與形塑創造越來越可能實現的新世界呢？以下是幾點建議：
- 著手建立LGBT的群眾基礎，串連網絡，連接那些已經做了許多令人驚豔的創造性與生產力工作的基層組織。現存的有色人種酷兒組織與涉及貧窮議題的組織正是擴大和連結的典範，在紐約的團體中，「酷兒經濟正義」（Queers for Economic Justice）、「羅德計劃」（Audre Lorde Project）、「李維拉法律計劃」（Sylvia Rivera Law Project）、與「有色人種LGBT少年領導者計畫」（FIERCE）都正在廣泛擴大他們的溝通與連結。這些連結越能夠在國內外建立新的網絡，透過佔領華爾街與世界或美國社會論壇及其他網站串連，酷兒的進步聲音就越能夠有效果。我們需要這些傳遞新想法與行動計劃的場域。
- 支持研究分析美國本土和跨國LGBT／酷兒人口的需求與夢想。LGBT運動領導者與組織往往犯了和一般非營利組織一樣的錯誤，它們太過強調實現既定目標時所需的具體技巧，以致於採取反智的論述，蔑視在創造並改變上述目標時所需要的分析和想像工夫。但是此刻，我們需要所有人的腦筋全力開動，不但積極分析那些撲向我們的概念和字彙，也要分析我們自己的策略和戰術想法。我們需要盡可能的收集知識，越多越好，我們也需要理解所有以同志之名所做的發言。洛杉磯加州大學威廉學院（Williams Institute）的Gary J. Gates和Christopher Ramos，曾對2008年收集的LGB人口資料進行分析（當時還沒有任何有關跨性別或陰陽人的數據），他們很有創意的把美國人口普查局2005/2006年進行的美國社區普查數據，和2003與2005年加州健康調查的數據結合起來，得出了一個非常有用而有意義的LGB人口分布圖樣。雖然這個數據被用來支持婚姻平權運動，但是數據實際顯示，加州大多數LGB人口並沒有固定伴侶，最可能有固定伴侶關係的是白人與高學歷的男女同性戀。如果我們直接採用這個數據來設計一套真正民主的優先政策排序，就會得出一套對LGB、跨性別、陰陽人、以及其他酷兒人口而言非常不一樣的願景：育兒、健保、開明的移民政策改革、更為平等而民主的雇傭規範、價錢合理的房屋市場、以及各種社會服務措施大概都會排在前面；而創造並構想滿足多樣生活方式（包括非婚姻家庭）的各種關係模式和家庭結構，可能會取代「只要婚姻」而成為政策上的優先選擇。我們的待辦事項裡說不定還會出現：設計新自由主義資本主義經濟組織模式以外的可能另類安排。
- 繼續生產並推進對主流LGBT組織行動方針的善意批評。主流同運強調要努力使同志被納入婚姻、軍旅、市場等三個新自由主義主要建制，這個決定其實反映了新自由主義時代的優先排序。這些行動方針在1990年出台，是為了回應經濟保守年代對「認可」的修辭要求，現在新自由主義即將成為過去，我們需要著重於改變這些建制以符合更多人的需求，而不是只要求或接受被納入現狀。
我們的時刻終於到了。別再錯失良機了。
