In “Sex in Public”, by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, the authors discuss how queer culture can survive and promote itself in a world of heteronormativity. The process described here reminds me of Louis Althusser’s idea of reproduction, in which “every social formation must reproduce the[…]existing relations of production”(Althusser 1336), meaning that an ideology must have a way of interpellating new subjects in order to survive. However, unlike Althusser, Berlant and Warner describe a situation in which a counter-hegemonic culture attempts to reproduce and survive.

Fittingly, the authors tell us of current (and by current I mean about 2o years ago) politics regarding queer institutions: “senators such as Ted Kennedy and Jesse Helms support amendments that refuse federal funds to organizations that ‘promote[…]sadomasochism, homo-eroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or any individuals engaged in sexual intercourse'”(Berlant and Warner 2602). Althusser tells us that ideology is primarily promoted through the ISAs, which, in general, reproduce the mindset needed to support the current hegemony without the need of force. By attempting to cut off the institutions that would promote the “queer ideology”, these senators are attempting to cut off queer culture’s ability to reproduce itself, and therefore reduce its power. The zoning laws described in this essay do this by reducing the amount of physical space devoted to queer culture and, furthermore, put this “ideology” in a negative and degrading light.

Berlant and Warner’s idea of privatization of intimacy also does this, not only to those who are queer, but also heterosexual couples as well. It makes “sex seem irrelevant or merely personal, heteronormative conventions of intimacy block the building of nonnormative or explicit public sexual cultures.”(Berlant and Warner 2604). By keeping heteronormative institutions and practices in place, and attempting to remove individualized accounts of sexuality from the public sphere, heteronormativity becomes the only acceptable version of sexual life, to the point where even heterosexual couples must hide the fact that they enjoy using vibrators (Berlant and Warner 2614).

Even powerful ISAs, such as the media, are criticized for discussing problems within heterosexual culture. The problems within heterosexual relationships are often discussed on talk shows and in journalism. Even though these mediums rarely state the problem to be heteronormative culture, there is still a backlash against publicizing the problems within these relationships: “‘We’ve forgotten that civilization depends on keeping some of this stuff under wraps,’ he [William Bennett] said”(Berlant and Warner 2607). “Civilization”, in Bennett’s sense here, seems to be upheld by hiding the fact that heteronormativity produces public problems that many people suffer from, rather than issues that only a few, abnormal individuals face. Heteronormative culture is promoted in part by hiding the problems and cracks within it, creating dissatisfaction for both heterosexual and queer people.

Like I said in the first paragraph, ideology and the public’s relationship to it must be reproduced in order to survive. In “Sex in Public”, Berlant and Warner call this “world-making”, in which “Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation. These intimacies do bear a necessary relation to a counter public- an indefinitely accessible world conscious of its subordinate relation”(Berlant and Warner 2609). Traditional ISAs, in Althusser’s sense, are found in physical, relatively permanent space. Churches, schools, even media all inhabit physical, well-frequented places in which they can encounter the public. Beyond the physical, common and well-acknowledged social practices, such as paying taxes or getting divorced, further promote heteronormativity. These long-standing institutions and practices help to instill a social memory of of the dominant sexual practices and ideas, which in turn reproduce them. The laws and political actions against queer culture mentioned earlier attempt to erase the social memory of queer practices.

So then, how does queer culture promote and reproduce itself if it cannot do so in the standard ways that Althusser enumerates? Street is an interesting example of how queer culture is able to survive. It is noted that not everyone who frequents this area does so for explicitly sexual reasons, and yet because sexually-oriented businesses thrive here, a queer culture can develop within this physical space. The economic success of these businesses allow for the street to become queer (Berlant and Warner 2612), creating a mass centered around an area that suddenly has political power because of its concentration geographically. Maybe queer culture cannot reproduce itself through Althusser’s ISAs, as it is not the dominant ideology, but it finds a way through the creation, through sex commerce, of a meeting space where queer people can collect.

Disappointing, I know. I’ve been thinking about how to begin discussion of Zizek! and wanted to get at the all-important “so what?” question. Amid all the charming examples of love gone awry from Hollywood in the essay, we can lose sight of why it matters that “courtly love” is still with us, that the Other we desire is a “black hole” whom we constitute as such through the “detours” of our own desiring, and so on.

I think the pithiest way to put this is that a) “courtly love” is a trap, in which the “knight” gets lost in narcissistic projections and the Lady vanishes altogether; that b) love as a “contract” between equals (i.e., the way most of us think about our erotic relationships most of the time, at least in the abstract) is also a fiction, since each of us is “the Thing” for the other and, as such, subject to all kinds of distortions via the circuitry of narcissistic projection already discussed.

This psychoanalytic dynamic is what led Lacan to claim “there is no sexual relationship.” By this he doesn’t mean that no one has sex (obviously) but that what unfolds in erotic life is not a reciprocal “relationship” between equals. This essay from the journal Lacan Ink lays out the logic of this; you might get lost in the weeds on the finer points of Lacan’s thinking here, but the works of art (and especially the beer commercial) help to bring the broad point home.