The politics of everyday life: Queer tactics for resistance and collusion

Political action over the last couple of decades has focused on equal rights. The intention of this project is to examine how the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion enforced through the apparatuses of western liberal democracy can be simultaneously queered through tactics of resistance and collusion. In positing this queer provocation, democratic theory will be readdressed through two of its foundational terms—equality and liberty. Furthermore, in readdressing these terms one must also que(e)ry the tension between the site/cite/sight and the subject of democracy as a necessary place that grounds political participation. Throughout this project the queer tactics of resistance and collusion of a politics of everyday life play in the tension that interpellates queer subjects as individuals, in families, at homes, and as citizens. I am proposing that a politics built on everyday life and its queer practices can build homes and a personal politics that find a future and present in the driving moments of jouissance. Two questions are primary to this project: Are queers seeking inclusion and acceptance? This is a liberal and progressive political quest. Or: Are queers seeking to expose heteronormativity, any normativity, as an unstable construct? This is a queer political quest. In the dissertation various configurations of semiotic, psychoanalytic, post-structural, and queer theories are deployed in the exploration and engagement of a politics of everyday life through public policy and events in pop-culture. As the title of this project suggests, there are instances to both resist and collude with the compromise positions offered by the liberal democratic state. Accordingly, one purpose of this dissertation is to raise queer consciousness to the disciplinary risks involved in choosing to participate in mainstream policies and legislation such as Domestic Partner Benefits and gay marriage, and being duped by “straight” reading strategies of any event be it pop-culture, political, etc…Regardless of whether queers participate, resist, or collude, we are reminded on a daily basis that a fine line divides the principles of liberal democracy from its myth