Outspeak: Narrating Identities That Matter

What does it mean to claim to be gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, straight, or to belong to some racial category, or to be a teenager or a senior citizen? Taking as its focal point the articulation of sexual orientation, Outspeak adopts a narrative approach to understanding professions of identity that does justice to the fears of those who recognize the potential of such labels to oppress, marginalize, and silence. It explores the ways in which professing identity speaks the truth and demands a hearing. In so doing, it addresses the fears of people who see attacks on "gay" and "lesbian" identities as erasing and silencing those who find a voice through them.

To understand the implications of the narrative structure of identity for liberatory praxis, O'Connell enlists the work of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Eve Kosowsky Sedgwick, and engages continental thinkers such as Ricoeur, Levinas, Heidegger, and Lyotard, whose ideas add much to the development of a narrative theory.

Sean P. O'Connell is Professor of Philosophy of Albertus Magnus College.

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Coping with Chaos in Pluralist America: Between Gender Oppression and the Foreclosure of Meaning

1

(38)

Power Relations: Foucault

6

(22)

Truth as Dis-closure: Heidegger, Ricoeur and, Gadamer

28

(11)

Hearing Gay Voices: Toward Building Community in a Pluralist Society

39

(34)

Testifying to What It Means to Be Gay: McNeill and Evans

43

(4)

The Nature of Testimony: Disclosing and Foreclosing Possibilities for Being in the World

47

(26)

Claiming One's Identity: A Constructivist/Narrativist Approach

73

(20)

The Constructed Character of Gender Identity: Ricoeur and Butler

76

(6)

The Narrative Character of Gender Identity: Ricoeur and Butler

82

(11)

Speaking What Has Yet to Be Said: The Call for Giving Voice to Responsive Narratives and to Hearing beyond Them

93

(56)

The Story: Narrative Constructions

99

(4)

Can We Talk?

103

(28)

The Story: Narrative Response-ability

131

(7)

Levinas: Epilogue/supplement (?)

138

(11)

Conflicting Stories/controlling Narratives

149

(28)

Stories That Marginalize Gays and Lesbians

149

(9)

Reclaiming the Story: The Interplay of Sedimentation and Innovation

158

(13)

Closing, But Not Concluding

171

(6)

Notes

177

(42)

Bibliography

219

(12)

Index

231

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Outspeak: Narrating Identities That Matter

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials