(Pre)Occupied Locations: Subverting Marginality—Reply to Commentaries

Abstract

In my response to commentaries by Hartman and Sedgwick, I examine the positions from which each chose to speak. Hartman's rather light approach performs a particular function: the mentalization of anal erotic and homoerotic desire through the introduction of surplus meaning. I explore the relationship of this approach to the absence of rigorous theoretical critique in his essay. I question Sedgwick's decision to limit her critique to the confines of queer theory; this results in a constriction of meaning rather than the expansion she purports to offer. I challenge her notion of growth through mutual recognition with a model of change that is based in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Contrary to her assertion, I do not jettison danger or gender destabilization from the discourse on anal eroticism between men, but I question these as obligatory or constitutive to its meaning.