From the Concepts Series

On the Colonization of Concepts:

Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, attempts to replace all democracy, including its superior forms, with liberal democracy, and she does this by building up a poor argument that has become a typical one, that the Nazi regime and the 'Stalin regime' can be grouped together as 'totalitarian', as despotic and dictatorial.

This argument is, among other things, subjectible to skepticism from those who feel the oppressions and falsities of liberal democracy.

Notwithstanding its pomposity and success, Arendt's theory of 'totalitarianism' with regard to the Soviet Union is really a reaction to Stalin's rightly saying 'no' to Zionism. One thing we can say is that, ironically, the reactions to Stalin's saying 'no' to Zionism have now themselves become the forces undermining liberal democracy from the anti-democratic direction. But that is another story.

And, Arendt's conflation of regime types and her anti-Stalinism are beside the point of the real narrative of a detrimental totality anyway.

I say 'detrimental' totality because totality itself is not necessarily detrimental but can actually be necessary and valuable to liberation and justice.

If we stick for a moment to the idea of a detrimental totality however, that is, to the idea of a detrimental totalitarianism, we should implicate much more correctly than the 'mass man' of totalitarian theory the heterosexual political regime and its adherents, and thereby perhaps rescue the term from its origins in Carl Schmitt, himself an anti-liberal loved by liberals, and thusly help bring the term 'totalitarianism' into a more correct and less mendacious narrative.

Why should right-wing heterosexuals like Arendt and Schmitt have anything to do with the idea of totalitarianism when they have so little to do with reality?

These fatuous oafs of heteronormativity who portray themselves as clever neologists sail along in boats that are false concepts riding over seas of false discourses.

However much this is the case, and all LGBT/Queer recognize the falsity of dominant discourses, the term 'totalitarianism' is valid in the heterosexual discourse at least in its abstraction and neutralization, in its general idea of something all-encompassing.

We can rescue, co-opt, and colonize the term and idea however, by first merely bringing it from irreality and misdescription into reality, into the reality of the totalizing nature of heteronormative desire.

Heterosexist desire is founded on the obviously false importance, false centrality, false necessity, and absurd valuation of heterosexual desire. This desire however, is as totalizing as it is false: it demands and commands that all of reality, and certainly all of desire, be forced into its falsity. All queers know this absurdity, the absurdity of living under something both falsely valued and total.

Even, however, if heteronormative desire is total, its forms and styles are not constant. Heterosexuals can jump on the bandwagons of 'free love' or 'marriage and family' as forms of heterosexuality without changing at all the totalizing nature of the regime of falsity that heterosexuality is.

Although Stalin did not "fabricate a structureless mass" as Arendt falsely claims (he merely stood up to Zionism, and this was outrageous to Zionists), the heterosexual regime, an actual structureless mass, keeps its power over, above, and beyond all of its specific iterations ("gay friendliness", "the extended family", "swinging", "a man and a woman"), and thus more properly fits the ideas of totality and totalitarianism. Its structurelessness lies in its total nature.

Heterosexual desire is total.

Under its totalitarian regime, queerness can only serve as its amusement, appendage, annoyance, or sometimes, when heterosexuals get either bored or charitable, as its neutralized challenge.

Totalitarianism is, as a concept, falsely conceived and falsely taught in universities far and wide in its Arendtian description. Its reality is buried in the actual and current totality itself, the totality that is the heterosexual political regime (of force, abuse, rule over, fraud, and other traditional political forms).

This is not an apology for Stalin, despite its having recently come to light that Stalin was involved in homosexual love triangles and in cross-dressing. It is rather more that we make outrageous demands of the heteroesexual regime.  These demands are not actually outrageous, but only seem so, because they, like everything else, are comprehended within a false reality of understanding.  

With that all in mind,  I demand that 'totalitarianism' be used henceforth in its proper form, as a description of the political regime that enforces heterosexual desire.

 

Thanks to Shifty, Lefty, and Scheistée De Leon for their comments and input on this blog entry.