Perversion the Social Relation

i6zMichael P. Biblerperience of mutuality and sameness—what Leo Bersani calls "homoness."Bersani argues that same-sex desire possesses a unique structurethat privileges sameness instead of difference. Unlike heterosexuality,which is a desire for an Other who is different from the self, homosexualityis "a desire in others of what we already are," a desire "to repeat, toexpand, to intensify the same." 7 That is, whether or not gays or lesbiansactually long for partners who are as identical to themselves as possible,the dominant discourses surrounding homosexual desire situate sexualsameness as the defining characteristic, and any expression of that desiremust be read accordingly. Consequently, any analysis of homosexualityin a social or literary context would potentially benefit most from a focuson this dynamic because sameness indicates a totally different alternativeto heterosexual relations, and not a failure, corruption, or deviationfrom them.Moreover, this association of homosexuality with sameness proposesa distinct form of interpersonal sexual relations that also makes homosexualitya powerful source for rethinking the hierarchical networks ofmainstream social relations. In Bersani's definition, homo-ness evokes aprofoundly alternative form of relationality in which individuals wouldrelate to each other identically, each person socially the same like "pointsalong a transversal network of being in which otherness is tolerated asthe nonthreatening margin of, or supplement to, a seductive sameness." 8Homo-ness intimates a system of human relations that is explicitly antihierarchicaland provides for the absolute equality of every citizen on thepremise that they are all, ultimately, the same. This definition needs tobe complicated in relation to Styron's novel, of course, but reading Nat'sencounter with Willis as an expression of homo-ness helps make senseof the nature and purpose of Nat's bloody revolt, for the experience notonly provides him with a necessary sexual release, but also shows himan image of the freedom and the community that blacks could enjoy outsideof slavery. Instead of making the revolt illegitimate, this instance ofhomo-ness acts as the driving force behind it because it simultaneouslyprovides Nat with the sense of a new model of social relations groundedin sameness and equality. In this way, homosexuality truly can be constitutiveof community—not through the reification of differences by wayof its exclusion, as the ten black writers would have it, but through thepresentation of a radical new form of homo-relationality that could heal