Fluent Essays

1. What are some of the key feelings or emotions that are evoked and conveyed in the manifestos? How would you consider these in light of the Love piece?  2. What does a manifesto achieve on its own? Think about this in light of the Armstrong and Crage article  3. In week 1 we already considered distinctions like intellectual/political, academic/activist. What do you make of these distinctions in light of all the material assigned for this week?  4. Try to identify 3 features that there are in common across a number of manifestos. This could be features relating to form, to content, to political stance, to the actions they demand…anything at all. Love, Heather. Epilogue: The politics of refusal Love, Heather., (2007) Epilogue: The politics of refusal from Love, Heather., Feeling backward: loss and the politics of queer history pp.146-163, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press © Staff and students of the University of Manchester are reminded that copyright subsists in this extract and the work from which it was taken. This Digital Copy has been made under the terms of a CLA licence which allows you to: * access and download a copy; * print out a copy; Please note that this material is for use ONLY by students registered on the course of study as stated in the section below. All other staff and students are only entitled to browse the material and should not download and/or print out a copy. This Digital Copy and any digital or printed copy supplied to or made by you under the terms of this Licence are for use in connection with this Course of Study. 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Digitisation authorised by Martin Snelling ISBN: 0674026527 Epilogue The Politics ofRefusal Imust make the finalgesture ofdefiance. and refuse to leI this be absorbed bythe final story;must ask for a structure of political thought that willtake allof this,all thesesecretandimpossible stories. recognize whathasbeen madeout on the margins;and then. recognizing it, refuse to celebrate it; a politics that \10;,11, watching this pastsay So what?;and consign it to the dark. -<:arolyn Kay Steedman, LAndscapefora Good Ilbman This book traces a tradition of backwardness in queer representation and experience. Backwardness means many things here:shyness,ambiva- lence, failure, melancholia, loneliness, regression, victimhood, heart- break, antimodernism, immaturity, self-hatred, despair,shame. 1describe backwardness both as a queer historical structure of feeling and as a model for queer historiography. In telling a history of early twentieth- cenlury representation that privileges disconnection. loss. and the re- fusal of community. I have tried 10 bring my approach 10 the past in line with dark. retrograde aspects of queer experience. If the gaze I have fixed on the past refuses the usual consolations-including the hope of redemption-it is not. for that reason, without its compensations, Back- wardness can be, as Willa Cather suggests, deeply gratifying to the back- ward. Particularly in a moment where gays and lesbians have no excuse for feelingbad.rhe evocation ofa long history ofqueer suffering provides, ifnot solace exactly; then at least relief. I have tried 10 resist the criterion of utility as a standard of judgment for the feelings and experiences that I describe. 1 have argued that the 146 TIle Po/ilics of Refusal 147 pressure within queer studies to make use ofbad feelings has not allowed for sustained engagement with the stubborn negativity of the past: critics have ignored what they could not transform. Still. despite my hesitancy about alchemizing queer suffering. I do want to think in the linal pages about the relation between backwardness and the queer fu- ture. It is not the aim of this book to suspend absolutely the question of the future; that is Lee Edelmans project in Na Future, and although I see its value, I am interested in trying to imagine a future apart from the reproductive imperative, optimism, and the promise of redemption. A backward future. perhaps. There are forms of queer negativity that are in no sense good for pol- itics. There are others-s-self-hatred.despair, refusal-that we have yet to consider because their connection to any recognizable form of politics is too tenuous, Still. many of these unlikely feelings are closely tied to the realities of queer experience past and present; a more capacious under- standing of political aims and methods might in fact draw on such expe- riences. As many critics have argued, the politics of gay pride will only get us SO far.Such an approach does not address the marginalsituation of queers who experience the stigma of poverty. racism, AIDS, gender dys- phoria, disability, immigration, and sexism. Nor does such an approach come to terms adequately with sexualshame-with the way that the closet continues to operate powerfully in contemporary society and media. Fi- nally, the assertion of pride does not deal with the psychic complexity of shame, which lingers on well into the post-Stonewall era. While critics and activist groups have attempted to cultivate a polit ics of the negative in recen t years, the great problem 10 be reckoned with in such approaches is the problem of political agency. Many of the queer ligures that I have considered in this book are characterized by damaged or refused agency. Is it possible that such backward ligures might be ca- pable of making social change? What exact ly does a collective move- ment of isolates look like? What kind of revolutionary action can we ex- pect from those who have slept a hundred years? Left Melancholy Walter Benjamins angel of history is a preeminently backward figure, an emblem of resistance 10 the forward march of progress. In his Theses 148 Epilogue on the Philosophy of History: Benjamin sketches a scene that recalls the image of Lots wifegazing back on the destruction of Sodom: A Klee painting named Angelus Nevus shows an angel looking as though he isabout to moveawayfromsomething he is fixedlycontem- plating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angelof history His faceis turned toward the past. Where we: perceive a chain orevents, he sees one single catas- trophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feel. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead. and make whole what has been smashed. Buta storm is blowing from Par- adise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned. while the pile ofdebris before him growsskyward. This storm iswhat wecall progress. History in Benjamins description is a single catastrophe: a pile of wreckage that just keeps getting bigger. He suggests that while most people are content to forget the horrors of the past and move on toward a better future . the angel resists the storm of progress. By turning his back on the future and fixing his gaze on this scene of destruction. the angel refuses to tum the losses of the past. in Adorno and Horkheimers terms. into the material of progress. The angel longs to redeem the past-Ow make whole what has been smashed-but he cannot, As he tries to linger with the dead. the wind tears at his wings. carrying him. against his will. into the future. Benjamin emphasizes the violence to which the angel is exposed in his failed attempt at redemption. Like Lots wife. the angel faces back- ward; like Odysseus. however. he keeps moving forward while he looks backward. Benjamin suggests that taking the past seriously means being hun by it. He is damaged both by the horrible spectacle of the past and by the outrage of leaving it behind. The angel of history has become a key figure in recent work on loss and the politics of memory. trauma. and history. In contemporary criti- cism. Benjamins sacrificial witness functions as something like an eth- ical ideal for the historian and the critic. Yet this figure poses difficulties for anyone thinking about how to effect political change. What are we to do with this tattered, passive figure. so clearly unfit for the rigors of the protest march. not to mention the battlefield? The question is how to imagine this melancholic figure as the agent of any recognizable form of TIl< P,,/ilics J ReJ/ 149 activism. At the heart of the ambivalence about the angel of history is a key paradox of political life. Although historical losses instill in us a de- sire for change, they also can unfit us for the activity of making change. If we look back, we may not be able to pull ourselves away from the spectacle of Sodom in names. Wendy Brown warns against the potentia l dangers of such an orienta- tion in her essay Resisting Left Melancholy. Brown discusses the pos- sibilities for sustaining hope after the death of Marxism. In a reading of Benjamins article Left Melancholy, Brown auernpts to make a dis- tinction between productive and paralyzing forms of political melan- cholia. Left melancholy is a form of nostalgia for an expired past-a way of clinging to a broken and outdated dream of class revolution. To this form of melancholy she opposes a productive clinging to historical loss. which is what she sees in the allegory of the angel of history Brown asks a series of questions about how to imagine the future after the breakdown of historica l master narratives. She considers our feelings about the future when we no longer believe in the inevitability of historical progress and when our dreams for a global revolution have died. What do dreams of freedom look like after the ideal of freedom has been smashed? Brown diagnoses a pervasive despair on the Left, a melancholic attachment to earlier forms of politics that has proved disastrous for responding to contemporary political condi- tions. Browns diagnosis of this structure of feeling is apt, and this essay is a crucial exploration of the state of contemporary affective politics on the Left: rather than adopting a position that simply condemns apathy as a cop-out, a failure ofnerve, she tries to map the response 10 losses on the Left as a melancholic response. Brown comes 10 diagnose, not to punish. Melancholic leftists cling to the lost objects because of actual feelings of love, actua ldesire for radical social change: the problem with their poli- tics is not the attachment but rather the paralyzing effects of melan- cholic incorporation and disavowal. Contemporary critics and activists ought to attend to her suggestion that the feelings and sentiments- including those of sorrow, rage, and anxiety about broken promises and lost compasses-thaI sustain our attachments to Left analyses and Left projects ought to be examined.? Browns call for an investigation into these feelings sounds, however, at times more like a request that such feelings should nOI exist, She writes: 150 Epilogue What emerges lin the present moment] is a Left that operates without either a deep and radical critique of the status quo or a compelling al- ternative to the existing order of things. But perhaps even more trou- bling, it is a Left that has become more attached to its impossibility than to its potential fruitfulness, a Left that is most at home dwelling not in hopefulness but in its own marginalityand failure, a Left that is thus caught in astructure ofmelancholic attachment to a certain strain of its own dead past, whose spirit is ghostly,whose structure ofdesire is backward looking and punishing. (463-464) Whereas Brown is writing in one sense from the perspective of a Left melancholic, someone trying to think of alternative political structures of feeling given the contemporary context, here her critique seems to shade into the kind of chin-up neoliberal polemics that she abhors. Al- though that essay sets out to think about the affective consequences of historical losses, in a passage such as this one Brown points to these bad feelings themselves as the problem. Why would this essay, so sym- pathetic to melancholic politics, make a final call for the dissolution of melancholy into mourning? Although I think Brown sets out to widen the range of political affects, thinking about the political usefulness of feelings like regret and despair. in the end she returns to what is invari- ably invoked as the only viable political affect: hope for a better future. Despite Browns claims to the contrary, it is difficult to distinguish be- tween good and bad melancholy; melancholia itself cannot be sealed off from more problematic feelings and attitudes such as nostalgia, de- pression, and despair. The anxiety to draw acomonsanitairearound politi- cally useful affects is legible in many quarters; one could certainly argue that Benjamins own diatribe against left melancholy is fueled byanxieties about the political valence of his own melancholic identification. Such anxieties are also legible in his Theses, where Benjamins tiger leaping into the past seems to serveas a revolutionary.can-do alibi for the angel of historyand where the historical materialist is distinguished from the his- toricist because he is man enough to blast open the continuum of his- tory (262). It is much easier to distinguish between productive and paralyzing melancholia on paper than it is in psychic life. where even the best feel- ings can go bad-and they give no warning. If we are serious about en- gaging with the terrain of psychic Iife-and at the same time, challenging a progressivist view of history-then it seems crucial that we begin to The Politicsof Refusal lSI take the negativity of negative affect more seriously. Bad feelings such as rage, self-hatred, shame, despair, and apathy are produced by what Lauren Berlant calls the routine pain of subordination. Tarrying with this negativity is crucial; at the same time, the aim is to turn grief into grievance-to address the larger social structures, the regimes of domi- nation, that are at the root of such pain. But real engagement with these issues means coming to terms with the temporality, the specific struc- ture of grief, and allowing these elements of negative affect to transform our understanding of politics. We need to develop a vision of political agency that incorporates the damage that we hope to repair. Carla Freccero, returning to Benjamins angel, considers such an ap- proach in Queer/Early/Modem. Throughout her book Freccero considers the political possibilities in what she calls queer spectrality; she argues that allowing oneself to be haunted can open up a reparative future (102). Exploring the ethics and politics of melancholia, Freccero finally wonders about the implications of her theory for the question of politi- cal agency. If this spectral approach to history and historiography is queer, it might also be objected that it counsels a kind of passivity,both in ILeoI Bersanissense of self-shattering and also potentially in the more mun- dane sense of the opposite of the political injunction to act. In this re- spect it is also queer, as only a passive politics could be said to be. And yet, the passivity-which is also a form of patience and passion-is not quite the same thing as quietism. Rather, it is a suspension, a waiting, an attending to the worlds arrivals (through, in part, its returns), not as a guarantee or security foraction in the present, but as the very force from the past that moves us into the future, like Benjamins angel, blown backward by the storm. (104) Freccero specifically links passivity to queer politics, suggesting that a passivity that is not quite quietism might constitute an alternative ap- proach to the problem of agency. Although some might argue that Ben- jamin confuses the issue of seeingatrocity with the need to do something about it (confusing the historical materialist with the revolutionary), Freccero ventures to suggest that the angel himself might be a model po- litical actor. The consequences of such a shift are clearly troubling to Freccero, who follows this suggestion with a footnote in which she responds to Browns concern about political passivity. 152 Epilogue Wendy Brown. in PoliticsOut of History, notes that the angel is para- lyzedand helpless and that it is therefore incumbent upon us to seize the moment, to interrupt the storm. She describes Benjamins under- standing of the agents of this process in what seem 10 me to be hu- manist terms. in that weare indeed the agentsofhistory whodo the in- terrupting. In using this image. 1want first 10 suspend the definirionof the storm, which in Benjamins text is what we call progress: and also. if possible, to suspend the question of agency within the image. What, after all. wemight ask, is an angel? (I47, n.105) In this remarkable final note. Freccero performs an exemplary act of backwardness, clinging 10 the paralyzed and helpless figure of the angel even as Brown urges action. Far from seizing the moment, Freccero-Iike Benjamins angel. or like one of Palersshy and shrinking figures-begs for a reprieve. Resisting the rhetorical force ofBrownscall to arms. she heads underground. and suspends each of the key terms in the passage-progress. agency. angel. The queer exemplarily of this move has nothing to do wi th any traditional sense of political agency; rather, queer activism here consists in evasion, latency, refusal, and in turning Browns injunction back on itself. What is 10 be done? We dont know,just as we dont know what an angel is. Backward March In his 1999 book, Disidcntificarions,Josc Esteban Munoz offers a longue- in-cheek version of what a queer, backward activism might look like. Recounting a joke that he shares with a friend, Munoz describes plans Cora gay shame day parade; This parade. unlike the sunny gay pride march, would be held in Feb- ruary . . . Loud colors would be discouraged; gay men and lesbians would instead be asked to wear drab browns and gra)S. Shame marchers would beasked to carrysigns no biggerthan a business card. Chanting would be prohibited. Parade participants would be asked 10 parade single file. Finally. the parade would not be held on a central city street but on some backstreet, preferablyby the river. Through this image of silent . orderly marchers filing through the backstreets of the city, Munoz suggests that the shame and self-hatred associated with life in the closet persist in the contemporary moment. The Polilies oj ReJusal 153 The e imaginary figures , joined in abjection, have not yet decided against the logic of their exclusion. Although Iunoz is clearly joking in this evocation of a gay shame march, his joke has become more relevant to di cussions of queer feeling and politic in the past several years . Munozs book came out one year after the activist collective Gay hame formed in ew York City. The movement drew on impulses that were also important to Munozs work and to that of many other queer scholars at the time: a ense that the transformational possibilities ofgay pride had been exhausted, and that it had instead become a code name for assimilation and for the commodification of gay and lesbian identity. In particular, Gay hame was disgusted \ ith the new look and feel ofgay ev York. Gay hame San Francisco (perhaps the most important offshoot of the original movement) narrates the history of the group on their Web site. Gay Shame emerged at a very specific moment in New York City his- tory. II was June 1998, the height of Mayor Giulianis reign of terror known officially as the Quality of Life campaign, during which ram- pant police brutality against unarmed people of color was the norm, community gardens were regularly bulldozed to make way for luxury housing, and homeless people were losing services and shelter faster than Disney could buy up Times Square .. . Gay Shame emerged to create a radical alternative to the conformity of gay neighborhoods, bars, and institutions most clearly symbolized by Gay Pride. By 1998, New Yorks Gay Pride had become little more than a giant opportunity for multi-national corporations to target-market to gay consumers . .. The goal of GayShame was to create a free, all-ages space where queers could make culture and share skills and strategies for resistance, rather than just buying a bunch of crap: The emphasis of Gay Shame was on the shame of gays selling out, on an- tisex zoning laws, and the gay move to the mainstream that was turning the movement into just another excuse for buying a bunch of crap. Rather than focusing on shame per se (as a feeling), the movement fo- cu ed on the shamefulness of gay pride (and gay consumerism and gay gentrification and gay mainstreaming more generally). Each year on the day of the gay pride march, Gay Shame an Fran- cisco holds a march, where nothing is for ale and protesters voice their oppo ition to the mainstreaming of gay life. The tone of the Gay hame events is a far cry from the quiet backstreet march describ d by Munoz, 154 Epilogue however. Gay Shame San Francisco practices rowdy in-your-face forms of direct action: though they embrace shame as a counterdiscourse to pride, they do not act ashamed. Gay Shame San Francisco has in fact made explicit their understanding of the relation between gay shame and activism in statements they made in the wake of a conflict that took place at the 2003 Gay Shame conference at the University of Michigan. Like Gay Shame the activist movement, the conference responded to the cultural moment ofgay normalization but in a somewhat different way. The main statement for the conference read as follows: The purpose of the conference is to inquire into various aspects of les- bian and gay male sexuality, history, and culture that gay pride has had the effect of suppressing. The conference intends to confront the shame that lesbians, gay men, and queers of all sons still experience in society; to explore the transformative impulses that spring from such experiences of shame and to ask what affirmative uses can be made of these residual experiences of shame now that not all gay people are condemned to live in shame.· This statement argues, from a queer academic perspective, what critics including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Michael Warner, and Douglas Crimp (among others) have understood as the political potential ofshame. As is perhaps to be expected, the conference focused less on matters of real estate, zoning, and class war than the activist movement ; instead, the focus was primarily on issues of representation, culture, and expe- rlence.? Members of the Gay Shame collective were invited to the conference and they appeared on the Gay Shame Activism panel during the second day. The panel was marked by conflict, and eventually fights broke out between members of the panel and the audience. In the wake of the con- ference, Mattilda (Matt Bernstein Sycamore) published an attack on the conference titled Gay Sham.! Mattilda accuses the organizers of the conference of inviting Gay Shame San Francisco only as fetish objects or token representatives to stand in for radical queer activism. In the after- math of the conference, the Gay Shame Web site offers an exhortation specifically aimed at academics seeking to write about gay shame. Under the heading Gay Shame &: Academia: the authors write: If you are writing a paper, GAY SHAME offers plenty of materials on- line and hopefully our meetings are great sources of inspiration. We The Polilics ofRefuSilI ISS hope that once your paper has been turned in that you remember to unleash your defiance on the world for all to see. GAY SHAME chal- lenges you to step away from the classist pillars of theoretical dis- course and celebrate direct action deviance (see HOW TO START A DIRECT ACTION page for ideas). During the conference, many academics in the audience responded to Gay Shames critique by arguing that they were also activists, and that the distinction is not so easily drawn. Gay Shame San Francisco was not impressed. The question as they saw it was not whether different profes- sors or academics did activism. Rather, it was a more direct confl ict about the fact that academics are, by and large, a professional class and so have very different aims as well as different ways ofarticulating those aims. It is interesting to note how little tension there is between shame and action in Gay ShameSan Franciscos rhetoric. The organization is not in- terested in feeling shame, or in the feeling of shame, although the tone of their material is dependably dark. Rather, they deploy shame: against gay landlords in San Francisco as well as against radical academics who do not back their theories up with direct action. Through their tactics at the Gay Shame conference and afterwards, GSSF activated (somewhat successfully) what we might call leftist academic shame- the feeling that results from diagnosing social ills without doing anything about them. Still, despite Gay Shame San Franciscos hard line about the relation- ship between feeling, thought, and direct action, the Web site features an interesting acknowledgment of the affective difficulties of activism, which they diagnose as post action depression: P.A.D.S. (Post Action Depression Syndrome) After your first action, you may find yourselves experiencing a wide range of extreme responses: mania, ecstasy, dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, dysphoria, vomiting, rage, enlightenment, empowerment, inspi- ration, disappointment , confusion, numbness, betray-al,vulnerability, eu- phoria, sensitivity, awareness, invulnerability wanderlust or enchant- ment. This is common. It is important to continue organizing. Brainstonn future projects to help keep the group focused, effective and inventive. Dont beworried ifpeoplehateyou- whenyou takean unpopularstance (and we certainlyhope you do), expect to be unpopular. 156 Epilogue This may bea great time to collectively write a statement of purpose in order to communicate the groups politics.This mayhelp build con- sensus within the group, encourage more people 10 gel involved and create future actions that work together to build a sustainable culture of resistance. Astatement of purpose maygive the group focusand di- reclion in order to work toward future actions that articulate the poli- ticsof the group in as many relevant directions as possible. Of course, this may also lead to arguing endlessly over differences instead of building an environment where direct action can nourish, so proceed with caution, creativity, glamour. intrigue and clamor.to Gay Shame San Francisco offers a stunning account of the complex and ambivalenl feelings that activism (and social opposition more generally) inspires. While insisting on the importance of direct action, the state- ment also offers an account of the potential pitfalls-s-rhe bad feelings and broken connections-that can inhibit such action. The statement ends, appropriately enough, with a directive. but also with a warning: Proceed with Caution-the implication being that getting stuck is a danger that comes with the territory. Feeling Bad, Acting Up Both the GayShame movement and the depression march recall a longer history of queer activism in which bad feelings were central. In tracing such a hislOry I would point not only to certain risky and disorganized forms of protest in the gay liberation movement but also to the insis- tence on bad feelings in the early days ofqueer activism. Acknowledging damage- and incorporating it-was crucial to the tum to queer politics and queer studies in the late 1980s. With the AIDScrisis raging, Reagan in office, and homosexuality recriminalized in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision, damage was all around. The activist group Queer Nation (an offshoot of the group ACT UP) was formed in response to this atrno- sphere of crisis. In one of their pamphlets from 1990, they discuss their choice of the word queer: emphasizing the importance of trouble to the concept. Queer! Ah,do we reallyhaveto use that word? Itstrouble. Everygayperson has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious. Thats okay, we like that. But some gay girls TItrP..liticsojRrJu, 157 and boys dont, They think theyre more normal than strange, And for others queer conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suf- fering. Queer. IIs forcibly biuersweet and quaint at best-weakening and painful at worst. Couldnt we just use gay instead? IIs a much brighter word and isnt it synonymous with happy? When will you militants grow up and get over the novelty of being difTerent? Why Queer . , . Well, yes, gay is great. II has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gaymen wake up in the morning we feel … Academic and Activist Assemblages: An Interview with Jasbir Puar Naomi Greyser American Quarterly, Volume 64, Number 4, December 2012, pp. 841-843 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: For additional information about this article [ Access provided at 1 Sep 2021 14:04 GMT from University of Manchester ] https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2012.0057 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/494062 https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2012.0057 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/494062 | 841Academic and Activist Assemblages ©2012 The American Studies Association Academic and Activist Assemblages: An Interview with Jasbir Puar Naomi Greyser Naomi talked with Jasbir Puar, professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers, Edward Said Chair of the Center for American Studies and Research at the Ameri- can University of Beirut, and columnist for the Guardian, Huffington Post, and blog sites. They discussed academia and activism, homonationalism, and what it’s like writing for multiple audiences in a moment when we have little control over how our words travel. Naomi: Jasbir, do you have any specific stories about times when activist analysis transformed academic work, or vice versa? Jasbir: The binary or the finite distinctions between academic work and activ- ist analysis is an impossible one for me to inhabit. Like many in my position, I could not tell you where my activist analysis ends and my academic work begins, or vice versa. So part of the issue, as we are discussing in this forum, is how to frame and discuss the multiple spheres of impact, influence, and labor that come to bear upon each other in fluid and generative terms. What interests me is how to address the productive nature of the binary between activism and academia and attend to the historically hierarchical relations of the two realms. Differing institutional spaces may entail different forms of output, media, and energy, but that does not then reduce to an easy equivalence of those differences to conceptual ones. Naomi: How do you understand the pleasures and challenges of writing and doing activist work across contexts? So, for example, how do you feel about the reception (and use) of your book, or your columns for the Guardian or Bully Bloggers? Jasbir: Obviously, Terrorist Assemblages was written with a very tightly defined scholarly audience in mind, and written for tenure also, which does matter. | 842 American Quarterly And yet the ideas have resonated beyond that demographic even if the lan- guage is “jargony” or too academic, as many have complained—academics and nonacademics alike. This suggests to me that we should not be so quick to invest in this critique of difficult language and should instead ask why it is that academic texts get taken up more broadly despite their purported impenetrability. We could say the same about conceptual work; in particular I have been amazed to witness the entrance of the concept homonationalism into the general lexicon of LGBTQ organizing in varying locations globally. The term homonationalism is a prime example of this marker of academic jargon that, on the one hand, requires a history of shared knowledge in order to be understood, but, on the other, in its travels, suggests irreverence about a theory-praxis species divide. So I am watching the curious life of a buzzword that has far exceeded the parameters of its production, within the space of a tenure-track time line and process, an academic publisher, an expectation of and dialogue with a scholarly audience, and its author; its motility is another example of how assemblage operates. It has also exceeded its geopolitical and epistemological boundaries, such that a study based predominantly on the United States is now being used to discuss events in Europe, India, and Israel-Palestine. But like any useful idea or term, homonationalism has gone the way of queer—it has increasingly been used to describe an agenda or a person, or a group/ identity, and as an accusation used to distinguish a good queer subject from a bad queer subject (which is of course ironic because that distinction between good and bad queer subjects is precisely what is produced by ho- monationalism). This may be one of the most serious problems of the activa- tion of academically produced arguments; not only activists but also scholars have taken up homonationalism in this identitarian manner as opposed to an analytic that helps to glimpse a historical shift within neoliberal modernity. Recently I did a workshop on homonationalism with FIERCE!, a queer youth of color activist group in New York City that works predominantly with low-income communities on issues of police brutality, homelessness, and unemployment. They do this work while struggling for legitimacy among mainstream LGBT organizations. The members of FIERCE! wanted to learn more about homonationalism because they were increasingly encountering the concept and not sure of its meanings or deployment. Of course, their work already is based in a deeply entrenched analytic and critique of homonationalist state practices and has always been deeply inspiring to me. So as we explored the language together, they resonated with the processes I was elaborating even | 843Academic and Activist Assemblages if they did not have familiarity with the terminology. They struggle against a homonationalism that is not an accusation or identity but an assemblage of forces, structures, and affects that implicates their own thinking, acting, and feeling. This to me suggests the need to privilege the porosity of the boundaries around language, to go beyond a reductionist linguistic post-structuralism to the body, the sensorial, the resonant. I describe the traditional theory-praxis distinction above as a “species divide.” By this I mean to push the metaphor of the shelf-life of an idea or term or how language and discourse is a field of forces and creation of nonlinear, destabilizing unpredictability. Like politics. My interest is not in prediction—or to know or describe what is happening in the world—but to somehow transmit tools for thinking that themselves will change what is happening, or how people create the forms and processes of political alignment. This is what I think I’m doing with FIERCE!—folding myself in again as a theorist, interacting with new groups on a plane of potentiality, not of control or of authority. Inhabiting this potentiality is precisely the politics I strive to espouse. On the one hand, I often feel uncomfortable when asked to authorize homonational- ism—to explain “how it works in Sweden,” for example. On the other hand, I have encountered my own dismay when I see some groups and individuals use homonationalism as another identity platform and as an aggrandizing political accusation or avant garde position. So it is both gratifying and complex to be connected to something that has gone viral and thus mutated (from) its host, part of a politics of citation and repetition—a promiscuous circulation in which origins and authorship are no longer primary. In some ways homonationalism’s recent travels has demonstrated assemblage, looking over time and through geo- and disciplinary spatialities of its citation, while in any single instance its use has been a reduction or distortion. Or not—I don’t claim to know. On the evening of June 27, 1969, New Yorkpolice raided the Stonewall Inn, a homo- sexual bar in Greenwich Village. This was notunusual: police raids of homosexual bars were common in New York and other American cities in the 1960s. This time, however, bar patrons fought back instead of passively enduring humil- iating treatment. Their response initiated a riot that lasted into the night. The Stonewall riots are typically viewed as the spark of the gay libera- tion movement and a turning point in the his- tory of gay life in the United States (Duberman 1993; Teal [1971]1995; Carter 2004), and they are commemorated in gay pride parades around the globe (D’Emilio 2002). Writing about homosexual activism, historian Marc Stein (2000:290) quoted an activist who claimed, “No event in history, with perhaps the exception of the French Revolution, deserves more [than the Stonewall riots] to be considered a watershed.” President Clinton made the Stonewall Inn a national historic landmark (Dunlap 1999). It is common to divide gay history into two epochs— “before Stonewall” and “after Stonewall” (D’Emilio 1992a). Claims about the historical importance of Stonewall continue, even though historians of sexuality have challenged the novelty of the events at the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall riots Movements aand MMemory: The MMaking oof tthe SStonewall MMyth Elizabeth A. Armstrong Suzanna M. Crage Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana University, Bloomington This article examines why the Stonewall riots became central to gay collective memory while other events did not. It does so through a comparative-historical analysis of Stonewall and four events similar to it that occurred in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York in the 1960s. The Stonewall riots were remembered because they were the first to meet two conditions: activists considered the event commemorable and had the mnemonic capacity to create a commemorative vehicle. That this conjuncture occurred in New York in 1969, and not earlier or elsewhere, was a result of complex political developments that converged in this time and place. The success of the national commemorative ritual planned by New York activists depended on its resonance, not only in New York but also in other U.S. cities. Gay community members found Stonewall commemorable and the proposed parade an appealing form for commemoration. The parade was amenable to institutionalization, leading it to survive over time and spread around the world. The Stonewall story is thus an achievement of gay liberation rather than an account of its origins. AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 22006, VVOL. 771 ((October:724–751) Direct correspondence to Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Department of Sociology, Ballantine Hall 744, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405-7103 ([email protected]). Supported by an ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline Award. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Northwestern University’s Culture and Society Workshop, the University of Chicago’s Politics and Social Change Workshop, and the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. Thanks to Terry Clark, Elisabeth Clemens, Wendy Griswold, Terry McDonnell, Josh Pacewicz, Bill Sewell, Marc Ventresca, Jolyon Wurr, Dingxin Zhao, and other workshop and session par- ticipants. The authors thank Tim Bartley, Tom Gieryn, Jerry A. Jacobs, Brian Powell, Fabio Rojas, Brian Steensland, Mitchell Stevens, Ann Swidler, Pam Walters, Melissa Wilde, and anonymous ASR review- ers for comments and suggestions; Shawn Wilson of the Kinsey Institute Library, Karen Sendziak of the Gerber-Hart Library, Stuart Timmons of the ONE Archive, and Terence Kissack of the LGBT Historical Society of Northern California for assistance in locat- ing primary materials; and Susan Stryker for insights into San Francisco’s gay history. did not mark the origin of gay liberation (D’Emilio 1983; Stryker and Van Buskirk 1996; Denneny 1997; Epstein 1999; Armstrong 2002). They were not the first time gays fought back against police; nor was the raid at the Stonewall Inn the first to generate political organizing (Murray 1996; Bernstein 2002; Stryker 2002). Other events, however, failed to achieve the mythic stature of Stonewall and indeed have been virtually forgotten. Why did the events at the Stonewall Inn acquire such significance, while other similar events did not? Addressing this empirical ques- tion provides insight into theoretical issues in the study of collective memory. Collective memo- ries are “images of the past” that social groups select, reproduce, and commemorate through “particular sets of practices” (Olick and Robbins 1998:106).1 As Wagner-Pacif ici (1996:302) argues, collective memories are “never formless. .|.|. The fact of embodiment is what all collec- tive memories share.” How memory is embod- ied varies within and between societies. Carriers of memory may include books, statues, memo- rials, or parades. Studies of collective memory have attended more closely to struggles over how particular events are remembered than to why some events are remembered and others are not.2 We conduct a comparative-historical analysis of the factors affecting the creation of collective memory by comparing the Stonewall riots with four simi- lar events that occurred in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York in the 1960s which were not remembered. Stonewall is remembered because it is marked by an international commemorative ritual—an annual gay pride parade. Accounts of other events are confined almost exclusively to books by historians of sexuality. Explaining Stonewall commemoration is central to understanding its privileged position in gay collective memory. Stonewall was not the first of the five examined events to be viewed by activists as commemo- rable. It was, however, the first commemorable event to occur at a time and place where homo- sexuals had enough capacity to produce a com- memorative vehicle—that is, where gay activists had adequate mnemonic capacity. That these conditions came together in New York in 1969, as opposed to in other cities at earlier times, was a result of historical and political processes: time and place mattered. Gay liberation was already underway in New York before Stonewall, which enabled movement activists to recognize the opportunity presented and to initiate com- memoration. Not all proposed commemorative vehicles are successful. The second part of our analysis explains the success of Stonewall commemo- ration. We found that the resonance of the Stonewall story, the appeal of a parade as a commemorative form, and the fit between the Stonewall story and the parade contributed to commemorative success. Timing mattered: while Stonewall was not the first riot, Stonewall activists were the first to claim to be first. Not all successful commemorative vehicles survive. Stonewall commemoration not only survived but also grew and spread. Features contributing to institutionalization included its annual design, compatibility with media routines, cultural power, and versatility. Our findings suggest a rethinking of the role of Stonewall in gay movement history. This research suggests that the claim that Stonewall “sparked” gay liberation was a movement con- struction—a story initiated by gay liberation activists and used to encourage further growth. The Stonewall story is thus better viewed as an achievement of gay liberation rather than as a literal account of its origins. We conclude with a discussion of the general relevance of the con- cepts developed. CONDITIONS FFACILITATING COMMEMORATION We build on collective memory and social movement research to outline how commemo- rability and mnemonic capacity facilitate the ini- tiation of commemorative activities, and how MOVEMENTS AAND MMEMORY—–725 1 See Olick and Robbins (1998), Swidler and Arditi (1994), and Zelizer (1995) for reviews of research on collective memory. Olick (1999:332) distinguishes between “the aggregation of socially framed indi- vidual memories” and the “social and cultural pat- ternings of public and personal memory.” This article focuses on public commemorative rituals. Recently, Griffin (2004) and Schwartz and Schuman (2005) have investigated the relationship between individual memory and public commemorative ritual. 2 Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002:49) concludes her recent study by recommending the study of “commemora- tive failures.” resonance and potential for institutionalization contribute to commemorative success. COMMEMORABILITY Scholars of collective memory recognize that the production and maintenance of collective mem- or y requires human activity (Halbwachs 1950:84; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991; Zerubavel 1996). Actors are unlikely to engage in “memory work” unless they identify an event as worthy of commemoration (Irwin-Zarecka 1994). Events defined as commemorable by one group may not be defined as such by oth- ers. Groups are more likely to find an event worthy of memory if they view it as dramatic, politically relevant, or newsworthy. Disruptive, violent, large-scale events are more likely to be viewed as newsworthy (Oliver and Myers 1999). Direct participation or perception that an event caused a change (for better or worse) in the fate of a group also enhances commemorability (Pennebaker and Banasik 1997). Events that fit into existing genres may be viewed as more commemorable, at least initially, than events that mesh less well with familiar genres (Jacobs 1996). For example, Irwin-Zarecka (1994) argues that initial silence about the Holocaust was in part a result of a lack of words to make sense of such horrific evil. Victories may be especially commemorable, but according to Irwin-Zarecka (1994:58), pure success stories are not as compelling as “mixed narratives” that combine “a shared memory of oppression” with victory. MNEMONIC CAPACITY Commemorability alone does not ensure com- memoration. Symbolic entrepreneurs must engage in mobilizing activities similar to those undertaken by social movement activists. They must frame the event (Snow et al. 1986; Benford and Hunt 1992; Benford and Snow 2000; Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002) and deploy resources to persuade others to approve, fund, and par- ticipate in commemoration (McCarthy and Zald 1977; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996). Sociological research on collective memory has generally assumed that groups have the skills and resources needed to build commemorative vehicles, perhaps because of a focus on com- memoration by well-resourced states (Wagner- Pacifici and Schwartz 1991; Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002; Olick 2003). Social movements, corpo- rations, and other non-state actors, however, also commemorate. These groups vary with respect to the skills and resources needed to create commemorative vehicles, what we call mnemonic capacity. Like other capacities for collective action, it is shaped by political, orga- nizational, and cultural opportunities (McAdam 1982; Morris 1984; McAdam et al. 1996). A group’s mnemonic capacity is closely relat- ed to its general organizational capacity; the development of shared memories tends to coin- cide with identity and community formation (Schwartz 1982:375; Bellah et al. 1985:153). Organizational and mnemonic capacities are not, however, identical. Groups may have the capacity for some forms of action and still lack the resources and skills needed to commemo- rate. For example, a group may be able to organ- ize a march but still lack the publishing facilities or media connections needed to preserve its message. Groups also vary in their orientation to the past. Those more concerned with the past are more likely to develop sophisticated technolo- gies of memory. Technologies of memory and commemorative forms vary historically and among cultures (Lang and Lang 1988; Taylor 1996; Olick and Robbins 1998). By commem- orative forms we refer to cultural models for commemoration. Groups with access to a broad- er repertoire of commemorative forms—to rich- er cultures of commemoration—are more likely to commemorate salient events (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). Cultures vary in their assessments of what categories of things should be commemorated, the circumstances under which commemoration is appropriate, and who may propose commemorative rituals. Some groups may be restricted by law from the use of commemorative technologies. They may not be authorized to build memorials or schedule pub- lic events. In contemporary societies, groups with low media access are disadvantaged because media coverage serves as raw materi- al for commemoration. RESONANCE If sponsors consider an event commemorable and have adequate mnemonic capacity, they may propose a commemorative vehicle. A com- memorative vehicle involves a justification for 726—–AMERICAN SSOCIOLOGICAL RREVIEW commemoration and includes a plan for how, when, and by whom an event should be com- memorated. The reaction of audiences to a pro- posed commemorative vehicle shapes its fate. We borrow the term “resonance” from the fram- ing literature to refer to how strongly a com- memorative vehicle strikes a “responsive chord” with the intended audience (Snow et al. 1986:477). If audiences disagree with sponsors about the commemorability of the event, the commemorative vehicle is likely to fail. Resonance also depends on the commemo- rative form proposed: forms familiar to an audi- ence and seen as appropriate are more likely to resonate. Perceived consistency between content and commemorative form also influences res- onance (Wagner-Pacifici 1996). Both the form and content of cultural objects convey meaning (Bourdieu 1984; Berezin 1994; Clemens 1996; Jacobs 1996), and not all content fits with all forms. Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991) demonstrate that commemoration is a challenge when the event to be commemorated fits uneasi- ly with existing commemorative forms. Audiences do not react to commemorative vehicles in isolation. Just as other cultural objects gain attention by “displacing others or by entering into a conversation with others,” so do commemorative objects (Schudson 1989:164). The resonance of a new commem- orative vehicle may depend on other demands for the attention of potential audiences (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988:55). A new com- memorative vehicle is more likely to be seen as fulfilling an important symbolic purpose in an arena with available symbolic, physical, or tem- poral space (e.g., a free weekend for another parade, ground for another monument). A crowded arena, however, does not always con- demn a commemorative vehicle to failure. If a new commemorative vehicle builds on existing memories, it may succeed. Arenas for memory are constantly in flux because new events demand an ongoing reorganization of a group’s relationship to the past; paradigm shifts or other ruptures may create “niches” for new memories (Olick and Robbins 1998). COMMEMORATIVE FORM AND POTENTIAL FOR INSTITUTIONALIZATION Even highly resonant commemorative vehicles may not survive if their design does not facili- tate institutionalization. Recognizing this, entre- preneurs often erect monuments intended to survive for hundreds of years. Embedding com- memorative ritual in the recurring, routine activ- ities of a group also promotes survival (e.g., designating a day each year for commemora- tion). Ritual provides the opportunity to rehearse memories (Pennebaker and Banasik 1997). Designing public commemorative rituals to fit with media routines may also contribute to sur- vival by ensuring periodic revisiting of the story (Oliver and Myers 1999). Physical endurance does not ensure the sur- vival of memory—commemorative objects and rituals may become taken for granted and lose meaning. Griswold (1987:1110) argues that cul- tural objects able to sustain multiple interpre- tations have more “cultural power.” High cultural power may enable vehicles to retain salience over time. Wagner-Pacif ici and Schwartz (1991:417) suggest that openness to innovation may keep commemoration fresh: “[T]he Vietnam Veterans Memorial’s enduring visibility has something to do with its unfin- ished, constantly moving, and expanding form.”3 Actors with high mnemonic capacity are bet- ter positioned to create and institutionalize res- onant commemorative vehicles. They have the power to label events as interesting, access to a wider repertoire of commemorative forms, and the resources to achieve a good fit between form and content. Resonance may also matter less because actors with high mnemonic capac- ity can use their authority to assert that an event will be remembered in a particular way. They can coerce or bribe people to participate. In contrast, actors with low mnemonic capacity depend more on voluntary participation, and, thus, on the resonance of the proposed com- memorative vehicle. RESEARCH DDESIGN Our goal was both to identify general conditions contributing to commemoration and to develop a specific explanation of why these conditions were more present in the case of Stonewall. Comparative-historical methodologists suggest joining multiple strategies of causal inference to achieve the dual goals of theory building and MOVEMENTS AAND MMEMORY—–727 3 See also Spillman (1998). particularistic historical explanation (Quadagno and Knapp 1992; Mahoney 1999). We employed what Griffin (1992) refers to as contextual logic through the identification of comparable cases and the examination of how possible explanatory factors co-varied with the outcome of interest. Sewell (2005) refers to this as “experimental temporality.” We identified the times and places most likely to have pro- duced similar confrontations, scoured primary and secondary sources for events that resembled the Stonewall riots, coded them on factors sug- gested by existing literature, and compared them to determine which conditions distinguished the outcomes. We worked inductively as well as deductively, delving deeply into the cases and moving between the development and applica- tion of concepts (Sewell 2005). This comparative approach helped us iden- tify general conditions facilitating commemo- ration. This approach, however, did not explain why these conditions were present at a sufficient level only in one time and place. For this we employed what comparative-historical method- ologists refer to as a narrative strategy of causal inference (Griffin 1992; Stryker 1996; Mahoney 1999). This approach employs an eventful con- cept of time (Sewell 2005), which directs atten- tion to the location of events in historical time and geographic space. In this case, where and when the events took place—in relationship to the New Left, the civil rights movement, and other political developments—mattered. This concept of time also kept us attuned to the inter- connections among events, including ways that they were part of the larger case of the devel- opment of the gay movement in the United States. This allowed us to see that the com- memoration of Stonewall relied on organiza- tional infrastructure developed in response to earlier raids. An eventful approach also sug- gests that historical outcomes are a result of “conditions peculiar to the circumstance” (Sewell 1996:862). A conjuncture occurred in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1969, creat- ing conditions that enabled activists to com- memorate Stonewall (Sahlins 1981; Gieryn 2000; McAdam and Sewell 2001). DATA C O M PA R A B L E C I T I E S A N D T I M E F R A M E . Homosexual communities were (and still are) concentrated in major metropolitan areas. New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles were obvious for inclusion—New York as the site of Stonewall, and San Francisco and Los Angeles as the other cities most important to gay move- ment development in the United States. We also collected data on Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, because they were also important sites of homophile activity. (In the 1950s and 1960s, organizing on behalf of homo- sexual rights was referred to as homophile pol- itics.) January 1959 served as a start date because earlier occurrence of viable contenders for commemoration seemed implausible. We included events in the year after the Stonewall riots, because other events might have claimed the spotlight before the successful commemo- ration of Stonewall’s first anniversary. THE DECISION TO FOCUS ON CONFLICTS WITH POLICE. Most homophile activity in the 1950s and 1960s was in response to police repression. Bars were “the primary social institution” of homosexual life after World War II (Bérubé 1990:271). They provided places to meet friends and sexual partners, and shaped individual and group identity (Kennedy and Davis 1993). As the most public aspect of homosexual life, they were frequently raided by police (Klages 1984; Chauncey 1994; Loughery 1998:chap. 9). Bar raids tended to follow a predictable pattern: police entered the premises, stopped activity, and ar rested patrons (Lougher y 1998:181). Sometimes newspapers published patrons’ names, and sometimes this public exposure led to job loss (“8 Area Educators” 1964). Homosexuals were aware of the scripted nature of the bar raid. In a July 1970 Mattachine Midwest Newsletter article, activist Bob Stanley explained that “[w]hen the New York police entered and closed the Stonewall Club during the early morning hours of June 28 a year ago, it must at first have seemed like a rerun of a seg- ment of that old, worn-out Official Harassment Story” (Stanley 1970). Experience with bar raids primed homosexuals to appreciate the transformation of the “worn-out” story into one of heroism and pride. Police raids of homosex- ual bathhouses, hotels, and costume balls also followed this script. We focus our attention on situations where homosexuals saw police as villainous and themselves as innocent, coura- geous, and triumphant—where police acted 728—–AMERICAN SSOCIOLOGICAL RREVIEW against homosexuals and homosexuals chal- lenged official authority. COLLECTING DATA ON EVENTS. We located events by systematically reviewing primary and secondary materials related to homosexual movements. Secondary materials included books by historians, journalists, and other schol- ars who have documented the history of gay communities in the United States. Homosexual and mainstream newspapers provided most of the primary materials, which we supplemented with documents located in gay archives.4 Relying on newspaper coverage and existing scholarship to develop the list of events elimi- nated occurrences not given salience by either activists or historians. Since we were interest- ed in occurrences most likely to be commem- orated, the selection bias of our source materials was not a liability (Earl et al. 2004). While a preliminary list of possible events included more than a dozen candidates, com- parison enabled us to focus on the five events characterized by the most confrontational response on the part of homosexuals. San Francisco’s most viable candidates were a response to a police raid of a New Year’s ball on January 1, 1965, and a riot in response to police action at Compton’s Cafeteria in August 1966. In Los Angeles, the Black Cat Raid of January 1, 1967, provoked public street protests sever- al weeks after the initial raid. In addition to the Stonewall riots of June 27, 1969, New York saw a large protest in response to a March 8, 1970 raid of the Snake Pit Bar. We consulted primary and secondary sources to develop analytical narratives of each of these events.5 We detailed the amount and type of police force, perceived legitimacy of police action, the constituency of the bar, number of arrests, duration of the event, the kind and tim- ing of political action taken (i.e., legal chal- lenges vs. street protest, immediate vs. delayed action), perceived importance of the event, how actively media coverage was sought, and cov- erage in the press. PRESENTATION OF THE ARGUMENT The results of the contextual analysis are pre- sented through analysis and comparison of each event in turn. Table 1 summarizes the level at which conditions facilitating commemoration were present. We discuss assessments of commemorabili- ty and levels of mnemonic capacity in each case, and show how they facilitated the spon- sorship of a commemorative vehicle only in the case of Stonewall. To develop insight into commemorative success, we then focus on efforts to commemorate Stonewall. The evi- dence suggests that resonance and potential for institutionalization are important factors in com- memorative success. The eventful analysis is developed through the ordering of the cases. A chronological organ- ization enables us to show the growth of mnemonic capacity throughout the 1960s, in part as a result of responses to police raids. Treating each city in turn allows a focus on city-level variation in gay movement develop- ment. We discuss San Francisco first, focusing on 1965 and 1966, when its most viable con- tenders for commemoration occurred. Los MOVEMENTS AAND MMEMORY—–729 Table 1. Conditions Facilitating Commemorative Effort San Francisco Los Angeles New York 1965–1966 1967–1968 1969–1970 New Black Snake Year’s Compton’s Cat Stonewall Pit Commemorability High Low Low High Low Mnemonic capacity Low Low Low → High High High 4 Primary and secondary sources are cited paren- thetically in the text, and are listed separately in the references at the end of the article. 5 A list of primary and secondary sources consulted for each raid, including sources not cited, is includ- ed in Table S2 of the online supplement (http:// www2.asanet.org/journals/asr/2006/toc053.html). Angeles is discussed second, as its most viable event took place in 1967. New York in 1969 and 1970 is discussed third. This organization helps us highlight the ways that time and place matter. SAN FFRANCISCO NEW YEAR’S BALL RAID, JJANUARY 1965 Six homophile groups agreed to organize a New Year’s Day costume ball on January 1, 1965, as a fundraiser for the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH), a new organization found- ed by homophile activists and progressive het- erosexual religious leaders (Boyd 2003:233). Organizers informed the police of the upcom- ing event and thought that police had agreed not to raid. Despite these efforts, sponsors saw what the Mattachine Review described as “the most lavish display of police harassment known in recent times” (“After the Ball” 1965:8–9; D’Emilio 1983:194). Police officers “stalked the area around California Hall, with police cars and paddy wagons in full view” (D’Emilio 1983:194). Photographs were taken of everyone entering and leaving the hall. The police demanded entrance, but lawyers asked for a search warrant. Three lawyers and the ticket taker were arrested on charges of “obstructing an officer” (D’Emilio 1983:194). Nancy May, the ticket taker, explained that entering the ball “took a degree of bravery,” as people knew that “there was a possibility that their bosses would get pictures.” She described feeling “like an historic event was happening” (Marcus 1992:141). A COMMEMORABLE EVENT. The next issue of the Vector, a San Francisco homophile publica- tion, covered the raid on its first page: Remember January 1! On January 1st the Vice Squad openly declared war on the local homophile community. A task force of 55 was ordered to intimidate, harass and make arrests; and to in any fashion destroy the ball held by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. This they did, in the most brutal and ugly manner, yet in contrast, 600 ticket holders behaved with exemplary courage and personal pride in the face of this outrage. (“Private Benefit Ball” 1965:1) Homophiles viewed the ball as significant even before it was raided because of its scale and the level of intergroup cooperation. The raid and the courageous reactions of organizers and attendees made it even more newsworthy. The raid mobilized San Francisco’s homophile movement. Organizations were eager to go to court to “establish the right of homo- sexuals and all adults to assemble lawfully with- out invasion of privacy” (“Private Benefit Ball” 1965:1). The ACLU defended the victims; before the defense had even presented its case, the trial judge instructed the jury to return a ver- dict of not guilty (D’Emilio 1983:194). Homosexuals also won in the court of public opinion. Heterosexual allies, who rarely wit- nessed intimidation of this sort, organized a press conference on January 2 “in which they ripped into the police” (D’Emilio 1983:194; Martin and Lyon [1972] 1991:261–62). The ball radicalized the newly formed CRH (Sweet 1975:170–73; Wolf 1979; Boyd 2003), which initiated a study of law enforcement practices and began sponsoring candidates’ nights for local politicians to present their views to homo- sexual voters (“A Brief of Injustices” 1965; D’Emilio 1983:202). These actions led to meet- ings between homophile …