From Paul Ricoeur’s concept of the “hermeneutics of suspicion”, in Paranoid reading and reparative reading,or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you Eve Sedgwick drives us to the process of suspicion to trustiness, from the act of “thinking” to the act of “doing”. The author formulates the concept of paranoid in five frames as an epistemological practice to offer a reparative perspective grounded in queerness.
Focusing on her development about Sigmund Freud, whose interpretation of paranoid was a problem for the queer community because it usually pathologizes us as paranoid or considers it a queer illness, Sedgwick brings a formulation from Guy Hocquenghem, who reviewed the traditional (damaging non sequitur) in order to change the perspective towards the queer person and transfer the spotlight to the comprehension of homophobia and heterosexism as systemic oppressions.
Thinking through the example of the practice of camp, the paranoid offers a mirror of a laugh that was never with queer people—it’s usually laugh queer people off. As the frame about “theory of negative affections”, paranoid works with the prediction of a bad surprise. Then, it’s obvious that usually camp practice works unveiling the problematic side, the mocking side, the dominant culture side. I’m inclined to relate it with the shade the bisexual (or panssexual) people suffer from monosexual community (regardless if they’re lesbians, gays, or straight) in this perspective. It’s common for bisexual people being seen as a mirror for the homophobia and heteronormativity we usually suffer. One of this usual shades is that bisexuals usually are accused of being the reason why monosexual community suffers prejudice, connecting bisexuality with polygamy or lascivious behaviors, for example. As proposed by Sedgwick, being able to be suspicious as a reparative practice of uncertainty may lead us, first, to spotlight the systemic oppression (heteronormativity, homophobia); secondly, to create social practices that do not simulate the oppressor system, instead, that stimulate ways of living based on people’s singularities, not just opposite to a system.
Eisner, Shiri. Bi Notes for a Bisexual Revolution. US: Seal Press, 2013. Print.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You're so Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You" Touch Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. 123-151. United States: Duke University Press, 2003.