From Mr. Big to mr. small

Seven Interludes on Impotence

Abstract

Making a case for the ethico-political potential of impotence, the seven interludes that make up this text focus on the virtues of small life. They show that passive experiences provide a lens through which to reduce the i, which allows for the other to become augmented. Inspired by the formal promiscuity of Jack Halberstam’s theoretical methodology, this text revisits some of the biggest figures of the Western philosophical and literary canon, which are read in relation to queer and feminist thought in order to intimate a diminutive, pathetic, and impotent subject.

Impotence and passivity are fundamental ways in which human being is, but their importance is rarely recognized in the Western philosophical tradition. Western thought has instead been shaped by the projects, projections, and productions of resolute masculine subjects. Its research interests as well as its form has been molded upon the ideas and dreams that pertain to masculine life, which have overwhelmingly centered on activity, productivity, and potency. But in the shadow cast by the potent top who makes big claims about truth and reality, the contours of another masculinity can be intuited, a diminutive self, an impotent bottom who makes small claims, or none at all. From Mr. Big who both enters and exits his interactions intact and proud, these interludes turn to mr. small, who always-already lives in the tender borderlands of ambiguity, negativity, and patheticism. Following these figures through experiences of average everydayness, failure, and impotence, these interludes show that passivity opens up new ways of understanding the subject and its relation to the other.