Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism by Madhavi Menon (review)

Enlightenment universalism is too caught up in the chain of signifiers that produces essentialist identities of multicultural and neoliberal politics; according to Menon, identity is not a heterogeneous rhizome, as conceived by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, but rather a "minus one" that allows for a transformation between the body and the psyche, between desire and knowledge—a type of opening that allows an Indian woman to teach and know Shakespeare. In what ways are particulars, or the "essence" of identities, pathologized as ontological realness? "Particulars," Menon argues, "are universal—we all have them" (125); with such a statement she expands the possibilities for how our bodies desire and shows that such desires cannot be contained within simplistic identity categories such as sexuality, gender, race, class, etc. In her analysis of the work of Yinka Shonibare MBE, an African-British curator, for example, Menon points out the varying particularities of his identity: a decidedly "un-British" name conjoined with a British title given to him by being a member of the "Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" (MBE) that he has since incorporated into his name (25).