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Constructionist and Deconstructionist Faerie Politics at Folleterre Luna
Constructionist and Deconstructionist Faerie Politics at Folleterre
by Luna
The Pan Gathering at Folleterre in the summer of 2017 was my first Faerie gathering. As with many other Faeries I’ve met since then, that first gathering was for me the most life changing and consequential. Depending on from which side of the fence you are looking, you could say that Faeries are great at either reviving or wrecking people’s lives. Like myself, I have seen a few Faeries who arrived to their first gathering having perfectly “respectable” middle class lives and a few years later ended up selling their homes, quitting their jobs and hitting the road in search of themselves. I can’t say that I have never looked back–life on the road has plenty of opportunity for retrospection–but I am definitely a happier person now than I was then.
I am always keen to listen to stories about how people have changed through the Faeries. Usually they are stories of healing and discovery. My fae sister May discovered her calling as a sexual healer (a form of sex work) and Silkie started doing political standup comedy in Parisian bars after performing in many no talent shows. I believe that the changes we undergo, in subtle and overt ways, are a testimony of the potency of the Faeries to have an impact in the world. In other words, those changes are a measure of how the Faeries are radical and political.
As I see it, one possible way to understand Faerie politics is as a means of de-programming us. In my case, the Faeries managed to de-program me from following a middle class life that was slowly killing my soul. More broadly, the kind of de-programming carried out at Faerie gatherings is directed at the violence and toxicity of a majority society that invalidates and at times still persecutes the expression of our desires and identities. Using a more evocative and yet somehow speciesist language, I think that is what Harry Hay was after with his call to “throw off the ugly green frogskin of hetero-imitation”. The hope is that by de-programming ourselves we will create the conditions for a truly caring and emancipatory culture.
Although the overarching task of de-programming is shared, at my home tribe in Folleterre I see two different strategies to go about it. The first strategy, what I call the deconstructionist approach, is indebted to the politics of the radical queer scene. In this approach, the task of deprogramming ourselves goes through the process of becoming aware not only of the oppression we have suffered but also the oppression we have interiorized and that we continue to exert, often unwittingly. It also aims to raise awareness about the privileges to which we are often blind in terms of sexual orientation, gender, race, class, etc. A central practice in this approach is to demonstrate our awareness of such inequalities and our willingness to dismantle them by naming and owning the categories that frame our experience. In my case that would be: gay, cis male, white, middle class, middle aged, etc. I call this the deconstructionist approach because, as I understand it, its project is to pick apart the bits and pieces that have given rise to each of us through historical processes and socialization and to discard or transform those parts that continue to reproduce oppression and injustice.
The other de-programming strategy that I see at play, what I call the constructionist approach, seems to have originated within Faerie experience itself although it is indebted to the hippie movement and counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. In this approach, the focus is not on deconstructing the fucked-up elements of the default world but rather to create a different reality. In effect, it is a form of imaginative politics that through play and experimentation wants to enquire into the emancipatory possibilities of community living. In the quest to give birth to something new, it actively attempts to erase or at least blur, some of the class markers imposed by socioeconomic extraction. It empowers people to express what we aspire to be, or what we perceive as our hidden, and yet most authentic, selves. That is, I think, the operational politics behind practices such as choosing a Faerie name or NOTAFLOF. At Folleterre, for instance, donations are anonymously deposited into a mailbox and, as a result, I am blissfully ignorant about whether the Faerie sitting next to me and gorging herself on hummus has donated ten, hundred or nada. The unspoken rule of Faerie etiquette of not asking people about their job, if any, serves a similar purpose. Drag is perhaps the practice that better embodies the ethos of the constructionist approach. By wearing a wig and heavy make-up, Faeries are able to both create a fantasy and to express a deeply held inner truth.
The two approaches I have described so far co-exist at Folleterre in a productive relationship at times, but also in tension. Last summer, for example, three Faeries decided to carve in pretty colorful letters the following sentence on a bench next to the outdoor bathtub: “Save the Planet, Have a Bath in Cis White Male Tears.” The reactions to the piece were mixed, but there were a sizable number of Faeries who felt hurt and upset at what could be read as a callous statement. On the other hand, the authors of the piece probably felt it was necessary to make such intervention to raise awareness about the persistence of racist, misogynous and transphobic attitudes at gatherings.
I believe that the tensions that erupt between the two approaches are inherent to their different strategies. Even if they share the goal of deprogramming us from the toxicity of a patriarchal and heteronormative society, it is hard to engage at the same time in the deconstruction and construction of Faerie identities. The chasm between those who want to dwell on the categories of oppression and those who want to escape them and create something else is a difficult one to bridge.
Both approaches have their merits, no doubt, but in order to avoid complacency or the temptation to present one strategy as superior to the other, I think it is important to take some time to explore their risks and possible flaws. The constructionist approach I discussed can easily be criticized as naïve and excessively voluntarist. Following this line of critique, it is politically naïve to expect that people will magically leave behind decades of conditioning and socialization and will be able to create something new from scratch. Even if some Faerie practices succeed in blurring certain markers, no amount of glitter will confer upon someone lacking educational oppor- tunities the social and cultural capital of betteroff Faeries. One of main risks of the constructionist approach, therefore, is that a well-meaning make-believe in the equality of Faeries could prevent us from grappling with our differences.
The deconstructionist approach, on the other hand, runs the risk of reifying the very categories that it attempts to dismantle. There is an argument to be made that as long as the current system of oppression maintains its hegemony, it will remain encoded in our being and, like it or not, we will continue to reproduce it. At best, we can aspire to become a little bit more vigilant and a little bit less oppressive, but emancipation belongs to a forever-receding horizon. That logically breeds suspicion towards those who can’t wait and want to start creating something new without going through the long and painstaking work of purgation. Another risk that the deconstructionist approach runs into is confusing sociology with psychology. It is an indisputable truth that, sociologically speaking, in France and the US (to take two examples) nonmale brown people are at a considerable political and economic disadvantage from cis male white people. It is not equally true that when I meet a French or American white cis male these few data points are enough for me to chart the course of their personal histories and struggles. The deconstructionist approach runs the danger of reducing individual people to sociological categories, thus erasing the myriad ways in which those categories are lived, negotiated and transformed. Sloppiness can lead me to a situation in which the person I just called “privileged”, without going through the trouble of finding out who they really are, happens to be a survivor of sexual abuse or endured years of bullying as a child.
The purpose of pointing out the possible shortcomings of both approaches is not to discourage anyone, but rather to show that there is no higher road on the path to de-programming ourselves from the toxicity of mainstream society. In the foreseeable future it is likely that both approaches will continue to co-exist at Folleterre. Although they appear irreconcilable in theory, in practice they seem to strangely supplement each other in what remains a fragile, but fruitful balance. At Folleterre, the contact between these two different ways of doing Faerie politics has had the result of softening the advocates of deconstructionism, while bringing more awareness to those who resonate with the constructionist approach. However, if we believe that on the road to emancipation there is a value in having a diversity of approaches and a multiplicity of experimentations, we may agree that whereasthe deconstructionist approach has successfully spread to a large number of queer groups and organizations, the constructionist approach remains fairly endemic to the Faeries. From that point of view, there is a particular value in preserving and cultivating the constructionist approach as a rare flower in the current landscape of progressive politics.
Only the Goddess knows what shape the future Faerie politics at Folleterre and the wider Faerie world will take. Whatever they become, though, I hope they don’t cease to touch and change us. I wish they continue messing up with people’s lives and setting them free from whichever cages they have grown accustomed to. In my case, it looks like I will continue to roam and ask myself questions, not really knowing what to do with my life but in no great hurry to figure it out either. For the moment, it is not a bad start to already know that I am a Faerie and that you are my tribe.
