Jonathan Alexander

I’m really excited. Jonathan Alexander, the person who has most vocally supported the discussion of queer issues within the field of rhetoric and writing (my field) is coming to my campus in April, to give some talks about issues relating to sexuality and literacy. My brain woggles, jumps, and geeks at the idea that I may even get to ask him a question or two, at some point. What to ask? What to say to the person who has probably had the single most impact on my thinking since I started graduate work? Today I’m re-reading his 1997 piece ”Out of the Closet and Into the Network” about how students talking about sexuality/orientation/identity is not just beneficial for gay students, but also for all students, because even straight students are highly implicated in the social conditioning that makes their lives. His discussion about how straightness can often be invisible makes me think (yet again), about how monogamy can be unseen by so many. About how monogamy goes unquestioned as the ethical choice–the ONLY choice. Alexander writes, “It is just where we think our personal lives are most natural and untouched by outside forces that we are most blind to the ways in which our society has conditioned us to think about ourselves and our identities” (210). To this I say: Amen. Hopefully this dissertation project will, at the very least, open up some eyes to the ways that monogamy is indeed shaped by social forces–and that monogamy as a relationship orientation is not necessarily the only way to live an ethical life.