Queerly Remembered: Rhetorics for Representing the GLBTQ Past

Abstract

In other words, whereas the debt of gratitude tends to narrow our focus to one privileged source of some past “gift” and then tie us in bonds of guilt and subordination to that act of giving, santosha widens our horizon and acknowledges the infinite connections between all things and reminds us that we are all, at some level, equal in producing our world as we move into the future together. The question then is not “Whom do I owe?” but “Whom can I help?” It redirects our consciousness to the pragmatic judgments we make in the present to bring about a desired future. Although Engels does not stress this point, I believe at the heart of his reorientation is a revived commitment to a humanistic understanding of duty. He makes this clear in the closing pages comparing the yoga concepts of the “path of withdrawal (sannyasa)” with the “path of action (karma)” (157). He writes: “Karma yoga is based on the recognition that just as we come from the All, we have duties to the All. We cannot be solely concerned with ourselves because we are of this world” (157). Here, duty does not mean some blind obedience to authority and hierarchy, a kind of duty that would have us die for blood and soil; rather, duty means the responsibilities we take upon ourselves because in recognizing the ties that bind us together we become committed to promoting the common welfare of all. This is the kind of duty that Frederick Douglass appealed to at the end of his speech, when he addressed “everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind” (617). With the simple phrase, Douglass sidesteps the question of debt and ingratitude entirely; his focus now turns toward what timely actions we can make in the present in order to achieve the common ideals of the future. Engels sees the practice and ethics of yoga as a means to this reorientation, but this path is but one of many; what matters is our acceptance of the duty that comes with being a part of the common world, not because we owe it a debt but because we are willing to fight make that world more loving, more just, and perhaps even more beautiful.