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The
Journey of the Queer “I”: Dislocation
and Re-location in the Late Life-writing
Victor Marsh (University of Queensland)
In this paper, I will pose the question: “Who is a homosexual when he is not having sex?” I see what used to be called the sexual liberation movement as a sub-set of the larger process of what is also called ‘Liberation’ in Eastern spiritual traditions. I re-frame the great disillusionment that many gay men go through—alienation from the normative discourses of family, church and the law—as the beginning of a stripping away of illusions; a potential initiation, even, into a rigorous tradition of self-enquiry, finding the roots of the ‘I’ in the ‘ground of being’ (to use the Vedantist term). What had been previously construed as difference could now be seen as mere distinction within a unified field. Until recently, most appraisals of Christopher Isherwood’s work have underplayed the importance of his late period, with the prevailing view being that the poor chap’s writing was in decline. What was happening, of course, was that after de-camping to California, Isherwood the atheist had ‘got religion’, or more to the point, a guru in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Possibly the ‘best’ of his four autobiographical texts is My Guru and His Disciple, which documents his 40 year relationship with his spiritual adviser. This 1980 text could now be identified as a watershed for what Stewart identifies as a distinct sub-genre: namely, “gay spiritual autobiography”. Stephen Wade has drawn attention to some key issues – of ‘performativity’ and the search for ‘self’ – in his article for Critical Survey (2001) but his discussion centres on the novels, and finishes with Down There on a Visit (1962). Until My Guru and His Disciple, we are reading ‘Christopher’ ironically, as a character, and in retrospect. In this 1980 text, however, the ironic separations of ‘I’ and ‘Christopher’ have disappeared and Isherwood comes fully deployed to his present ‘self’. Paradoxically, the mystical practice which works to overthrow “the centrality and power of the directing ego” [Wade] had really allowed Isherwood - the man and the writer - to come to himself, a re-location which not incidentally allowed an accommodation of his sexuality with his spirituality.
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