For my presentation, I will be focusing on one of the recommended readings for the week, the introduction to José Esteban Muñoz's Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. The basis of Muñoz's theoretical work that underpins disidentification stems partially from performance art, with the book opening on Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay, wherein Gomez relates her experience as a kid seeing "lady homosexuals" on David Susskind’s talk show.[1] She recalls performing homophobia with her facial expression to appease her mother, but simultaneously sees herself in the lesbian panelists, even rewriting the script in her retelling to have one of the panelists look at Gomez through the screen and invite her into their community: "At this time we want to say 'hello' to a new friend who is watching this at home with her mom on WNEW-TV in Massapequa, Long Island. Marga Gomez? Marga Gomez, welcome to the club, cara mia" (qtd. in Muñoz 3). This act of interpolation pairs with how the homophobic staging of the episode (which treats the panelists as “other”) becomes a source of positive identity formation for Gomez despite it being designed not to be a source of identification for her. More specifically, Gomez does not identify with the show because it is not meant for her, but does not counteridentify (or reject) its representation out of hand; she disidentifies with it, working with and reworking the material to provide a basis for self-realization in a way that might challenge the normative ideas that underpin it. As Muñoz’s puts it: "Disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship" (4). Gomez's performance both is an act of disidentification, and recollects an act of disidentification.
Muñoz discusses more of the theoretical predecessors of his idea, including Michel Pêcheux’s argument that ideology is constructed in specific material and structural contexts. The framework for how a subject engages with material contexts is roughly what I outlined before: they can identify (assign their self to the constructions built by the ideological framework of power), counteridentify (directly oppose this framework, which thus works within the framework’s confines by working at it from a directly oppositional perspective), or disidentify (neither assimilate or oppose, but instead transform the confines of dominant ideology by working within and against it) (Muñoz 11).
An additional cornerstone of Muñoz’s framework is work by radical feminists of color. Specifically, the work of contributors to This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (which contains “La Prieta,” another recommended reading for this week), functions within gender studies while also fundamentally challenging the field’s appeal to a de-raced, de-classed, de-sexualized subject—that is, it disidentifies with white feminism to work toward a more radical and contextualized approach to liberation (Muñoz 22). The emphasis on subjects experiencing and living several marginalized identities is fundamental to disidentification as Muñoz describes it, and the emphasis on marginalized groups working within a marginalizing framework is thus necessarily related to the ways radical feminists of color have experienced and theorized hegemonic discourses and structures.
Gomez’s performance provides an example of practicing disidentification (including other examples of performances by namely LGBTQ+ artists of color, including Marlon Riggs and Osa Hidalgo), and I am sure that many of us in this class have done something similar in our lives. Whether it be a piece of performance art or watching a movie that both repels and attracts, the practice of disidentification describes a wide array of experiences: "To disidentify," Muñoz says, "is to read oneself and one's own life narrative in a moment, object, or subject that is not culturally coded to 'connect' with the disidentifying subject" (12).
Going into Wednesday, I want us to think about how we have each practiced disidentification, or imagine ways that it might be practiced. Specifically, I will be playing a clip from a soap opera that introduces the genre’s first character to explicitly fall in the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I will then have us practice disidentification with this clip in a hands-on activity where people will be able to participate (or not!) in a few different ways, which do not have to stem from one’s personal experiences/identity but absolutely can. I will obviously discuss this in greater depth on Wednesday, but for now I will leave the clip. Do not feel the need to watch it ahead of time, as I will play it in class, but if you want to have an idea of the material before the presentation then please do so. The clip begins at 4:32 and ends at 8:00. Also, feel free to reach out to me with any questions, clarifications, or concerns in the comments or in a direct message/email.
[1] I found no video of Gomez's performance, and the only clip of Susskind that I could find that had lesbian women was from 1971, which does not match the discussion of the scene as pre-Stonewall, so I won’t include it.
Works Cited
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Cultural Studies of the Americas, vol. 2.
Thanks Addison! I am wondering here about the politics of disidentification as a performative practice--or as Muñoz terms it, I am interested in how we locate the "performance of politics." We might say, to a certain degree, that Anzaldúa performs it in "La Prieta," but her route disidentification-to "what I do not identify as" (229) is not direct, either in her actual life or in the essay itself. That is, by deploying various modes of writing, interspersing personal stories with her own poetry, (and more than likely a bit of fiction) does she arrive at new modes of identification that might "transform the planet." What then, is the performative labor of disidentification as practice and ongoing process?
ReplyDeleteI love this call to focus on how we have each experienced or have been aware of
ReplyDeletedisidentification, and this post also reminds me of ch. 3 in "Abject Performances," where Alvarado analyzes NBC's "Ugly Betty." I wonder if Alvarado is, in exploring this show, doing a kind of disidentification. America Ferrera-as-Betty's assimilative transformation from "ugly" to a performance of "normative standards of beauty" is, for Alvarado, complex (108). The show at once usefully explored issues of undocumented U.S. residency and featured gay and transgender characters during the family-focused 8pm time slot, the show is--overall--still deeply problematic. (Here, I think the show promo visual on pg. 104 is especially illustrative: the promo declaring "from poncho / to honcho"). The "space" created by "Ugly Betty" is potentially a good one--but potential is where it ends, as the focus is "on what both Ferrera and Ugly Betty producer Silvio Horta have stressed is a universal immigrant story— a strategy that “[highlights] majoritarian values, fantasies and narratives” (18).
I am not arguing that "Ugly Betty" is a decent or helpful representative depiction of a Latina experience; I am suggesting that, rather, Alvarado herself is, borrowing Addison's quotation, "negotiat[ing] a phobic majoritarian public sphere" via this show. In stating the show's failures, making them clear and vivid to the reader, Alvarado also understands and describes how the show made room for types of identities which, before then, had been even less represented in prime-time family television--and begs the question of how we can do better. I wonder if stating "Ugly Betty"'s failures is, in and of itself, an act of asking for better--and if this is a practice of disidentifiation, of doing what Addison suggests: "instead transform the confines of dominant ideology by working within and against it."
Jane - I'm going to hop on board here momentarily, because I'm glad we got to Ugly Betty! Here are some potentially interesting [or just even more problematic] sources/rhetorical framings/discussions of Ugly Betty:
Delete"America Ferrera, from Ugly Betty to Hot Betty" (2007)
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/america-ferrera
"This is the frustrating comment America Ferrera still gets after playing 'Ugly Betty'" (2017)
http://www.vivala.com/entertainment/america-ferrera-ugly-betty-comments/7009
"Human and Latina/o Camp in 'Ugly Betty': Funny Looking" (Critical Studies in Television) (2015)
"Humor and Latina/o Camp in Ugly Betty: Funny Looking expands the vista of critical approaches to comedy and representational politics on mainstream television from an interdisciplinary Latina/o studies approach. González and Rodriguez y Gibson examine how Ugly Betty uses humor and Latina/o camp to reframe socially charged issues on the show: representations of masculinity and familia, immigration, drag and queer subjectivities, Latina sexuality, and finally, a Latina feminist critique of the American Dream. Ugly Betty moves beyond the binaries of traditional representational politics and opens a vista of critical possibility applicable to all mainstream texts that portray people of color through comedy." - Amazon Prime
Anyhow, I hope we get to this in discussion at some point or another (be it in relation to disidentification or in post-presentations discussion)! I'm also interested in the implications of the difference between the titles of the original Colombian telenovela ("Yo soy Betty, la fea" -- which is a declarative "I" statement) and the US title ("Ugly Betty," which is descriptive/proscriptive).
Addison,
ReplyDeleteI love how you tied Munoz’s theory of disidentification with work by radical feminists of color. Within the acknowledgments of the piece, Munoz states that “it is my contention that rage is sustained and is pitched as a call to activism, a bid to take space in the social that has been colonized by the logics of white normativity and heteronormativity” (xi-xii). This line reminded me of how radical women of color deploy rage as a rhetorical tool towards challenging injustice and engaging in activism. I am thinking, for example, of Audre Lorde’s germinal essay “The Uses of Anger”, in which she develops a framework of anger that reclaims it from its negative associations, and frames it as necessary towards creating better feminist movements and other movements for liberation. Sylvia Rivera’s speech “Ya’ll better Quiet Down” also comes to mind, in which she calls out an LGBTQIA+ movement that has been shaped by trans women of color, yet continues to privilege cis and white queer experiences.
I think anger is in many ways an essential component in how many of us experience both disidentification and our positions within academia. I am thinking for example, of your analysis of Marga Gomez and how she simultaneously is able to both embrace aspects of representation, while also being able to see how this representation is rooted in the creation of a marginal Other. Within the academy, many of us that come from minoritarian positions simultaneously identify with the many possibilities this job has offered us towards better understanding ourselves and our positionalities, while also having to be constantly cognizant of our “Otherness” within the space and how academic institutions are limited in faciliating justice for our communities beyond the appearance of representation and diversity.
Caught in this seeming paradox, many of us turn to anger as a tool that allows us to exist in this seeming state of contradiction. Contradictions which can be translated to other realms, such as the simoultaneously desire for a cohesive LGBTQ community while this community itself is still grounded in white supremacy, or a desire to be feminists, while maintaining the contradiction that historically feminism has served predominantly cis white upper-class women. In anger, I feel, there can be healthy exploration of disidentification in a way that fosters productive dialogue and alternative possibilities.
As has been pointed out in the blog post, disidentification is definitely a daily practice which at some point we have all performed. I also wonder if we can see this disidentification in the third chapter of Abject Performances by Alvarado when she discusses Nao Bustamante’s misunderstood performance piece on the Bravo show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. It caught my attention how Bustamante’s performance piece was very quickly dismissed in spite of its clear shock factor. If, in that particular episode, the artists’ objective was to create the most shocking piece of art possible, or at least something that makes the viewer feel something, why was Bustamante’s performance art, which seemed to generate the most shocked and confused reactions, only deemed “shock-your-grandmother” worthy and in the end, get her eliminated? Alvarado herself answers the question when she notes how the guest judge/artist reacts to Bustamante’s piece: “Serrano pays keen attention to both Bustamante’s presence (in costume) and the terms on which the piece was constructed and received. He is quick to note the ways the work calls forth the abject realm of homelessness and undesirable bodies, unpleasantries this version of the art world would sooner eliminate from their competition” (124). The specific reaction of the rest of the judges to Bustamante’s seemingly unidentifiable work makes me wonder if the judges themselves were performing an act of disidentification (which on the outside manifested as counteridentification, perhaps) especially for the sake of the success of the show. In other words, although perhaps never having experienced homelessness, etc., they may have identified in Bustamante’s piece a certain resonance with the idea of the unpleasantries of undesirable bodies that the judges themselves could have experienced in different ways. Alternatively, this disidentification could be a way to dismiss or protect themselves from problems in society that are just too hard or complicated to think about in this context. It is also worth mentioning how, as Alvarado also points out, the artists who channeled more mainstream yet sufficiently controversial and acceptably identifiable themes like racism and sexuality, received the highest praise. I think this speaks to not only a personal process of disidentification on the part of the judges but also, given that this was a TV show whose goal is to have the highest ratings possible, a reflection of a wider issue of the rejection of certain subjects in society at large. Although the judges’ opinions may have embodied a complete confusion and unidentifiability with the piece, I believe that this could actually be read as the masking of a very uncomfortable but tangible inner connection or recognition of the issues expressed in Bustamante’s work.
ReplyDeleteHi Addison,
ReplyDeleteI am very interested in the concept of disidentification, especially because as a strategy, it is important in how a minority subject negotiates with the public and private sphere to resist and create solidarity and coalitional politics. In the last semester, I had read a book by Erin J. Rand titled Reclaiming Queer, in which Rand talk about two specific dimensions of (what I would consider) as politics and performance of disidentification: Humour and Shame. The question of humour in adopting a performance of disidentification has troubled me because on the one hand humour is often crucial in an act of communication and self-survival but at the same time, what I also find difficult in reconciling myself with humour is how it can end up getting codified and creating another new set of stereotypes. For instance, in several queer marches in Kolkata, India that I had participated in, comrades often carried posters that said, "Queer hain to kyaan huya, hum to dilwale hain?"(" So what, if we are queers? we are large-hearted people"). While I completely understand the light-heartedness with which posters were carried, I felt as if the message that is being communicated(As we are large-hearted people, we should be accepted) ultimately ended up in defeating the larger goal of queer movement in India.
Additionally, I am thinking about queer shame(not as an opposition to pride but as a continuum) as a dimension of the disidentification politics precisely because of the intensity and myriad nature of emotions that shame can generate.I think that transformation(transmutation) is an important element of disidentification which engagement with shame as a tool for politics can lead to. I am just wondering what would be your opinion about humour and shame within gthe scope offered by disidentification?
Hi Sri!
DeleteThank you for sharing this with everyone. I think it adds a great set of layers to the conversation! I will say that I haven't done as much reading on the politics of shame/queer shame. However. I think the impulse to challenge assimilationist (identifactory) political impulses---which I understand as central to the gay shame movement---and its pairing with humor (I'm thinking of the evergreen protest statement, "Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you") are useful tools toward disidentification, as you describe. Shame and humor both interact with social structures, norms, and dominant forms of organizing, while also challenging them and reinventing them. Your point about shame being on a continuum with pride as well is a useful way to think about it, as just going all-in on shame vs pride would be more aligned with the counteridentifactory approach Muñoz describes, and all the issues that come along with it.
Additionally, I think that the idea of abject performances fits in well with ideas of shame as a tool toward disidenitifaction. In embracing that which is socially cast out, in embracing shame, we can find ways to challenge and work within dominant structures. That said, I think Krystal added a really interesting way to look at how abjection and disidentification may inform each other in her comment: disidentification engages with identity formation, while abjection deals with aesthetic relations (please feel free to correct me if I am misinterpreting at all, Krystal!). In that way, I think abjection and disidentification can serve as two ways to think about how shame can be mobilized as a strategy on two different levels, or at least in two spheres that intersect.
Addison,
ReplyDeleteThe way that you track Muñoz's concept of disidentification across the work of other theorists and collectives is really helpful! In thinking about the final question you pose, I think that--at least in my understanding of disidentification-- excitement is tied up in my experience of it, i.e. of finding myself thinking "I'm not supposed to like this or I shouldn't like this, but I do" and beginning from that perhaps uncomfortable position in which your immediate response perhaps pushes or grates against the limits of your "political consciousness" (I put this in quotations because part of the point is that it's, of course, impossible to separate the political and personal). Generally, I'm also thinking about my constant struggle to identify my stance on recuperative criticism versus criticism that is less interested in recuperative efforts. Of course, it differs from project to project and the context, but it seems like the third chapter of Alvarado's Abject Performances on Ugly Betty has already gotten us to this conversation. Does work, like Alvarado's third chapter, unintentionally engage in essentialism that draws lines around different kinds of audiences, their responses, their politics, and ultimately, their identities?
Also--and this is kind of a tacked on thought that I need to unpack a bit more--I'm wondering if it's at all helpful to think about Muñoz's disidentification alongside Stefano Harney and Fred Moten's discussion of undecidability in The Undercommons particularly in "Politics Surrounded" in regards to the tactic of dodging dominant logics that seek to easily position us. I also find Harney and Moten helpful for thinking about capital "p" Politics or, in other words, some of the organizing principles around the Political that might open as well as foreclose particular possibilities and futures.
I can’t help but think of “disidentification” through the lens Brecht and his desire that performance be dialectical and “argumentative.” His epic theatre is entirely predicated on the idea of alienation — and I am trying to think through how “disidentification” can be put into conversation with his vision of political theater.
ReplyDeleteBoth alienation and misidentification are interested in upsetting the seemingly familiar, in deliberately confronting the very idea of “subject/object” dichotomies but they seem to delineate from each other in how they understand personal identity in the process of performativity. For Brecht, identification in performance (either the actor “becoming” the character or the audience “empathizing” with the character”) is detrimental to radical, progressive, actionable theater.
With that being said, I think Alvarado is important in thinking about how disidentification can be an effective performance. Her vision of abjection, for example, does not include one that leads to identity formation but, instead, imagines abjective performances as ones that “reorient our quotidian commitments, toward willful otherness, displaced phantoms, queer failure, and apostasy.”
Her performances focus on the aesthetics of abjection not on the identity of abjective figures (her chapter on Mendieta seems especially relevant here) and seem to be tracing the very acts of diisidentification you’re interested in here. I’m left asking, then, is disidentification as heuristic as alienation? Is it the 21st-century non-masculinist version of Brecht’s “epic theater?”
I’m looking forward to hearing you talk more about this clip and your activity — I think it’ll really illuminate and help me work through a lot of these questions!