Week 10 Maps - Ethan

Cruising Utopia
CU is an invitation to consider queerness, queer lives, and their socio-historic context differently/more critically

Queerness is not yet here, as such everything we do must be future oriented; it is looming potential/possiblity.

Present focus is normative, not queer.

Aesthetic and political practices required to reach queer utopia


Disidentifications
Disidentification is a strategy of resistance and survival for some minority subjects. It is a way to relate to identity that is not assimilation with the dominant culture and not counter-identification that reverses the status quo and puts minorities on top of majorities. It works in some but not all situations and for some but not all marginalized identities.

Performance of disidentification “offer[s] the minoritarian subject a space to situate itself in history and thus seize social agency,” (1). This seems like an answer to the questions Butler poses in her work on preacrity regarding how the precarious subject seizes power. Like the precarious, “Marga’s disidentification with these damaged stereotypes recycled them as powerful and seductive sites of self-creation,” (4)

“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) Butler is also present here in the idea of performing gender wrong being punishable by dominant culture.

“Disidentification is not always an adequate strategy of resistance or survival for all minority subjects. At times, resistance needs to be pronounced and direct; on other occasions, queers of color and other minority subjects need to follow a conformist path if they hope to survive a hostile public sphere,” (5) This reminds me of Taylor’s concerns on week 4’s blog post discussing the prevalence of subversive performances of gender and the importance of the QPOC experience in these discussions. Understanding disidentification as “a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within,” (11) helps me understand my role as the LGBTQ+ Project Graduate Coordinator and reminds me to check my own participation and proliferation of what Munoz calls “the force of whiteness in queer culture,” (9).

In the following quote, Munoz describes the queer subjects he intends to address: “subjects whose identities are formed in response to the cultural logics of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and misogyny,” (5). I am reminded of our conversation last week surrounding Laura’s provocation, “aren’t we all queer”. Considering this quote, I think Munoz might agree. Is being queer not about opposing the collective and dominant racial, sexual, and gendered normatives that constitute a neutral idea of human which is white, male, and heterosexual? We would be remiss to exclude non-sexual identities from queerness and its discourse and should heed Munoz’s warning that “a politicized agent must have the ability to adapt and shift as quickly as power does within discourse,” (19). Those in power are adept at creating competition between marginalized groups and influencing discourse to sustain their power; they don't need our help.

“Socially encoded scripts of identity are often formatted by phobic energies around race, sexuality, gender, and various other identifactory distinctions,” (6). Because the repertoire of acceptable social roles to play are inherently racist, sexist, and heterosexist, disidentification is a forced mode of self-creation.

“Identities-in-difference emerge from a failed interpellation within the dominant public sphere,” (7) This reminds me of how instead of re/inventing the wheel on gender, many subversive acts of gender employ aspects of the existing gender binary to critique it and subvert power structures. Although some individuals and groups /are/ reinventing the wheel with gender, so to speak, like the gender is dead and phluid project I offered previously.