Disidentifications: Queers of Color And The Performance of PoliticsThere is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.Disidentifications is also something of a performance in its own right, an attempt to fashion a queer world by working on, with, and against dominant ideology. By examining the process of identification in the work of filmmakers, performance artists, ethnographers, Cuban choteo, forms of gay male mass culture (such as pornography), museums, art photography, camp and drag, and television, Muñoz persistently points to the intersecting and short-circuiting of identities and desires that result from misalignments with the cultural and ideological mainstream in contemporary urban America.Muñoz calls attention to the world-making properties found in performances by queers of color—in Carmelita Tropicana’s “Camp/Choteo” style politics, Marga Gomez’s performances of queer childhood, Vaginal Creme Davis’s “Terrorist Drag,” Isaac Julien’s critical melancholia, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s disidentification with Andy Warhol and pop art, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s performances of “disidentity,” and the political performance of Pedro Zamora, a person with AIDS, within the otherwise artificial environment of the MTV serialThe Real World. |
Contents
Famous and Dandy like B n Andy Race Pop and Basquiat | 37 |
Photographies of Mourning Melancholia and Ambivalence | 57 |
The Autoethnographic Performance Reading Richard Fungs | 77 |
The White to Be Angry Vaginal Creme Daviss Terrorist Drag | 93 |
Sister Acts Ela Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana | 119 |
Pedro Zamoras Real World of Counterpublicity Performing | 143 |
Other editions - View all
Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics José Esteban Muñoz Limited preview - 1999 |
Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics José Esteban Muñoz Limited preview - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
activist aesthetic African-American ambivalence American artist Asian Basquiat body burden of liveness C. L. R. James camp Carmelita Tropicana choteo chusma chusmería Cinema colonial color counterpublics critical critique Cuban Cuban-American cultural production Davis's DerZee describes desire discourse disidentification disidentificatory performances dominant culture dominant public sphere drag enact ethics Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick fantasy Felix Gonzalez-Torres female feminist film Foucault's Fung Fung's gay male gender Gomez heteronormativity heterosexual homosexual hybridity identification identity ideology imagine Jean-Michel Basquiat Judith Butler Julien's La Lupe Latino lesbian Looking for Langston mance Mapplethorpe Marga Gomez masculinity melancholia minoritarian minoritarian subject mode monologue mourning multiculturalism narrative Pedro Photo Pingalito play politics pop art porn position practice produced Puck queen queer racial racist reading representation Routledge scene sexual show's Smith social space spectator strategy suggest television theory tion Troyano understanding Vaginal Davis Warhol women York Zamora