Let's talk about binaries and intersections. We have several varying takes on intersectional identities, starting with Crenshaw's critique of "single-axis" advocacy, through Cohen's call for coalition-building along shared lines of oppression, to Nyong'o's reprimand that keywords like "punk," despite being "street" language, can continue to reinscribe notions of regulated behavior.
I find their arguments less contentious, because I am sympathetic to the values of coalition-building, left-wing movements based on histories of oppression, and recognition of the complex strata of privilege and identity formation. From a practical standpoint, though, I pose the following question to these advocates of intersectional identities:
Is there a possibility of exclusion through inclusion? In other words, do we run the risk of a) alienating potential allies who don't agree with a specific aspect of a broad-based agenda, or b) overly watering-down that agenda in order to cater to many groups whose particular interests may at times be at odds with each other?
Because I have more trouble with them, I want to focus more on the works by Singer and Lugones, who both take up "street" idioms - metaphorically? or literally? - to embody their positions as perpetual outsiders, navigating the margins of a system in an active attempt at resistance. Lugones concludes on p 231, "The streetwalker is someone who comes to understand, through a jarring, vivid awareness of being broken into fragments, that the encasing by particular oppressive systems of meaning is a process one can consciously and critically resist within uncertainty or to which one can passively abandon oneself." Singer envisions a similar binary, although she frames it in terms of the conflict between the bandita who "survives outside the sphere of domesticated stabilized identities" (23) and the woman philosopher, who attempts to "try, to dwell or, at least, to work in a place from which one is also always already exiled, dispossessed" (24) - the conflict between the "dutiful daughter" and the "daughter's seduction" (25).
My questions:
1) What does it mean to be a bandita or a streetwalker and an academic? I find it somewhat disturbing that these theorists appropriate these titles while sitting behind their university desks - is there a way to do this un-ironically or un-problematically? Can one be both "street" and "straight"? Through a close look at the text, can we work out how Lugones and Singer navigate this binary?
2) In practice, I like the idea of constant resistance and constant reformulations of given meanings. The problem is, while this works well on the intellectual level of fragmentation of identity and constant questioning, I have difficulty envisaging a life lived by the same principles - or even more, the world Lugones and Singer hope to create. In other words, I see the intellectual revolution, but not the material revolution. Is intellectual jaywalking enough to change deeply entrenched dynamics of power? Cathy Cohen admits that she's been "short on specifics" (47) - can we find specifics in any of the other articles? (Or, if we can't is this a problem?)
ive been thinking a lot about your first question since class last week and i finally think i framed my response! (great question btw)
although i see where you're coming from, i find it refreshing that these theorists use these "street" terms and i don't see it as appropriation at all. at least as far as lugones goes. because for lugones (and many academics already) its not a matter of learning how to become both an academic and a bandita or streetwalker, its a matter of actually acknowledging both parts of your selfhood that already exist!
this is really powerful for me. in lugones larger book she talks a lot about how she is a "world-traveler" going between a bunch of different worlds and inhabiting a bunch of different spaces with different identities. she articulates a unique way to go about this that is allows you to be "authenic" to all sides of yourself despite the many divergent worlds you might be partaking in. to me, this is also the basis of being a streetwalker. its acknowledging that you a given moment you are in a "street" space (ie the field of study) and navigating your positionality in that space with mindfulness and intention. its learning how to feel comfortable, act strategically, and "blend in" in a productive manner so that you can "observe" that world that you are momentarily apart of. in my understanding anyway.
to give a more concrete example. i understand myself to be an academic (in-training at least), but i grew up "upper-class poor white trash" (my mother's term of self-identification). obviously, my present social position in the academy is one of privilege, yet i am easily able to "streetwalk" when i go home in the lower-class world i grew up in. i am not appropriating this term or identity when i talk about it in an academic setting, since it was once mine, and in part will always be mine. however, i am now able to re-enter this world with a completely different "set of eyes" and understand it in entirely different ways. to me, this is what lugones was talking about. finding ways to be while not being with the mindful productive intentions.