In Disidentifications, Munoz asserts disidentification is challenging an institution by not identifying with it, and also not fruitlessly trying to reject it completely when it is inescapable, but by working against and on it to change that institution in a comprehensive way. If, as Munoz also asserts, "ideology is the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. The location of ideology is always within an apparatus and its practice or practices, such as the state apparatus," (Munoz, 11) then I am curious to understand disidentification of the state apparatus. For instance, if there is an ideology within the state apparatus that is affecting peoples realities by prescribing or influencing an imaginary relationship with (or understanding of) that reality, then what are we to understand as the reality and what are we to understand as the imaginary?
Within this question there is the issue of intelligibility. The state apparatus (nation, country, the US, however you want to read it) uses systems of laws, naturalization, criminalization, education, taxation, etc to prescribe a set of codes onto citizens and non-citizens alike regarding the definition of both groups. Both groups also understand the implications of those terms. Citizen must find be able to fit in the classification of: gender, race, age, height, weight, etc in very specific terms. For a body outside of these terms, there is now a rift between the reality of the body and the ideology of the body. The ideology is not chosen, it is necessary for obtaining legal "rights" reserved for those members of the nation who are intelligible. For me, two very real examples of this are the Gender Recognition Act I cited in my second annotated bibliography, and also the debate surrounding face-veils and coverings in photo IDs and drivers' licenses, where some states still do not deem a person legitimate until they remove their veil and expose their physical characteristics for interpretation by the state.
If this system of identifiers of who is and is not eligible for inclusion into the legal benefits of the state apparatus is the ideology, and reality is the term for all aspects of a body that don't fit within these identifiers, then disidentification would be to understand the space between the two. What are the ways in which this space can be understood and what are ways that disidentification can tangibly change this system? Should the focus be instead to start conceptualizing the dissonance between the definable and indefinable in the body and use discourses as a starting point? Does it begin with trying to change the regulations regarding physical identification in gender, race, age, etc, terms? I also wonder then, if disidentification is realizing the all-encompassing nature of an institution, like a state apparatus, then does this refer to the fact that there is a state apparatus presiding over any physical place that a person can go, or rather, there is a nation claiming any given location on the planet? Or does this refer to the fact that, once given status (legal or illegal, citizen or non-citizen) i.e. put in a category into which a citizen must fit, then there is no undoing the mental effects of this ideological wiring?
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