Mash-up!

I would like to talk about the idea of the value of identity/identities. I am interested in learning more about how one perform's an identity and what that means for quote on quote "queer people." Also, I want to look further in the idea of resisting regimes of the "normal" as well as the idea of focusing on the logics of race, colonialism, gender, sexuality, and capitalism.
The articles I sought out are Patrick E. Johnson's "Quare studies, or (almost) Everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother" and Andrea Smith's "Queer Theory and Native studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism". In "Quare studies", the focus presumes to fall under the importance of calling for the value of identity and the idea that not everyone has access to each other's identities. His argument is rounded towards how people of color are viewed with the idea of queer and he uses his grandmother's views of queer to understand himself what queer means to him. Johnson uses Butler's concept of performativity to unpack his thoughts of her in critiquing the way in which Butler does not articulate in his words "the meatier politics of resistance" ( Johnson,136). He suggets an example, " what are the implications of dismantling subjectivity and social will to ground zero within oppressive regimes? Does an overemphasis in the free-play of signifiers propel us beyond a state of quietism to address the very real injustices in the world?"
Now to use a Queer this post: I want to use Sara's Queer This! of the image of the starving black children on the right and the gay men on the left about to kiss. As I had already commented on this i wanted to further use it as way in which Johnson describes his "quare" concepts. I think in terms of the idea of performing as a form of resistance Johnson would interpret the picture of the gay men as maybe posing in a sexual way to perform their identity or gay lifestyle. This would suggest that these two men might be performing in order to survive their day-to -day experiences. He mentions that we should reconceptualize "play" (performance) as "work". And then draw our attention on the social consequences of those performances. (Johnson, 140).
Now i want to turn my attention to "Queer Theory and Native Studies":
In this article Smith suggests the idea of resisting to regimes of the normal. I like this idea very much because it gives us a chance to talk about the ways in which the native peoples sought out to resist colonists with a queer look. Smith argues that native studies can be informed by queer theory's turn toward the subjectless critique. In other words you can look at native people's as not being acknowledged as a subject and not acknowledging themselves as a subject. Smith borrows Silva's "Toward a Global Idea" and suggests the concept of the "transparent 1" and the "affectable other". "The queer (white) subject is the universal self-determining subject, the "transparent1", but the racialized subject is the "affectable other" (Smith,45).
I'm not sure if this DE goes well with what i'm saying but i want to use Kelly's DE on Sullivan because Andrea Smith mentions some of the same theorists that Sullivan does. Kelly suggests, "Often queer falls short of its radical potential. Sullivan describes activist groups who find that queer is still male centered and utilizes white privilege. Queer can also fall into dichotomous ways of thinking that endanger coalitional strategies (48)."
Andrea Smith also argues to the fact that queer is male centered and utilizes white privilege. She refers to discussing the logic that indigenous peoples must disappear and through this logic of genocide, non-native people then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous, including land and resources (Smith, 53). The non-native people's are referred to white males as most colonists at the time were.

Finally, we can see that both these articles mention the concepts of the value of identity and the concepts of resistance and logics in referring to race, sexuality, gender, capitalism, and colonialism. I'd like to say that these two articles enhanced my understanding of queer theory.