Recently in DEs Category

I decided to take up the Judith halberstam's book the Queer art of Failure as my direct engagement. In the Book she presents an argument of the failure of academia to be able to make ideas and theories like "queer theory accessible to the general public. In class we sorta came to a consensus that she as well did not do a very effective job at providing "access" to her own theorization. I am interested in this idea of access that she presents because it has been a common critique towards academia that it is not accessible.

In the book she references movies like dude where's my car as a way to provide an imagery that is more accessible to the general public but here's the thing. Any reference to ashton kutcher or any of his movies pre-demi moore divorce is sooo passe. It just ends up falling flat and looks gives the general impression that she is just trying too hard to be cool. I am not trying to hate on Judith Halberstam I see this failure of the use of popculture more on a grander scale. The time frame in order for her to be able to write the book, get it edited and then published is too long of a time frame to be able to capture effectively any pop culture reference. Reference like the ones she was making are tricky at best because what is "cool" doesn't stay cool too long it will change and change fast.
The failure in her book... well I, that it's because it's a book. The way systems of publishing literary work now is not fast enough to be able to capture the moments that she may be trying within her book to catch. Much of the current technologies now allow for such rapid commentary to moments of pop culture that by the time a book gets published the issue is all talked out. I feel that any "failures" of the book that we might be able to identify are a failure of the system that she works under.

"unreal" bodies who are reduced in order to become "real" #quet2011

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

at the US-Mexico border,"immigrant"is identified through control,containment,surveillance, checks:marking these bodies as "unreal" #quet2011

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

Space=numerous, varied, open, connected variously, possibility, becoming, incomplete... #quet2011

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

"unreal"individuals are vulnerable to violence of norms. simultaneously they must rely on those very same norms for protection #quet2011

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

how do we give new meanings to current norms in order to make "unreal" lives livable/recognizable?#quet2011

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

#quet2011 performativity from a focus of survival, not identity.Who then is #real or #unreal?

— Briana (@Bribird6) November 28, 2011

Living beside one self is a fascinating concept. Chavez writes of this, as a state of ecstasy, one enters this state after an event or a trauma. As a result one realizes "he or she is not autonomous and does not posses control over his/her existence" (Chavez, 2). It seems to me that bodies of those on the margins are always beside one self. People in this position are the "unreal" never fitting in constantly in danger. Those who are in an ambiguous or in an in between state are in constant question, in need of finding a way to adjust to others, others are never expected to do the adjusting. In that attempt to adjust, that fact that one is even in a normative space challenges the assumption of sameness in and of itself. In that I can fully see how agency is enacted. The power to subvert is in existing, it many not be an intentional act on the part of the individual.

The space of prison reduces a person down to their most basic state, stripped of all materials used to express one self. Victoria refused to be so stripped, singing and dancing. What is really interesting his how the role of the others changed into more caring roles, in the face of a hyper masculine setting. Even though this was a goal of the penal system, it became a space of reclaiming and redefinition. Victoria's presence in the prison challenged the very system that sought to strip her of her identity; in this way there was a positive effect from her tragic death.

Reading essays from the anthology That's Revolting: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity alongside JJ Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure allows for the problematization of conceptions of 'queer' as inherently radical (by this I am defining the term radical as referring to root cause of social inequity). If one is to take failure as an inherent art of "queerness", what becomes of those who do not have the luxury/privilege to fail? Theorizing from a space of seemingly unchecked race and class privilege, JJ Halberstam hardly seems to engage with material implications of failure within neoliberalist structures that require the success of some at the failure of many. Erased is the link between failure and violence and violence, where the material implications of violence exist to the extent of bodily harm, homelessness, poverty, deportation and starvation, access to healthcare and even death. This denies the power of institutional and structural violence through implying a degree of agency and autonomy that many may not have while romanticizing the notion of what it means to fail in multiple contexts. Who is absent from a definition of 'queer' subjectivity that assumes a certain degree of privilege in order for one to be 'queer'? What subjects exist in contradiction to "queer" (i.e. queer's abject, an impossibility to queer or be queer)? How is capitalism, dominance and hegemony rearticulated in a 'queer'/not 'queer' dichotomy that values certain identities and means of resistance over others?
In their essay "The End of Genderqueer", Rocko Bulldagger presents limitations of the terms 'queer' and 'genderqueer'. Some questions one could pose of genderqueer from Bulldagger's reading are: Is genderqueer a politics of exclusion? Who is absent from conversations that produce 'queer' discourse and understandings of gender and sexuality? What is the radical potential of an exclusively defined community that divides people into camps of those who get 'queer' and those who do not?
Many in Bulldagger's community define 'butch' identities as archaic. According to Bulldagger, many genderqueer folk read butch as bogged down with "too much baggage", implying that 'butch' embodies masculinity in a way that is not queer. This reading of butch is homogenizing and reeks of ageism and classism, as it discounts the validity of older generations experiences of queerness while ignoring the working-class roots many butch-identified folk come from (Stone Butch Blues anyone?). While Bulldagger does not implicitly state this, I do wonder if this dismissal of 'butch' identities subconsciously seeks to establish 'queer' as something modern that was created from the scraps of inactive queer subjectivities found in previous generations. Many LGBT theorists of color suggest that the way to the future is paved by ones relationship to their histories.
Bulldagger also questions the absence of queer people of color, cisgender femmes, trans woman and folks who have "transitioned all the way, however [one] define[s] that today" (That's Revolting pg). First discussing the absence of femininity, this is interesting to me as it seemingly rearticulates heteronormative misogyny albeit in a slightly different context. Referencing arguments presented by Julia Serrano in her book, Whipping Girl, we may have reached a point where it is out of fashion to openly discriminate against someone who would identify as female; this is altogether different from saying we have reached a place where masculinity and femininity are equally valued. This is arguably the case for heteronormative and 'queer' communities alike). By Serrano's argument, many in 'queer' communities read those who actively choose femininity as their gender identity and expression as compliant in their own oppression. This naturalizes a hierarchical relationship between masculinity and femininity, where masculinity is more desirable.
Classed assumptions define femininity as inextricably linked to a politics of consumption. Identification as femme and expressions of femininity by this interpretation, exist solely through accumulation of material possessions--clothing, makeup, and perfume--rather than something innate to one's being. While this may play out differently in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans communities, it seemingly does exist as a link between many of those under the umbrella term of "queer". Class informs how one is to do and be 'queer' (Butler on performance and performativity).
Similar to class, race also informs how one is to do and be 'queer'. Cathy J. Cohen and many other LGBT people of color have expressed hesitation in readily adopting the term 'queer', often because of the relationship between queerness and unmarked whiteness (Alan Bérubé How Queer Stays White and What Kind of White it Stays is a good read for anyone who wants to learn more about this). Universalizing 'queer' is both patronizing and colonizing as it privileges the experiences of 'queer' identified white folk while eclipsing the narratives of LGBT people of color.

For this Direct engagement, I will explicate Chapter 4, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling and Loving Perception" in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes by Maria Lugones. This is a rich and complex text, and I believe is needs a lot of analysis and explanation in order to be understood. I will use many quotes from the chapter and annotate them as I go along.

I. Introduction
At the beginning of this chapter, Lugones states

"... the outsider has necessarily acquired flexibility in shifting from the mainstream construction of life where she is constructed as an outsider to the other constructions of life where she is more or less "at home" (77).

Lugones states that while this flexibility is "required by the logic of oppression," it can also be "exercised resistantly." She calls this flexibility "world"-traveling, and states that she will argue that this should be done in a playful manner.

II. "Arrogant Perception."
An important part of Lugones' argument is the concept of "arrogant perception." To introduce this concept, Lugones quotes Marilyn Frye:

"to perceive arrogantly is to perceive that others are for oneself and to proceed to arrogate their substance to oneself" (78)

Lugones does not offer any interpretation of what this statement means. I will take the liberty to interpret it as best I can. What I believe it means is that to perceive a person arrogantly is to only see that person one-dimensionally. That is, to see someone as a stereotype or in such a way that ignores the complexity of a person and her/his experiences, and to deny the possibility of a multi-dimensional subject. It is a way of seeing or interpreting a person in a way that is understandable/intelligible to oneself. Or, perhaps, it is to see a person through the eyes of the oppressor.

Lugones states that she plans to make a connection between arrogant perception and "the failure to identify" with the person that one perceives arrogantly, or to view a person as being a production of arrogant perception. She argues that as we learn and continue to perceive others arrogantly or to think of them as merely passive subjects molded and shaped by arrogant perception, we are failing to identify with - and failing to love - that person (78).

Lugones continues, arguing that women have an injunction to "have our gazes fixed on the oppressor" along with another injunction "not to look to and connect with each other in resistance" to oppression. She writes, "It is part of veing taught to be a woman ... to be both the agent and the object of arrogant perception" (80).

To elaborate on this point, Lugones discusses her relationship with her mother. She explains that she struggled with how she ought to "love" her mother. She thought that by loving her mother - by being a "parasite" (a term she uses throughout the chapter, and which I took to mean being dependent on her mother for housing, feeding, etc.) - she was abusing/using her mother. She also had the sense that to love her mother meant that she had to identify with her mother, to see herself in her mother - "Thus, to love her was supposed to be of a piece with both my abusing her and with my being open to being abused" (80).

What Lugones is saying is that the way she was taught to "love" another meant that she had to identify with the other person - identifying with, in this case, meaning seeing oneself in the same position as the person with whom one is identifying. Lugones saw her mother being used/abused by those around her, therefore, if she identified with her mother - saw herself in the same position - that meant that Lugones herself was in a position to be similarly abused.

It is in this way, Lugones argues, that "women who are perceived arrogantly can, in turn, perceive other women arrogantly" (80). Lugones is perceived arrogantly by others in that she is stereotyped and oppressed as a woman, as a woman of color, and so on. However, she was also perceiving her mother arrogantly when she saw her mother as being only in a state of servitude to others - this perception, Lugones argues now, is an arrogant one, as it reduces the possible complexities of her mother's life and does not take into account how her mother might see herself outside of an arrogant/oppressive gaze.

The point of elaborating on arrogant perception is so that Lugones can make the argument that white/Anglo women (who are perceived arrogantly by white/Anglo men), arrogantly perceive women of color. What makes this article unique, I think, is the disclaimer Lugones gives after making this argument:

"I am not interested in assigning responsibility. I am interested in understanding the phenomenon so as to understand a loving way out of it. I am offering a way of taking responsibility, of exercising oneself as not doomed to oppress others" (81).

Lugones does not wish to condemn white/Anglo women, for indeed it is not only white/Anglo women who perceive others arrogantly: as she pointed out, women of color can do it to one another (shown in the example of Lugones and her mother).

Additionally, it is not necessarily a choice made consciously. As Lugones argued earlier, women are indeed compelled to perceive others arrogantly, while simultaneously being compelled to understand themselves as being perceived arrogantly by others. Instead, Lugones wishes to find a way to escape the seductive draw of arrogant perception, and instead find a way for women of all shapes and colors to perceive one another in a loving way.

Lugones continues by explaining why coalitional work between white/Anglo women and women of color has been difficult. She cites Audre Lorde and her argument that the formation of coalitions can have a problematic homogenizing aspect. Focusing on "differences" which are constructed by the "logic of domination" is part of the "divide and conquer" strategy used by oppressors to separate and diffuse the radical potential of different groups of women. Lugones argues that instead we need to focus neither on sameness nor on "difference" (insofar as these "differences" are constructed through the logic of oppression), but instead of "non-dominant differences" (84). What this means is that we need to understand ourselves as occupying interrelated "'worlds' of resistant meaning," - that is, to abandon arrogant perceptions and to instead "travel" to other people's "worlds" and to see and understand these "worlds" (85).
Lugones once again quotes Frye:

"the loving eye is 'the eye of one who knows that to know the seen, one must consult something other than one's own will and interests and fears and imagination'." (85).

What this means, I think, is that we have to abandon our arrogant perceptions and refuse to use our own preconceived notions and experiences to interpret the experiences and lives of other people. To do this, Lugones will argues, we need to "travel" to the "worlds" of other people.

III. "Worlds" and "World"-Traveling
Before we can go further, we need to explore the concept of Lugones' "worlds." Lugones stresses that a "world" is not a utopian theory. It cannot be an imagined place; rather, a "world" must be possible. However, Lugones clarifies, any possible "world" will not necessarily fit into her conception of "worlds." Rather, a "world" must be "inhabited at present by some flesh and blood people" (87). A "world" could be a society, a "dominant culture's description and construction of life" including its constructions of gender, race, class, etc. A "world" can also be a "nondominant, a resistant construction" by a minority of the dominant society. Indeed, she writes, a "world" "need not be a construction of a whole society. It may be a construction of a tiny portion of a particular society" (87). "Worlds" might also be incomplete (88). Furthermore, one does not have to participate in or consider oneself a member of a certain "world" in order to be constructed as a certain subject within that "world." For example, the "world" of patriarchy may construct me as a "woman" and with that construction come adjectives such as weak, emotional, irrational, feminine. I may not accept that construction of myself, yet the fact remains that that "world" of sense still exists and continues to view me in such a way regardless of how I may personally feel or think about it.

The next point Lugones makes is that one can move between different "worlds" and may even occupy multiple "worlds" at the same time. Lugones writes,

"Those of us who are 'world'-travelers have the distinct experience of being different in different 'worlds' and of having the capacity to remember other 'worlds' and ourselves in them." (89)

The peculiar trait of a "world"-traveler is that she knows herself to be a slightly different person while she occupies different "worlds," but still retains the memory of each different person while she moves between these "worlds." The best example I can think of is this:

I think many people probably behave differently around their - for example - grandparents than they do around - to take another example - their friends. Around my grandparents, I become a different person: I am law-abiding and mindful of rules, I focus on my studies rather than on my social life, and I always tell them that I am majoring in political science, which is only about 1/3rd true (since political science is, in fact only one of three parts of my individualized degree). There are various reasons for my animating this particular self, one of them being I don't wish to give my poor grandparents (who were born in the 1930s, and must have been the big scandal of the town when they got married - since my grandfather is Catholic and my grandmother is Lutheran) a heart attack by discussing with them the gritty details of my studies of Gays, Lesbians, and Trans-folk (oh my!) and because it makes them happy to see me as the angel of a granddaughter they have come to see me to be. However, the person I become around my friends is radically different from this self I present to my grandparents. I understand that I am different people within these different "worlds," and yet while I am in either "world," I can still fully recall who I am in the other.

This shifting from being one person to being a different one depending on the "world" that one is occupying at a specific time is what Lugones means by "traveling" in her conception of "world"-traveling. She clarifies that this traveling may or may not be done by choice or even consciously by an individual. While it may be that I choose to be a different person while around my grandparents, it may also be partly due to the fact that in the "world" of my grandparents, they have come to see me in a particular way, and I find myself unwittingly animating that construction of myself.

IV. Ease/Comfort in Different "Worlds"
An important part of this chapter is the degree to which one feels at home (or not at home) in different "worlds." Lugones discusses four different ways of feeling at ease in different worlds:

1. Ease via Fluency

"The first way of being at ease in a particular 'world' is by being a fluent speaker in that 'world.' I know all the norms that there are to be followed. I know all the words that there are to be spoken. I know all the moves. I am confident." (90).

An example would be the "world" of our classroom. I can say that I feel at ease in this "world" because I am fluent in the "language" we use inside of it. I know all the terms and lingo we use to discuss queer theory. I know the protocols for discussion and sharing our thoughts. Therefore, I am at ease in this "world" - I am confident. However, if I were to enter a different kind of classroom - say, a 4000-level chemistry class - I would not feel at ease at all. I would have no idea what vocabulary should be used, nor would I have any sense of how I should appropriately engage with my classmates or my instructor. I am not fluent in the language of that "world."

2. Ease via "Normative Happiness"

"Another way of being at ease is by being normatively happy. I agree with all the norms, I could not love any norms better. I am asked to do just what I want to do or what I think I should do. I am at ease." (90)

The example that immediately came to mind when I read this section was the "world" of a church or another religious institution. One who is in full agreement with the faith being practices within their religious institution would feel at ease. She/he understands and agrees with the doctrine of said establishment. She/he feels that the religion/faith is asking her/him to perform rituals that she/he wants to do or at least feels comfortable doing. I am not a religious person, and so in any religious institution, I feel uneasy. I am not at home in this "world," because I either do not understand or disagree with the norms of the institution.

3. Ease via Personal Bonds

"Another way of being at ease in a 'world' is by being humanly bonded. I am with those I love and they love me, too." (90).

This sense of ease seems fairly self-explanatory to me. An example could be the "world" of one's family. One may feel at east at home among family, whom one loves and feels comfortable with.

4. Ease via Common History

"Finally, one may be at ease because one has a history with other that is shared, especially daily history ..." (90).

Lugones gives an example for this type of ease, but - perhaps ironically - I think it is not as profound for most of us in this class, because it is slightly "dated." The example I will give is of "90s kids." What I mean by this is kids born in the 1990s. While a group of 90s kids may come together without knowing each other at all before hand, if one of them says, "Remember cartoons in the 90s? They were the best!" I can guarantee that a lively discussion will follow in which each member references her/his favorite show that aired in the '90s, and much reminiscing will be had. While a group of strangers would normally feel uncomfortable around one another, the fact that they share a common history (i.e., the golden age of cartoons), they are able to feel at ease with one another in this particular "world." Someone who was not born in the 90s would not feel at ease, because she/he would not have had the same experience of watching the best cartoons ever conceived of, much to their loss. (Forgive my biased-ness. I am being ~playful~ here.)

Lugones states that it is possible for one to feel all four of these types of ease in a certain "world," but she adds that this is often only the case in the "worlds" of the dominant/oppressors, and one who feels all these comforts within a given "world" is often not compelled to travel between "worlds," thus causing the negative effects of arrogant perception and so on (91). Still, the ease one feels in different "worlds" is important to pay attention to, because it can be helpful in examining who one is in a specific "world," and in explaining why one travels between "worlds" to begin with.
Lugones writes that one may experience "oneself as an agent in a fuller sense than one experiences oneself in other 'worlds,'" while at the same time one may dismiss another "world" because one has painful memories of oppression or degradation within it. In some "worlds," one may be compelled to act in certain ways by other people, and may be unable to act in the way one wishes for oneself, yet despite this lack of agency/choice, this is still a "world" in which one travels (91).

The important part of this argument is that the "world"-traveler retains a perfect memory of each different person she/he is in each different "world." Sometimes these persons embody characteristics that are contradictory to one another, which leads the "world"-traveler to have a "double image" of her-/himself. Lugones writes:

"I can have both images of myself and, to the extent that I can materialize or animate both images at the same time, I become an ambiguous being." (92).

This, I think, is where the resistant possibility of "world"-traveling comes in. If one chooses to animate two opposing selves within one particular "world," this will cause ambiguity, confusion, doubt, discomfort. This, I think, can reveal the constructedness of arrogant perception. Lugones uses the example of how she, being a Latin American woman, is constructed as being emotionally intense. She may animate this emotional intensity either unintentionally or by choice. However, the outsider watching her will only see her animating emotional intensity, without being able to access or understand Lugones' true intentions (92). However, the outsider may get the sense of some internal tension, which may cause her/him to wonder if the joke is actually on her/him, and not on Lugones, and she/he may have originally suspected. Here, I think, is a link to Butler's theory of using performativity as a form of resistance. While performing gender in a parodic way may reveal the construction of gender itself, animating multiple, contradictory selves within a specific "world" of sense may reveal the fact that "worlds" to indeed exist, and that some of these "worlds" construct certain people in an "arrogant" fashion.

V. Playfulness
Lugones has now explained "worlds" and "world"-traveling, but she still has an important part of her argument to cover. At the beginning, Lugones states that "world"-traveling must be done in a "playful" manner. In this section, she discusses two types of "playfulness."

1. "Agonistic playfulness."

This type of playfulness, Lugones explains, is a particularly Western and masculinist conception of playfulness. Central to it is competition. She says there is uncertainty involved in this kind of playfulness, but the uncertainty in this case is about who is going to win and who is going to lose. In this kind of playfulness, there are rules, and one is required to know them and to follow them. In this kind of playfulness, the playful attitude is the result of an activity being designated as "play." Lugones uses the example of role-playing, in which "the person who is a participant in the game has a / fixed conception of him- or herself" (94). There is no room for flexibility or interpretation within this type of playfulness.

If one travels between "worlds" using this kind of playfulness, that person is traveling in the same way as an imperialist. Lugones writes, "The agonistic traveler is a conqueror, an imperialist" (94). This type of travel will only ever do violence to other "worlds," as it will try to conquer them and make them assimilate or disappear. Lugones writes, "One cannot cross the boundaries with it [this agonistic type of playfulness]. One needs to give up such an attitude if one wants to travel" (95).

2. "Loving playfulness."

This type of playfulness could be considered the mirror image of agonistic playfulness. While in agonistic playfulness, the playful attitude follows from an activity that has been deemed "play," loving playfulness comes about in the opposite direction:

"Instead, the attitude that carries us through the activity, a playful attitude, turns the activity into play. Our activity has no rules, though it is certainly intentional activity, and we both understand what we are doing. The playfulness ... includes uncertainty, but in this case the uncertainty is an openness to surprise." (95).

In this type of playfulness, the rules are not nailed down, and the participants are not concerned with winning or losing, but rather concerned with the possibility of surprise - of changing the game. One plays in a way that "does not expect the 'world' to be neatly packaged, ruly," and the participants are not pre-packaged subjects, but rather are "open to self-construction" (96). It is this type of playfulness that one must use while traveling between "worlds."

Lugones ends this section with this statement:

"In attempting to take a hold of oneself and of one's relation to other in a particular 'world,' one may study, examine, and come to understand oneself. One may then see what the possibilities for play are for the being one is in that 'world.' One may even decide to inhabit that self fully to understand it better and find its creative possibilities." (96).

This is what I take that statement to mean: Choosing to animate a particular self in a particular "world" fully is not submitting to an outside construction - it is allowing one to fully understand that particular self and to find a potential within it for change, for play, or for creating resistance.

VI. Conclusion
The ultimate point Lugones is trying to make, is that we need to understand that people can move between "worlds" and can inhabit multiple "worlds" at one time. We must come to understand the plurality and multiplicity of selves that many of us occupy. We need to abandon arrogant perception and allow ourselves to travel to other people's "worlds" in order to see them in a full and complete way - a way that does justice to the beautiful complexities of each person's experience. Lugones writes, "Only when we have traveled to each other's 'worlds' are we fully subjects to each other" (97). To travel to another person's "world" is part of knowing them, and knowing them is part of loving them.

"By traveling to other people's 'worlds,' we discover that there are 'worlds' in which those who are the victims of arrogant perception are really subjects, lively beings, resisters, constructors of cisions even though in the mainstream construction they are animated only by the arrogant perceiver and are pliable, foldable, file-awayable, classifiable." (97).

This is, I think I beautiful chapter, full of hope and love. Lugones suggests "disloyalty to arrogant perceivers, including the arrogant perceivers in ourselves" (98). While there are "worlds" that we construct for ourselves, there are also "worlds" that are constructed outside of our control, and in them we are constructed by arrogant perceivers, and are compelled to arrogantly perceive others. However, Lugones shows us that we are not trapped in those "worlds." We can travel to our own various "worlds," and through that travel, we can come to understand ourselves as complex, beautiful, and reject the arrogant perceiver's construction of us as flat, ugly, one-dimensional beings. Also, once we learn to travel between our own "worlds," we can travel to the "worlds" of others. But, we must do this in a lovingly playful way - this is the only way we can enter the "worlds" of others without colonizing them, and without bringing our own preconceptions and our own internalized arrogant gaze into them. We can accept others into our "worlds," and we can lovingly and playfully enter the "worlds" of others. By doing this, we can come to know and understand each other. And through knowing each other, Lugones says, we can love one another.

This article called " One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals, and Hermaphrodites With Attitude" discusses the argument of how gender and sexuality are construed or understood as cultural not natural. Within this article the authors Valentine and Wilchins examine ways in which bodies are challenged. They first discuss what trans and intersex bodies mean for feminist anthropologists, secondly they discuss what it means to understand cultural constructions of the body. They also define what intersexuality is. This is very helpful when reading the article. The authors also bring in the idea behind the 1 percent on the burn chart. The two authors then bring about 3 stories from 3 different people that either represent themselves as transgender or intersex, or gender oppressed. All three of them prefer to be called hir but two of them also inform the author they can be referred to as she/he.

I want to first examine the ways in which the authors explain their understanding of gender and sexuality and how it is understood as cultural not natural. Valentine and Wilchins suggest " As anthropologists over the past century- particularly from within the field of feminist anthropology- have developed understandings of gender and sexuality as cultural , not natural, categories of experience, they have also increasingly understood "the body" itself as a cultural construct" (215). The idea of embodiment, sexuality and gender come into context in terms of identity markers such as man, lesbian, or even transexual. This produces a coherence between gender, sexual practices and somatic makeup.
Next, the concept of bodies being challenged refers to the idea of discussing "what kinds of bodies challenge the cultural grids of intelligibly gendered, sexual and embodied identity categories and how these categories can contribute to a feminist and anthropological rethinking of what it means to say that the body is "culturally constructed" (215).
Next, i want to move into discussing the two issues Valentine and Wlichins suggest that adheres to the concept of challenging bodies. First, they explain the issue of what a trans and intersex body might mean for feminist anthropological understandings of gendered and sexual bodies.They conclude that the understandings may focus on the issues of power and difference. Are there certain bodies that fit this category of different? How can these bodies gain power? Second, they explain the issue and/or question of "what does it mean to understand the "cultural construction of the body" by studying bodies that are othered by categories such as transexual, hermaphrodite, or intersex, and how might one extend such an analysis?"(216). In this instance i think the authors are suggesting how we as a culture can understand the "cultural construction of the body",how these bodies are looked upon in society through cultural beliefs. What is constructed as "othered" body? In terms of thinking about intersexuality the authors explain this term as " a physical condition that refers to people whose genitals are not clearly male or female" (216). And that there are multiple manifestations of intersexuality... (216).

Next, i want to confront the idea behind the "One Percent on the Burn Chart".
The idea come from a conversation the author had with a registered nurse, who is all too familiar with transgender experiences. Wilchins explains that the nurse indicated to her that "in assessing skin burns, the genital area counts as only 1 percent of the surface area of the body. But - 1 percent or not- genitals carry an enormous amount of cultural weight in the meanings that are attached to them" (215). Wilchins argues that "genitals constitute as almost 100 percent of what we, as both cultural members and as producers of cultural knowledge, come to understand and assume about the body's sex and gender"( 215). This means that most people within our society hold genitals to be a huge part of how one identifies and when certain people are cannot be identified by their genitals it becomes a dominant issue within our culture. Why has genitals become so evident within our culture? Who decides that genitals constitute what a person's gender is?

Lastly, i want to conclude with the three people the author meets up with in discussing the issues of the othered bodies. The first person is Max and is intersex. In this context the author uses pronouns such as hir and she/he to refer to max. Max got surgery when he was as little as 1 years old and was assigned to be a girl. The second person is Morgan and is gendered as a woman according to the author's opinion of hir, She/he. Morgan's father was told by a doctor that morgan's large clitoris would have to be down sizes to avoid erections that may be painful if she/he would be wearing trousers. Morgan is careful to avoid mentioning hir gender, what hir genitals look like as well as hir partners gender.The thrid person is named Rikki Anne and does not identify as either intersex or as anything at all, except for gender oppressed. The author informs the reader the Rikki has been very influential in writing this paper. Rikki has had sex re-assignment surgery.
The author has discussions with these three people about the meanings of bodies. Valentine explains that trans and intersex bodies raise questions for him as an anthropologist. "The ways in which people physically reconstruct bodies comes to mind, but it also raises questions as to how we, as anthropologists and producers of cultural knowledge, make sense of them. The author also mentions the idea of power. Valentine suggests the issue of power in terms of not only agency, but also in the policing of these bodies by cultural apparatuses. what question comes to mind is how these people are being police, by who and why?

Munoz begins his essay with a description of the way that performing queerness on a stage has multiple signifiers because of the many ways that queers and queers of color have been disadvantaged and discriminated against by society. Munoz offers artist Marga Gomez's performance in her metaphoric bedroom as an act of resistance to the Bowers vs Hardwick Supreme Court decision which effectively removed the right of privacy from gays and lesbians. By performing from her on stage "bedroom," she is challenging her lack of privacy and owning her queerness in a way that she is opening herself up from her own accord as opposed to being exposed by the government.
Munoz defines disidentification as something that 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 subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship." To put disidentification into my own words, I would say Munoz is saying that they are survival strategies for oppressed minority groups in order to exist in a world that constantly punishes them for existing in a non-normative framework. Munoz also posits that it is possible to exist within and outside of dominant practices while utilizing disidentification survival strategies. I wonder how it is possible to simultaneously exist within and outside of a space. Perhaps it is participating in mainstream Capitalism, for example, while also resisting in other ways such as performing a queer gender or unintelligible sexuality.
Munoz says that these identities-in-difference come from a failure to adopt society's identity norms and create a counterpublic sphere of identity. Munoz provides a definition of identity by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis that states that identity is assimilating to a certain model. By disidentifying, you are resisting assimilation into the model that has been created for us. He discusses Sedgwick's argument that by identifying with something, you are disidentifying with some other identity. This is similar to Judith Butler's idea that in order to create the heterosexual, one most construct the opposite: the homosexual.
Munoz moves to discuss Marlon Brigg's discussion of queerness as always being associated with whiteness, a problem we still face today. Much of the gay rights movement is still seen as "white-faced," or represented only by upper-middle class, white, gay men. This leaves out the possibly for representation for queers of color, of lower class, of lesbians, of transpeople; the list goes on and on. We have a very homonormative ideal about the LGBT rights movement and it's main struggle: gay marriage. This exclusion combined with the racist idea that the African American community is somehow more homophobic and intolerant of gay people makes the gay rights movement a very racist space.
Munoz delves deeper into the idea of working against and within a dominant ideology, clearing up some of my previous confusion. He states that, "this 'working on and against' is a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change while at the same time valuing the importance of local or everyday struggles of resistance."

My assigned Tracking Term reading included selections from the book That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, which includes submissions from various authors concerned with anit-assimilationist queer resistance. I would encourage you all to take a look at this book, which is very helpful in interrogating anti-assimilationist queer politics and strategies. For my Tracking term project, I focused on three pieces that highlighted and/or problematized potential sites of queer resistance.

The first piece is entitled "Sites of Racism or Sites of Resistance?" and is written by Priyank Jindal. In this essay, Jindal points to the emergence of mainstream gay patriotism and its racist implications. The author framed the move as an assimilation accomplished through white supremacy, one that pitted the privileged (presumably white) "Amerikan" against the figure of the Middle Eastern terrorist and asked mainstream "Amerika" who was worse. Their ability to mainstream, siding with the "victims" of anti-"Amerikan" terrorism, was a highly visible assertion of white privilege. The author goes on to highlight some of the ways in which mainstream gay activist and cultural groups are rarely concerned with issues affecting the poor, the non-white, the trans, etc.

The next piece I looked at was entitled "Revolting", presumably an inspiration for the name of the book, and was written by Josina Manu Maltzman. In this text, Maltzman focuses on resisting gay mainstream consumerist culture. For example, she starts the piece off my telling of her attendance at a Gay Pride Festival in which she was costumed to protest the event. The author also suggests the importance of resisting certain privileges that may be afforded to her due to her status as a white, anglo-featured Jew. She goes on to encourage others who can "pass", who have certain privileges, not to take advantage of them.

The last piece used in my presentation was entitled "Inside the Box", written by Neil Edgar, a zine author who, at least at the time, was imprisoned in the California state penitentiary system. Edgar writes very candidly about his status as a rebellious resistance in an institution that's primary goal is to dehumanize and deindividualize its captives. He also talks about the rigid binary (trans)gender roles that emerge within the prison when men assume homonormatively traditional butch/femme performances within the institution, expression they would not necessarily assume on the "outside". I found this piece particularly interesting not only because of the awesome writing, but because of the massive, all-encompassing forces that the author is resisting from. To resist in a system specifically designed to demoralize and erase difference is quite a feat.

In this article i would like to talk about the ways in which Butler talks to materiality of the body and to the performativity of gender.
Butler proposes the idea of regulatory norms of sex and how it works as a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies (2). Butler then moves her thought process into the concept of power. She suggests that the fixity of the body, its movements, and contours will be fully material, but also that materiality will be thought of as way to effect power (2).This makes me think about ways in which performativity can be thought of as a way to effect power. For one to perform their gender may very well be a way of gaining power. Regulatory norms of sex forms a performative space that promotes the ideas of materiality of bodies. Materiality of bodies adheres to the very "sex" of the person as i think Butler is suggesting. Does she mean certain people are performing their sex through their bodies?

Next, I want to move into Butler's idea of the subject through identification with the normative phantasm of sex and the idea that identification produces the concept of the abject. Butler proposes " the forming of a subject requires an identification with the normative phantasm of "sex", and this identification takes place through a repudiation which produces a domain of abjection, a repudiation without which the subject cannot emerge" (3). This sentence suggests that the forming of a subject must adhere to an identification that includes normative phantasms of sex. In other words in order to form a subject you need to make some kind of identification for the subject with the norms of sex. "This is a refusal or repudiation which creates a valence of "abjection" and its status for the subject as a threatening spectre" (3). This line represents the idea of abjection being part of a kind of refusal for the subject; to refuse the norms of sex, and this becomes a way of threatening the subject in creating something that is feared.
I like this article because of the concepts of materiality of the body, performtivity and how it links into the body, also because of the concept of a formation of a subject. The subject is linked into the formation of materiality and performativity.

This is my first attempt to tweet while reading. I have to say I liked it very much, it helped me to understand what I was looking at. Plus I think Foucault is one of the most interesting minds. I like tweeting as a way of note keeping, also others may become interested by the passages chosen. The internet is a source of power and resistance, I find myself wondering what he would have thought of this class. p.s I just realized I posted @quet2011 not #, so you may not see it on the scroll. Good thing, it's long!?!

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
#quet2011 wondering then how Foucault would have equated facebook in the exercise of power relations.
1 minute ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
#quet2011bib dos on the way
9 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 Foucault blows my mind!!
16 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 silence and shelter for power. there is then no one truth that can be undone?
21 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 discourse transmits and produces power.
22 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 therefor we are all implicated in power relations.
26 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet though discourse power and knowledge join
27 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 "medicalization of sex and the psychiatrization of its non-genital form". didn't get that till now!!
28 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 relations of power are a matrix, moving , changing.
32 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 techniques of power knowledge and procedures of discourse were capable of investing (powers, target) WOW!
36 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 "How was the action of these power relations modified by their very exercise"? good question
41 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 interesting how power and resistance shape destroy and reform thought institutions and bodies.
50 minutes ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 "where there is power there is resistance" Foucault. Form inside, power is within there is no escaping.
1 hour ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 power from below a thought we never conceive of unless its viewed as revolution, not that we had power in the first place. Ummm?
1 hour ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 power is NOT a structure or institution, "Politics is war by other means"...I like that!!
1 hour ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 power is ever present, produced at every moment in relation from point to point.
1 hour ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 live tweeting thoughts back on line
1 hour ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 no existence of central point of power.
6 hours ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 "power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations" uhh wow
7 hours ago

mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 this is a power bagel
7 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete
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mejiagmn Gina Cristian
@quet2011 live tweet d.e Foucault History of Sexuality
7 hours ago

This piece was challenging for me to read given how reactionary it was. While many of Nussbaum's assumptions are incredibly problematic, points she raises throughout this article are well taken.

Beginning Nussbaum's article, the immediate question that is raised for me is how Nussbaum defines "women". Nussbaum is highly critical of Butler, criticizing Butler for what Nussbaum is reading as apathy and passivity toward activism. Nussbaum further critiques Butler suggesting that her theorizing isn't sound as it is specifically rooted within geographic space (i.e. the "global north", white and upper-middle class) and is solely written for the purposes of academic consumption within the Ivory tower. I believe Nussbaum implies that Butler is engaged in a process of theorizing the category of "women" out of existence. Specifically, Nussbaum remains concerned with negligence of the material realities of poverty, sexual assault, domestic violence, heterosexism and homophobia, structural and institutional violence. Claiming to speak for LGBTQ women, women of color, immigrant women, women residing in the "global south" and working-class women, Nussbaum's definition of "women" as a categorical space remains homogenizing as it assumes her position as a legal scholar is somehow not rooted in a classed, raced and geographic position. An example of this is Nussbaum's use of flaws in rape laws in India as this came across as patronizing. Nussbaum implies a universalized trajectory of development that places a more developed (parental) United States in juxtaposition to a less developed (infantilized) India. That this trajectory is universalized operates on an uninterogated assumption that India will one day develop in a way reflective of the United States. The two countries do not have historical or cultural specificities that have resulted in how laws are written.

Nussbaum places theory and activism as mutually exclusive polar opposites which I believe resembles the Cartesianist split of mind and body. Butler has been active within anti-zionist movements and LGBTQ movements. Michel Foucault was involved in prison abolitionist and LGBTQ movements, that either intended for their theorizations to be used as a means of resistance while also being engaged within communities is rendered both invisible and impossible by Nussbaum's reading.

I also find it interesting that Nussbaum juxtaposes the disrespectful language of Judith Butler to that of respectful language of male philosophers throughout the first half of this paper (though she does cite the work of female and feminist scholars toward the end of this piece).

What I believe is important to take from this piece is that activism within the academy alone can never be enough. Theorizations by feminists of color claiming an impossibility of neutral and objective knowledges, instead claiming situated knowledges as valuable (theory of the flesh). Theorization that is rooted in space and place is a space blurs the divisions Nussbaum has constructed between the academy and the material world.

In class I have made the remark that a common critique of Butler is the limitation of what her theorizing can do. A gender non-conforming queer identified person will find little use in the passages from Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter when experiencing physical and/or verbal violence directed at their body because of their non-normative gender and sexuality. But to deny the reception feminist and LGBTQ communities had to Gender Trouble, folks who were not in academia, neglects the ability of academic texts to leave the Ivory tower and not simply be consumed but embodied (Riot Grrrl? Homocore???).

So, this was my first attempt at live-tweeting, or taking queer notes as I've started to call it. This was my second time around on the Allison piece. In all honesty, I felt I paid it better attention the first time, reading it uninterrupted. However, the tweeting did help me to engage with the piece and ask questions. I apologize for having so many tweets. It seemed necessary for this piece. *Sorry about the poor format, I had some trouble embedding my tweets. Please, start at the bottom.

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 ...are dismissed when it is utilized by the upper classes and internalized by the poor themselves, who feel shamed and hopeless.
2 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 "...I know that suffering does not ennoble. It destroys" (Allison). The good/ bad poor is a dangerous myth. Whole populations...
2 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 ...We live in a society that prioritizes crime by the class of the perpetrator. Not Allison's focus, but I wanted to note it.
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 "and after jail he couldn't join the army" (Allison). As if stealing money from phone booths makes you unfit to shoot people...
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 ...Is Allison describing a specific arrangement here, one that is only possible when money has extreme material consequences?
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 I find myself thinking about the quasi-prostitution Allison writes of, are relationships of unequal power exclusive to poor women?
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 Allison's family's rejection of unions reminds me of capitalism's need to keep folks on the bottom in competition.
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 We can see this phenomenon in greater society with class rigidity.
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 Dorothy talks about avoiding home for sometimes years at a time, as if poverty/ hopelessness is contagious.
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 When Allison talks about hope/fear in regard to her familial community, it is as if to hope is too dangerous, too much of a risk.
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 "I also experienced a new level of fea[r], a fear of losing what had never before been imaginable" (Allison).
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 ...Or, does the abject, having no hope to survive within, commit a sort of encouraged suicide?
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 "...we had been encouraged to destroy ourselves..." (Allison). Do those within the hegemonic destroy the abject?
3 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 ....but how many of her family/community members did not achieve what she did? Does that proportion justify the system we live in?
4 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 To some, Allison's story might be the "American Dream" played out. Poor girl grows up to become renowned author...
4 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 "Entitlement...is a matter of feeling like we rather than they", Allison says. Strong connection to OWS, "We are the 99%"
4 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 Second time reading this piece. It spoke to me deeply the first time around. Let's see how live-tweeting changes any perceptions.
4 hours ago

Awake0064 Anna Wakefield
#quet2011 Alright, folks. Going to live-tweet my DE 2 on Dorothy Allison's "A Question of Class"...
4 hours ago

I'm not biased at all, really.

Live tweeting Butler was an interesting experience. I thought that it might be helpful for me personally to engage as I went along. Sometimes as I am reading difficult texts I start off thinking about each sentence and then begin to gloss over as I go along. Live tweeting forced me to summarize as I went along which really helped as I got to the psychoanalysis parts. Live tweeting did take a lot longer and I did find myself tweeting quite a bit. On the first few pages I was tweeting about once every 2 sentences and then I realized that was not going to be feasible going forward. So I tried to reduce to about once every paragraph.

There's a lot of tweets here, but here goes:

In this article, Puar elaborates on the term homonationalism. Homonationalism seems to be historically and geographically specific to the US in the post- 9/11 context. Puar argues that the inclusion of glbt peoples in the US nation is contingent on the Muslim/ terrorist other as sexually deviant. I think this also can relate to our class discussions about pragmatic political gains because Puar forces us to consider what the "others" are that make that possible and how are those gains still within the structures of nation and normativity. Specifically DADT comes to mind here as well as marriage.

The Image of the Terrorist
Puar opens this discussion with the example of the poster depicting Osama bin Laden being anally penetrated by the Empire State Building. This example illustrates the post- 9/11 investment in creating the terrorist as a queer other to the nation. This image of the terrorist is integral to the production of both the War on Terror and the US nationalist, white gay and lesbian subjects.
The terrorist after 9/11 was viewed as a threat to white civilization and the preservation of heteronormative white families. Media images focused on the grieving white families specifically. The terrorist was a threat, and necessarily outside of heteronormativity and this queer. Obama bin Laden specifically was associated with sexual excess and femininity (71).

"Sexual deviancy is linked to the process of discerning, othering, and quarantining terrorist bodies, but these racially and sexually perverse figures also labor in the service of disciplining and normalizing subjects away from these bodies; in other words, to signal and enforce the mandatory terms of patriotism. In this double deployment, the emasculated terrorist is not merely an other, but also a barometer of ab/normality involved in disciplinary apparatuses." (68)

Homonationalism
Puar's term to describe the process by which US national citizenship is extended to some lesbians, gays, and queers. This term draws heavily upon Lisa Duggan's homonormativity, which we have already discussed in this class as a means of envisioning queer possibilities on the terms of heteronormativity. These strategies are inevitably built on exclusion in the name of a new ideal glbt figure. Homonationalism works to theorize the point of "collusion" between homosexuality and US patriotism, aligned against the terrorist.
Gay people began to perform nationalism in a certain way after 9/11. The symbolism of the flag appeared at gay bars and parades while other prominent gays favored US intervention in the region (70). Homosexual aligned themselves with an us vs them mentality and argued for inclusion based on the exclusion of terrorists and Arabs. They are complicit in racist construction (71).
Puar is also concerned, as is Duggan, about the role of consumption in offering admittance to the nation. She specifically looks to the gay tourism industry that is fueled by white, middle to upper class gays and lesbians who are able to access those services and fit within the national myth of consumption. Inclusion within the nation is based on patterns of consumption (77).

"What I aim to demonstrate in this article is that through this normativizing apparatus the war on terror has rehabilitated some-- clearly not all or most--lesbians, gays, and queers1 to US national citizenship within a spatial-temporal domain I am invoking as 'homo-nationalism', short for 'homonormative nationalism'." (68)

"I argue that the Orientalist invocation of the 'terrorist' is one discursive tactic that disaggregates US national gays and queers from racial and sexual 'others', foregrounding a collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves: homo-nationalism." (68)

"As national identity is reoriented towards excellence in consumption rather than public civic political participation, gay tourists are representative of a form of US exceptionalism expressed through patriotic consumption designed to recover the American nation's psychic and economic health." (77)

Myth of the US Nation
Puar describes nationality as performative. Similar to Butler and other theorists that discuss the performative, Puar is interested in ways that nationality and nation myths are produced and reproduced. These forces work to create "imaginative geographies" that conceal their own contradictions and create their own truths. For Puar this is especially important in terms of the US nation as both heteronormative and gay-friendly and liberated. The existence of liberal mantras that make up the US myth conceals the contradictions within it.
For example, Puar discusses how the US simultaneously attempted to regulate sex and sexuality post 9/11 while portraying the nation as modernist and feminist. The War on Terror was built on the US as a modern, rights-bearing country freeing other peoples from oppressive rule. Discourses around veils and feminists advocating for war to free Afghani women from the Taliban are relevant here.

South Park
Puar looks at an episode of South Park entitled, "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" originally called "Osama bin Laden Has a Small Penis" (80). The episode features the characters stuck in a cave with bin Laden where his pants get pulled down to reveal a tiny penis and Cartman says, "So that's what this is all about?" (80) The episode goes on to focus on bin Laden's masculine, heterosexual shortcomings when he is more attracted to a camel than a beautiful Muslim woman.
Bin Laden is viewed as the "lack." He lacks a large penis and interacts with the world accordingly. He is emasculated in popular culture. He fails at being properly heterosexual.
In another episode called "The Death Camp of Tolerance" a character is perceived as a "leather man" and is not only queer but also perverse (82). One of his students remarks, "I think that Mr. Slave guy might be a Pakistani" (82). His students are unable to recognize the leather man figure and instead associate his perversion with that of the Muslim. Puar then goes on to discuss the position of Pakistan in the War on Terror and how it is caught in a complex liminal position to terrorism and the US.

In reading Luhmann's "Queering/Querying Pedagogy?, Or Pedagogy is a pretty Queer Thing" she mentions many questions within the beginning of her essay stating questions along the side of what does a pedagogy look like? and who is it for, or what is it about? These questions are a great way to start off the essay striking critical thinking among readers. Her main concern deals with gender and sexuality, specifically with queer pedagogy in that it disrupts the idea of normalcy.
Luhmann also mentions in her argument the concept of pedagogy being that she doesn't focus on "the common concerns of teaching, such as what should be learned and how to teach this knowledge", instead she "focuses her idea of pedagogy as beginning with the question of how we come to know and how knowledge is produced in the interaction between teacher/text and student" (6). In her concept she suggests that "this type of orientation to pedagogy exceeds education's traditional fixation on knowledge transmission, and its wish for the teacher as the master of knowledge" (6). This new idea of transmission of knowledge between teacher and student suggests how we come to know knowledge. The teacher is no longer the "master of knowledge".
Luhmann's suggestion of an alternative way of thinking about knowledge suggests a new way of thinking that should be at least looked at. Luhmann's concern as pedagogy being posed as a question instead of an answer of knowledge suggests that "pedagogy begins to shift from transmission strategies to an inquiry into the conditions for understanding, or refusing knowledge" (7). But what does to refuse knowledge mean? How can we refuse knowledge? Are we refusing to be taught knowledge in a certain way?
I'm interested to know further about her ideas of understanding knowledge and/or refusing knowledge ,as well as her ideas about normalcy and heteronormativity.

My first attempt to tweet while in class was interesting to say the least. It was quite difficult to stay engaged while trying to come up with a tweet that would be coherent. I found that I could not think fully thought the statements that others where making. I think that is does sure to ask questions to be discussed at a later time. This is a great way to continue class discussions. I think it could be a useful took to include others in the fold, also it is a helpful way to keep notes. the majority if my tweets where questions that I had or that were asked by others. I think it would be more interesting if others were also live tweeting, but it may take peoples attention out of the class all together. I'm wondering what would happen if the live feed was kept on the screen in the front of the class, it may be a way to structure class discussion. Someone who does not speak much may find their voice this way.
Does tweeting challenge that normative structure of the class room? Sure it does but the space is still privileged as well as the knowledge. Who is able to participate in 140 characters. I wonder if ideas can be fully transmitted.

In Susanne Luhmann's "Queering/Querying Pedagogy? Or, Pedagogy Is a Pretty Queer Thing", the author attempts to imagine a queer pedagogy, along with its goals and limitations. Technically, her article is set up rather nicely. To start off, she asks her audience questions like: What might a queer pedagogy look like? Who is it for/ about? What are its goals? Is it a platform for queer theory and content? Is it simply a queer form of pedagogy? This is really a lot to tackle in one relatively short text, but Luhmann's approach is rather graceful.

Right off the bat, Luhmann interrogates both "queer theory" and "pedagogy", both as related and separate terms. For Luhmann, the two share a like history, both being regularly oversimplified and used for insult and injury. However, both terms have been reclaimed in a sense by marginalized communities. While this is interesting, it is not necessarily the meat of Luhmann's argument here. She goes on to talk about queer theory and its rejection of gender binaries, which in turn renders sexual orientation useless. In other words, if gender is not central to a subject's identity, there is no non-normative sexual practice.

While I found this part to be especially interesting, I should note that Luhmann's queer theory and pedagogy are specifically concerned with gender and sexuality. Rather, queering is an interrogation of ways of knowing normalcy in general, how it is produced and how it functions to render subjects intelligible. That is why queer theory lends itself so well as an approach to pedagogy. Queer pedagogy, in this piece, attempts to disrupt traditional educational models, even "progressive" ones, that are focused merely on instructing.

Luhmann's assertions that the goals of a queer pedagogy would not necessarily be to worry about the transmission of knowledges with expected outcomes is particularly intriguing. Instead she asks us to think of queer pedagogy as the "question", rather than the "answer" (pg 7), an environment in which the process of knowledge production and transmission is deeply interrogated. For me, this evokes images of an educational model in which the goals and knowledges one is supposed to/ going to achieve are not decided beforehand, but discovered throughout the process of questioning how such knowledges are produced and passed along, and why certain knowledges and goals are deemed important.

Queer pedagogy is concerned with the relationships of the student to the teacher/text. What does that relationship look like? What can be transferred back and forth between parties? There is a wonderful section of this text in which Luhmann explores the concept of ignorance. She states, "Ignorance is not the opposite to knowledge but an opposition to knowing"(pg 7). This is not the standard definition one is used to, but it is representative of the strength of queer pedagogy. With a queer pedagogy, the recurring "problems" which occur with the practice of traditional educational models can be approached in such a way that each subject involved is communicated with at their particular vantage point or location. I will not address the language learning analogy too deeply because we had a good go at it in class, but I believe this is what Luhmann is referring to, an educational model that presupposes differences amongst students rather than their equal (identical) capacities to engage with material presented to them.
For Luhmann, queer pedagogy may not be entirely tangible, but that is why it is so useful as a mechanism for disruption and interrogation.

Near the end of the text she writes, "Such queer pedagogy does not hold the promise of a successful remedy against homophobia, nor is it a cure for the lack of self-esteem" (pg 11), implying that queer pedagogy is not only less firmly positioned as a resistance-based tactic, but it is also not solely for and about an already "queer" community. This educational model, rather, is about questioning normalcy within academia, both its content and methods, as well as its aims.

For my first direct engagement, I would like to write about Christina B. Hanhardt's article Butterflies, Whistles, and Fists: Gay Safe Streets Patrols and the New Gay Ghetto, 1976-1981. I would like to revisit concepts I brought up in class discussing homonationalism, gentrification, economies of risk and the body.

As Hanhardt suggests, the riots at Stonewall were a challenge to police authority by LGBTQ populations, many of them existing on the margins of society as working-class and people of color. The largest organization that immediately stemmed from the riots was the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), an organization largely consisting of LGBTQ activists from nationalist organizations (such as the Young Lords and the Black Panthers), feminist and anti-war movements. It is notable that the GLF got its name from a Vietnamese Nationalist organization (called the National Liberation Front) that directly opposed the Vietnam War. This was a coalitional approach that operated within a lens focused on radical politics (by radical I mean "root" as in the algebraic understanding of the term). Fissures quickly formed within organizations such as the GLF, often resulting in racialized and classed factions.

Race and class privilege, or at least the ability to navigate more affluent social networks with ease, could be credited in many circumstances for the trajectory many middle and upper-middle class LG(BTQ) organizations took in the years following. Hanhardt's essay largely focuses on a lesbian and gay land grab, similar to westward migrations by white American's in the 19th century, where lesbian and gay white folks fled rural areas and migrated for settlement in urban areas. Queer identities in this context became linked to urban areas (What Mary Gray would term "queer urban imaginaries" and Jack Halberstam would call "metronormativity"), and more specifically to neighborhoods within the cities--such as the Castro, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Seattle's Capital Hill and Chicago's Boystown.

The "city" granted a degree of animosity for lesbian and gay folk, offering privacy from ones family and strength in numbers. The "city" was reinvented as a space where such queerness was possible. Claims to space resulted in claims to property. Citing Hanhardt, "property ownership is one means by which neighborhoods have been claimed and marketed for exclusive urban constituencies" (pg 63, emphasis mine). Hanhardts reading suggests that, " Neighborhoods came to be seen as an expressive demonstration of gay identity, and thus as the collective asset most in need of protection" (67). Gay neighborhoods became symbolically tied to the healthy body of a lesbian and gay population; they must be protected from outside pests and contaminants.
The community-policing model used by the Butterfly Brigade and the Christopher Street Patrol engaged with "economies of risk" that largely resembled public health discourses that would shortly follow when HIV/AIDS exploded in gay male communities. The name RID, after the pest deterrent, becomes symbolic for me, as the languages used for pest deterrent are often militaristic. Medical language discussing the bodies' response to HIV/AIDS seroconversion often referred to the body as a fortress, the immune system as an army, and HIV as an invasion.

There is also an aspect of identity formation within gay neighborhoods. I see the street patrols as protecting gay neighborhoods from populations who were defined as not belonging. Through this surveillance, I recognize a distinction as more acutely drawn, creating a dualism between how one could be gay and how one couldn't. This is to say that while the rainbow flag was created in San Francisco as a symbol of diversity, that within this context gay and lesbian communities were largely imagined as homogenized. Considering the characteristics that often raised flags for patrollers were raced and classed markers, this renders being gay/lesbian and working-class and a person of color as impossible. The result was what could be related to white flight to the suburbs and gated communities, where we substitute the new gay "ghetto" (or homonationalist islands). This follows Lisa Duggan's definition of the "new homonormativity", where gay and lesbian social movements begin to more closely mirror the values of affluent heteronormative populations and (gay) marries neoliberalist discourses.

The Berlant and Freeman article did not resonate well with me and I wish to discuss three main points in the article, and my objections to them.

1. "I Hate Straights." I think there is a lot wrong with this concept and the arguments surrounding it. I do believe there are a lot of reasons to be angry, and I don't wish to deny or downplay the very real effects of discrimination and hate that queers face in our world. However, while it is possible for anger to be productive, I don't think that hate ever is. First, I think this concept incorrectly conflates "straights" with "heteronormativity." There are heterosexual people who do not, actually, fit into the parameters of heteronormativity. For example, the idea of the "welfare queen." While the "welfare queen" may be heterosexual, she violates the tenets of heteronormativity by being a single mom, by being poor, and by being a woman of color. Her predicament of being poor and a single mom on welfare is explained within society by her supposedly incorrect or inappropriate sexuality. The figure of the welfare queen faces just as much discrimination as a queer person, but it is just a different kind. I think "I Hate Straights" perpetuates the incorrect and unproductive hetero/homo binary -- something which, paradoxically, queer theory wishes to challenge. I also think it forecloses important possibilities of coalition between queers and other marginalized groups, such as working class people and people of color. It also fails to take into account the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, race, etc. While a white gay man certainly faces challenges and discrimination from a heteronormative society, he may be relatively better off than a poor, black single mother.

2. "Coming Out." This is another place, I think, where privilege goes unexamined. White, middle-class queers have the means to become financially independent, should family ties be strained or severed by the process of coming out. However, not everyone has this possibility. For example, I have a friend who has not come out to his family, though he is out with almost all his friends. He knows that if he were to come out to his family, the results would be the loss of financial support from his family and possibly he would not be able to finish college without that support. I feel it is not my place to insist that he be "out," nor do I think that his decision not to come out to his family makes him a bad queer. Coming out is not a possibility for people who rely on family ties for survival (which is common among the working class and people of color), and sometimes can be out-right dangerous. I believe that coming out should be a personal decision that each person needs to make based on his/her own situation, and I don't think that choosing not to come out is a failure on the part of that person.

3. Creating Discomfort. Here I am referring to the quote at the end of the article which reads, "queers are thus using exhibitionism to make public space psychically unsafe for unexamined heterosexuality." I think this is an interesting strategy, and I think it can be useful. I think part of challenging heteronormativity involves forcing people to confront the fact that sexuality is not as simple and clear-cut as it may seem. I think making people uncomfortable and getting "in-your-face" is a good strategy for doing so. However, I think it is wrong to insist that everyone use this strategy. Just like the issue of coming out, there is unexamined privilege within this strategy. For some, visibility is not an option, or would be life-threatening. Taking over a bar or other "straight space" also requires a community of queers, and for people living in rural areas, perhaps this is not available. I think this sort of militant visibility has its place, but it cannot be insisted upon as a general strategy for the whole queer community.

I chose to do a direct engagement with the Sullivan reading. I enjoyed this reading because when a buzzword like "poststructuralism" or "humanism" was used, it was defined and articulated how it was being used. I chose some words/ concepts/ questions to trace throughout the article and what affect these have on the idea of queer theory.

Poststructuralism
Poststructuralism is defined as "a rejection, or at least critique" of humanist ideas and aspirations (39). Poststructuralism questions commonly accepted ideas of humanism like power, freedom, truth, etc. Poststructuralist theorists argue that the search for truth is futile because there is no truth, but rather commonly accepted "bodies of knowledge" that are produced rather than innate. Similarly, there is not inner self to be found, the subject is produced through discourses and normalization processes (39). Following these premises, the goal for poststructuralists is to understand how dominant ways of thinking have been reproduced and reveal the contingency of their dominance. They also focus on local power relationships and reject universalistic accounts (40).
Poststructuralism creates many challenges for queer theory. It creates a challenge to identity politics that tends to universalize experiences based on an identity marker. Poststructuralism would question how local power acted on bodies differently. GLBT activism has also focused on revealing the "true self" through processes of outing, etc. Poststructuralists would find this inherently problematic because there is no true self before conditioning and normalizing processes. The search for the true self also distracts from attention to those processes of normalization (41).
Instead, queer theory should focus on how local power operates to create normalizing tendencies and how they can be resisted at the local level.

Humanism
Sullivan defines the humanist subject as having a distinct mind and body. It follows that "identity is located in the consciousness and that the body is simply a material receptacle that houses the mind or the spirit" (41). Humanists argue that "ideology" has colonised the true self and the goal of politics should be to free the self (41). Humanism views power as a tool of the elite who force ideology on individuals.
Humanists believe that activism needs to be focused on ridding the mind of the power of elites in order to liberate the true self. The ideology imposed on souls is something that can be gotten rid of.

Power
Sullivan discusses debates around power primarily as a debate between humanists and poststructuralists. Humanists view power as coming from the top down. Elites impose their power through ideology on individuals. Poststructuralists view power as flowing through society. Both elites and individuals can possess it. Humanists are more universalizing in their view of power whereas poststructuralists tend to look at power as more localized.
This affects queer theory in terms of resistance. Humanists would argue that resistance to power would lead to the ultimate liberation. The true self can be revealed once ideology is revealed. Poststructuralists, like Foucault, argue that power is central to resistance. Individuals have power and localized power can be used to resist and expose power/knowledges. This resistance will not look the same everywhere and depends upon the location and power structures there (42-3).

So, What is Queer?
Sulivan explores several options for how to explain or define the term "queer." A lot of theorists she examines, who appear towards poststructuralism prefer to keep the term undefined. Queer is something that is constantly negotiated and exists in opposition to norms. David Halperin describes queer as a positionality because it does not describe the humanist sense of the soul or identity (44). Cathy Cohen also describes how straight people who are leading non-normative lives (the welfare queen) can be viewed as queer because of their non-normative positionality (49).
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).
There is also the question of what the goal of "queer" is. As Halperin would seem to suggest, queer is merely an oppositional force that is in fact defined by its opposition to the norm. But queer has also been used in assimilationist struggles to justify "homonormative" ends as discussed in class.

So, what are we to take from this? First, I think this piece gives a nice primer on the common buzzwords and philosophical turns and debates. I think it's also important to connect these philosophies to "queer" and how they differ in their aim.
The author's example of But I'm A Cheerleader reveals the author's point of view. Her process of "queering heteronormativity" utilizes a poststructuralist critique of the movie and the process the main character undergoes.
I think humanism and poststructuralism are both concepts that we have engaged with and will continue to engage with throughout the class. Both of these concepts are utilized in queer/ GLBT activism today and this article can help us to think critically about the assumptions these strategies rely on.

3 Direct Engagements with the Readings
You are required to write 3 entries in which you engage with our course readings. There is no word count requirement. Your entry can be as long (within reason) or as short as you think necessary in order to demonstrate a critical engagement with your chosen reading/readings. By critical engagement I mean that your entry clearly demonstrates: a. that you have closely read (that means more than once or even twice) the reading and b. that you have thought through it in terms of appreciation, critique and construction. I would encourage you to play around with your word count, but aim for shorter entries rather than longer ones.

Appreciation involves figuring out what the author is saying and demonstrating a clear understanding of their argument and how they develop and defend it. Appreciation does not require that you agree with the reading. Instead, it requires that you clearly state what the author is trying to state. What is their main argument? What is the purpose of that argument? How do they defend it?

Critique involves assessing what the author is saying. Critique should not involve a total rejection of dismissal of your chosen readings. Instead, they could involve raising some critical or questions and/or exploring the benefits or limitations of the argument.

Construction involves applying the concepts from the reading to your own thoughts, areas of interest and research or experiences. It could also involve applying the reading to the topics/discussions of our class.

One of your direct engagements must be on your tracking topic extra reading. These readings will be posted when we discuss your tracking topic assignment on sept 20th.

You may also do a live-tweet of your engagement with the reading/s. You could do this alone or with 1-2 other class members. If you live-tweet, you must embed all of your tweets into a blog post and include a brief discussion of how twitter helped/didn't help you engage with the reading/s. While there is no min/max tweet for this assignment, you need to include enough tweets to demonstrate a critical engagement with your reading/s.
Category: DEs

Mash-up
More information coming soon.

Remix/Redux/Revisit
More information coming soon.

Comments on other DEs
You are required to comment on 2 other direct engagements. Your comments should demonstrate a respectful and critical engagement with the post author's entry. You can build off of what the post author is saying or raise some critical questions of their summary/assessment of the topic of their direct engagement. The purpose of these comments is to further our blog/class conversations and our exploration of the readings/topics. Therefore, make sure that your comments are respectful and aimed at opening up more discussion as opposed to shutting it down. 

Due Dates:
DE #1: September 22
DE #2: October 31
DE #3: based on tracking topic presentation date
Mash-up: November 25
Remix: December 7
DE comment 1: September 27
DE comment 2: December 7

Make sure to keep track of your DE entries and comments by filling out your blogging/tweeting worksheet and putting the static links of your entries/comments/tweets in a word document. 

DIRECTIONS: (taken directly from worksheet)
All of these dates are due by dates (as opposed to due on).This means that you are encouraged to post them at any time during the semester by the required due date. It is strongly suggested that you do not wait until the night before your due date to post your entries/comments/ tweets.
Fill out the following worksheet and hand it in on October 6, November 1 and December 8. Additionally, keep track of all of your blog posts (entries and comments) and tweets by creating a document that includes links to all of them.You will be required to hand in a hard copy of this document with your filled out worksheet on12/8.

Make sure to keep track of your DE entries and comments by filling out your blogging/tweeting worksheet and putting the static links of your entries/comments/tweets in a word document. 

EXAMPLES FROM PAST CLASSES

• example one 
• example two
• example three