Disidentifications: Queers of Color And The Performance of Politics

by José Esteban Muñoz

José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process "disidentification."

Disidentifications attempts to fashion a queer world by working on, with, and against dominant ideology. By examining the process of identification in film, performance art, ethnography, Cuban choteo, gay male mass culture, museums, art photography, camp and drag, and television, Muñoz develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Theory, LGBT, Race, Gender, Politics

399 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

José Esteban Muñoz was a writer and scholar living in New York City. He taught at and served as chair of the department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Reviews

[Why-why]

The intro is golden, wherein Munoz lays out his theory of disidentification.  The book itself, each chapter an application of his theory of disidentification to various examples of performance, I was not so interested in.  By the time I got to p. 130 my interest was barely hanging on, I didn't even bother to unpack what the heck Irigarayan hom(m)osexuality is, lol.

Admittedly, I am not so interested in analysis of art, and stage and screen performance.  I would have appreciated if there was a chapter that addressed off-stage, everyday performance of everyday individuals in day to day living.  Given the focus on media, there was a strong, unmentioned link to the idea of representation.  

Unlike a number of other reviewers, I found the definition of disidentifications to be fairly straightforward.  Perhaps the confusion is in the author's use of previous works that informed his theory, but different from the idea of disidentification proposed.  Or perhaps it is because Munoz gives it a 3-part definition as it pertains to different functions.  In short, disidentification is "heuristic," the process of an individual developing their self-ness via societal models, in this instance by dis-identifying, identifying in-opposition to mainstream values.  (If I remember correctly,) the second is as a mode of analysis that deconstructs mainstream value models and thereby reconstructs new value models in-opposition to mainstream.  And lastly, as a term describing action (vs. passive societal mind control), creating new possibilities and worldviews through performance.

The reviewer Justin is correct, Munoz spells out the limits to the revolutionary potential for disidentification as social action.  He very specifically states that it is not a complete rejection of mainstream, it is a critical distortion of mainstream, staying within the complex, if you will.  The desired end point seems to be inclusion to the mainstream, rather than a rejection of.  

Theoretically I was left with two questions.  For Munoz, queer identity is premised as necessarily fractured, split, fragmented, malaligned... Which leaves the question, is it then impossible (by that definition) to be queer in a completely supportive, inclusive community?  My bigger issue with the formulation of disidentification is arguably beyond the scope that is limited to disidentification with  mainstream culture.  Disidentification is specifically in-opposition to a non inclusive mainstream, which for me begs the question, what about positive identification with non-mainstream examples from other cultures in place and time?  As I read this book it occurred to me that all of history is queer!  (i.e. queer in comparison to mainstream ideology today). 

[Justin]

I found the book provocative and I appreciate how transportable the concept is, but I had Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" in the back of my head and I guess I'm just wondering whether there's somehow evidence that disidentifying actually works as a political and not just a personal project. I'm not even saying I disagree but I need to chew on it a bit more.

[Zefyr]

A few weeks into their relationship, Sean proposed marriage to Pedro and Pedro accepted. In response, the show's other "star" presence, Puck, decided to one-up the queer couple by proposing marriage to his new girlfriend Toni. Puck stands as proof that not all counterpublics challenge the way in which the social is organized by the dominant culture. Puck's counterpublic is a juvenile version of rugged individualism; it represents a sort of soft anarchism that relativizes all political struggles as equivalents to his own exhaustive self-absorption.

-- Pedro Zamora's "Real World"

[Angbeen]

incredible incredible piece of work on queer performativity + queer of colour critique of queer theory. very interesting, more accessible than i thought it would be (still a challenging read tho lol) and essential reading if you're a queer theorist or queer art-maker.

[Ayanna Dozier]

Disidentification is a "world-making" process for minoritarian subjects, Muñoz states in the closing chapter of his book (p. 197). This world-making process utilizes performance as a method in which individuals can create an environment where identities that do not conform can exercise freedom of being, which is to say that this process performs subtle subversions as a creative way to engage with a state of being. The mere concept of disindetification alludes to the "construction site" that is identity. Identity is never a fixed or stable concept, identity is always changing and is nothing but not fluid. To perform a disindetification, a performance that minoritarian subjects and queer individuals are particularly adapt to in Muñoz's analysis, is to illustrate the limits or failure of fixed subject formations in society. Thus, the disindetification of the "bored lesbian housewife," disrupts the fixity of the the category of woman as situated only in the home and relation to men under the heterosexual matrix (p. 3). Additionally, Muñoz correctly argues that individuals of color are used to performing a disindetification out of survival from living under conditions of white supremacy. Muñoz grapples with the psychological implications of growing up brown or Black and seeing only whiteness as emblematic of success and beauty. In one of may favorite passages, Muñoz points out that survival is possible and praises those who find a way out, quoted here at length:

"I always marvel at the ways in which nonwhite children survive in a white supremacist U.S. culture that preys on them. I am equally in awe of the ways in which queer children navigate a homophobic public sphere that would rather they did not exist. the survival of children who are both queerly and racially identified is nothing short of staggering. The obstacles and assaults that pressure and fracture such young lives as brutally as a police bully club . . . I understand the strategies and rituals that allow survival in such hostile cultural waters, and I in turn feel certain compulsion to try to articulate and explicate these practices of survival." (p. 37)

[Isabella :)]

mister muñoz thank u for existing and building the queer world i can come into. i cannot wait to understand your legacy as i keep reading you. thank you cuban. “Our charge as spectators and actors is to continue disidentifying with this world until we achieve new ones.” thank you.

[Julie]

Absolutely loved this book. It’s definitely a denser, more academic read. I felt proud to read of queer people of the past choosing to perform gender and sexuality in daring and often subversive ways.

The politics of performance are interesting and it’s interesting seeing individuals lean into certain aspects and pull away from others.

My favorite chapter was definitely the one that covers “The Real World” from MTV. With my age, I was unfamiliar with the importance of the show and the normalization of AIDS. Would definitely recommend to those familiar with Gender and sexuality studies. having prior knowledge of Foucault and Gramsci theories is definitely a plus in understanding.

[Tia]

Kind of expected more from this! Muñoz develops a useful, portable concept, and this book is very accessible and easy to read (how else could I consume 170 pages of theory while sick), but a lot of the readings feel sort of obvious. I can appreciate that maybe they were novel at the time though!

[Nihar Mukund]

3.75
One can spot the seeds of the theoretician's later work on utopias in this book. As a lover of Muñoz's work, I enjoyed the core idea of this text, and for the most part, how it was applied, albeit it was a bit repetitive across most chapters (except for the last few).

However, the writing style felt a bit rushed and unedited, with dense and tricky underexplained passages sometimes followed by overly explained passages, where sentences would forget about those placed next to them. (I think I, too, am writing similarly right now, but this is a rushed review, not a published book.) Like bestie, don't name-drop Hegel's and Irigaray's theories (which would need greater explanation) and then give a repeated idea a whole other paragraph.

Finally, the final chapter led forward, but because the author wanted to suddenly info-dump in limited space, a few threads are left unexplored, to the detriment of his explanations at times. (i.e. Cindy Patton, and the critiques of C.L.R. James' idea) Nonetheless, it is a useful and well-thought-out read (for the most part).

[Benjamin Coakley]

Five and half stars.

Currently writing a master's thesis that employs Muñoz's understanding of disidentification as a way to read the paradoxical formation of conservative evangelicalism as a minority subculture, despite its place within the hegemonic spheres of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and patriarchy.

Someone remind me to come back and say more about this book when I'm done writing. 😄

[Kate O'connor]

An incredibly important book for any scholar of queer studies or those interested in queer of color critique. Where the book is weakest, however, is its repetitive cycles. Further, the book gives nearly a dozen definitions of disidentification and makes the very term seem almost meaningless. despite these critiques, it is a marvelous work which can be valuable to almost any scholar.

[Cameron]

Selected quotes:

“Disidentification is a performative mode of tactical recognition that various minoritarian subjects employ in an effort to resist the oppressive and normalizing discourse of dominant ideology. Disidentification resists the interpellatinf call of ideology that fixes a subject within the state power apparatus. It is a reformatting of self in the social. It is a third term that resists the binary of identification and counter-identification”

——
“Readings that posit subordinate groups as unified entities fail to enact a multivalent and intersectional understanding of the various contingencies and divergencies within a class or group. Thus, Gramsci offers an extremely appropriate optic through which to evaluate the disindentificatory work that Davis performs within subordinated classes, such as gays and liminal groups, like the hard-core punk rock community. Paul explains that Gramsci shows how the so-called self which underpins these ideological formations is not a unified but a contradictory subject and a social construction. He thus helps us understand one of the most common least explained features of racism: the subjection of the victims of racism to the mystifications of the very racist ideologies which imprison and define them. He shows how different, often contradictory elements, can be woven into and integrated within different ideological discourse, but also the nature and value of ideological struggle which seeks to transform popular ideas, and the common sense of the masses.
Queerness and blackness need to be read as ideological discourses that contain contradictory impulses within them, some liberatory, others reactionary. These discourses also require a hermeneutics that appraise the intersectional and differential crosscutting currents with individual individual ideological scripts. Davis work is positioned at a point of intersection between various discourses where they are woven together, and from this point, she is able to enact a parodic and comedic de-mystification. The potential for subversion is planted.
Disidentification, as a mode of analysis, registers subjects as constructed and contradictory. Davis' body, her performances, all her myriad texts, labor to create critical uneasiness, and furthermore to create desire within uneasiness. This desire unsettles the strictures of class, race, and gender, prescribed by what Catari calls the social body.
A disidentificatory hermeneutics permits a reading and narration of the way in which Davis clears out a space, de-territorializing it, and then re-occupying it with queer and black bodies. The lens of disidentification allows us to discern scenes and contradictions, and ultimately understand the need for a war of positions.”
- Part 2, Chapter 4, Disidentifications, Jose Muñoz

——
“Disidentificatory artwork unites subjects/viewers not via the content of its artistic representation but through the feeling that it generates for minoritarian subjects who are “in the know” by supplanting contextual knowledge with lived experiences.

For example, the billboards of a bed with the imprint of heads in pillows united queer and Latino voices via knowledge of the intimate devastation of AIDS. Those who had lived with this were united in their collective grief from symbolic images not for what the image represents but rather what the absence in the image represents.

Disidentification relates to discursive relations by highlighting the symbolic background that frames the content of discussions. It is not what is discussed but rather what allows the discussion to be framed as such. For example, a white man complaining about “illegal” migrants poses the content of migration as negative and racialized (othered) - whereas the framing itself comes from a sense of entitlement, racial superiority, and lack of awareness related to personal, interpersonal and structural impacts of migration”

——
“Not yet—that’s not it” = Sandoval’s differential consciousness, Audre Lorde’s difference, Derrida’s différence.

These different paradigms signify the site of emergence. The book deals with minoritarian subjects who seek identification through this difference.

It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality of the self is constituted and identified… what stops identification from happening is always the ideological restrictions implicit in an identificatory site…”

——

Michel Foucault explains the paradox of powers working in relation to discourse in the history of sexuality vol. 1.

It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together and for this reason we must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. We must not imagine a world of discourse between accepted and excluded discourse or dominant and dominated discourse… we must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance, and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.

[Stacey Rice]

A honest look at queer masculinity.

[Katrinka]

4? 5? I don't know—the book gives much food for continued thought, and that's the sign of something good.

[Nic]

A great first book by an important figure in queer of color critique. The chapters don’t progress so much as they accumulate sites and textures of disidentificatory practices performed by queer of color artists and activists. I see so much of Judith Butler’s influence on Muñoz’s own use of performativity. I also see how this work sets him up for his next book on queer utopia. I appreciate how he writes with care, love and understanding about his subjects, who seem so often to be friends and acquaintances from the coterie of queer of color nightlife and underground artists in urban cities. Even if the context and references are dates, the work still feels relevant.

[Nilsu]

I read his work after engaging with thinkers like Irigaray, Lorde, Anzaldúa, and his PhD advisor, Sedgwick. With those voices in mind, it’s hard not to connect his ideas to concepts like Mimesis and Mestiza Consciousness, while I recognize disidentification as a powerful tool, to me, it feels like another variation of these... (Even though he employs dualities rather than a direct split, it still feels relatively familiar).

[Amber]

While I realize the value of this book as a marker and archive of queer being and action, it was challenging to grasp a complete understanding of disidentification. Like other reviewers I found the definition or term to be nebulous, nonetheless, the examples were clear and understandable in themselves of the hybrid nature of queerness.

[Jacob]

an essential queer theory read, in my opinion. it’s so interesting to read this a while after reading Cruising Utopia—disidentification has so much utopic potential and you can see Muñoz’s thoughts leading to that next step.

[Archie Hamerton]

One those much misquoted or misinterpreted texts: he is clear in distinguishing disidentification from counteridentification — that latter contrarily upholding the norms of dominant ideology through its subversion of those norms — and yet the two are all too regularly conflated elsewhere.

[Gisela]

I'm mad I didn't read this earlier!!!

[Kolby]

Necessary reading for anyone invested in the process of queer art-making. We lost one of the greats with Muñoz's passing.

[Leomii]

This book is very good

[Lemon]

Life-changing book about queer and trans* BIPOC performances! A must-read for anyone interested in queer studies and performance studies!

[seamus slattery]

unbelievable

[Adrianne Fraize]

No one does it like Munoz. This is theory as it is meant to be done.

[Kafka]

Read Intro. for essay. Will read more later, good stuffff

[Iris Core]

Amazing little text, a lot of depth within it but in a way that is very readable. Certainly one of my favourite pieces of queer theory i’ve encountered

[Joseph Conner]

The ability to exist outside oppressive systems is the most thoughtful, liberating concept that I have never eve considered possible before I read this

[jess liu]

reading this was a litmus for how much i’ve grown since reading cruising utopia (my first piece of queer theory)

[Lisa]

I found disidentification really useful as a concept. Munoz doesn’t really jump into it fully until the last third of the book.