Disidentifying In Spaces Of Violence: Under The Microscopic Gaze Of The Dominant Culture
Location
SU 124
Department
English
Abstract
Marlene Garcia and Isaias Rogel will examine spaces of capitalist enterprise and imperialism to identify how a dominant culture’s gaze constructs beauty, gender performance, and racialized bodies through erasure. In identifying these mechanisms of meaning making and performance, they will re-visualize identity and explore the relationship between the practice of love and constructing beauty within a violent dominant culture. Marlene and Isaias will identify such mechanisms by tracing identity formation in James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. With an emphasis on José Esteban Muñoz’s Performing Disidentifications, Marlene and Isaias will do the critical work of identifying how to navigate violent spaces, how to negotiate multiple performances, and refigure toxic identities. With the help of Dr. Poll, from the English Department—they will participate in what Emma Perez describes as a recovery of the invisible—memory and narrative erased by the dominant culture. Both students will employ bell hook’s theoretical framework from all about love to think of the transformative power of love while, conversely, illustrating how a lack of love can have detrimental consequences by facilitating erasure. They will develop ideas of “disidentification” in relation to theories of race and gender, incorporating George Yancy’s Black Bodies, White Gazes and Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning. In the process of carrying out this research, each student will compose their own original work that illustrates disidentification as an act of radical self-love and conversely, demonstrates the relation between erasure and a false capitalist sense of love. They will each present their essays for a total of 15-20 minutes.This work is important not only to the students involved--in negotiating their sense or lack of identity--but in fostering a larger conversation. This theoretical work seeks to create a safe space to practice love, a space where community allows othered people the agency to participate in identity formation. In engaging with José Esteban Muñoz, Marlene and Isaias pursue transgressing and queering othered identities while encouraging the discussion of alternative accounts of history and narrative. Often, in a capitalist and imperialist space, othered bodies are denied expression and agency. Both students will pursue the recovery of both expression and agency.
Disidentifying In Spaces Of Violence: Under The Microscopic Gaze Of The Dominant Culture
SU 124
Marlene Garcia and Isaias Rogel will examine spaces of capitalist enterprise and imperialism to identify how a dominant culture’s gaze constructs beauty, gender performance, and racialized bodies through erasure. In identifying these mechanisms of meaning making and performance, they will re-visualize identity and explore the relationship between the practice of love and constructing beauty within a violent dominant culture. Marlene and Isaias will identify such mechanisms by tracing identity formation in James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. With an emphasis on José Esteban Muñoz’s Performing Disidentifications, Marlene and Isaias will do the critical work of identifying how to navigate violent spaces, how to negotiate multiple performances, and refigure toxic identities. With the help of Dr. Poll, from the English Department—they will participate in what Emma Perez describes as a recovery of the invisible—memory and narrative erased by the dominant culture. Both students will employ bell hook’s theoretical framework from all about love to think of the transformative power of love while, conversely, illustrating how a lack of love can have detrimental consequences by facilitating erasure. They will develop ideas of “disidentification” in relation to theories of race and gender, incorporating George Yancy’s Black Bodies, White Gazes and Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning. In the process of carrying out this research, each student will compose their own original work that illustrates disidentification as an act of radical self-love and conversely, demonstrates the relation between erasure and a false capitalist sense of love. They will each present their essays for a total of 15-20 minutes.This work is important not only to the students involved--in negotiating their sense or lack of identity--but in fostering a larger conversation. This theoretical work seeks to create a safe space to practice love, a space where community allows othered people the agency to participate in identity formation. In engaging with José Esteban Muñoz, Marlene and Isaias pursue transgressing and queering othered identities while encouraging the discussion of alternative accounts of history and narrative. Often, in a capitalist and imperialist space, othered bodies are denied expression and agency. Both students will pursue the recovery of both expression and agency.
Comments
Ryan Poll is the faculty sponsor for this project.