This abstract is from the cover of the book and materials provided by the publisher.
There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. 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,' and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.
Disidentifications is also something of a performance in its own right, an attempt to fashion a queer world by working on, with, and against dominant ideology. Whether examining the process of identification in the work of filmmakers, performance artists, ethnographers, Cuban choteo, forms of gay male mass culture (such as pornography), museums, art photography, camp and drag, or television, Muñoz persistently points to the intersecting and short-circuiting of identities and desires that result from misalignments with the cultural and ideological mainstream in contemporary urban America.
Muñoz calls attention to the world-making properties found in performances by queers of color — in Carmelita Tropicana's “Camp/Choteo” style politics, Marga Gomez's performances of queer childhood, Vaginal Davis' “Terrorist Drag,” Isaac Julien's critical melancholia, Jean-Michel Basquiat's disidentification with Andy Warhol and pop art, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' performances of “disidentity,” and the political performance of Pedro Zamora, a person with AIDS, within the otherwise artificial environment of the MTV serial The Real World.
“Taking psychoanalytic theory were it has never been before, Muñoz raises the curtain on queer performance art. Itself a complex act of disidentification, this vibrant and venturesome book unveils queer worldmaking at its passionate best.”
—Diana Fuss, author of Identification Papers
“Demonstrating a thoughtful and acutely pushy intellect, Muñoz tops a new generation of identity theorists. Disidentifications beautifully describes transformative performances of sexuality and race in ways that reverberate dramatically, further transforming the conditions of possibility for those who encounter the text, its world of pleasures, images, and analyses. The sheer value of this archive of Queer world-making acts cannot be underestimated: as citation keeps the films, performances, and texts open and animating, queer commentary like this sustains resistance to and optimism against the forces of exhaustion.”
—Lauren Berlant, Professor of English, University of Chicago
“Disidentifications is an innovative and ground breaking intervention done with theoretical and critical elegance. Eloquently written, this rich and eclectic text will ‘trouble' the intersections of queer, racial, and ethnic studies.”
—Ana M. López, Tulane University
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