Initial Thoughts on Sanitization

I would like to preface this by saying that I often forget and find it unfathomable that the ideological world that I come from is vastly different than the rest of the United States, thus I tend to see things through rose colored lenses.

After Whitney Chadwick’s talk with us last week, it seems fitting that we should be reading about an artist who challenges the ways in which identities are perceived at the same time that a bill regarding gay rights in the workplace is being discussed in the political world and the media. Dr. Chadwick spoke about the ways in which the issues of feminism and civil rights played a part in her formation as an art historian. Art and the practice of art history may be able to work together through written and visual dialogues to promote social change.
José Esteban Muñoz refers to commercial drag and gives examples such as RuPaul as a sort of “dumbing down” of a queer subject for the masses. He points out that the dumbing down coincides with the erosion of gay civil rights. Although, I am sure this is true in certain situations – or depending on “where you look” (as Dr. Chadwick asserted) – there does seem to be a certain level of acceptance, perhaps based on the increased visibility of queerness in our culture, albeit sanitized, that has generated the possibility of a political discourse regarding the inclusion of different self-representations within the workplace for gay men, lesbians as well as transgender and transsexual people. Admittedly, the bill will more than likely not be signed into law AND the author of the bill chose to ultimately exclude transgender and transsexual people in order to make it perhaps more palatable to certain other lawmakers. Indeed David M. Herszenhorn of the New York Times stated, “Some Republicans in the House have said they wished Mr. Frank had included the language on transgender and transsexual people because it would have made it easier for them to vote against the bill.” However, the discourse may at least allow for a new thought process for people listening to these discourses in a way that is similar to, although perhaps less powerful than, the new thought process that Vaginal Davis initiates through her “terrorist drag.” The fact that it will be difficult for some lawmakers to vote against the bill is some steps, although tiny ones, away from an “erosion of gay rights.” And the acknowledgment in the above quote referring to Republican lawmakers, even though it is a warped acknowledgment, of varying gender identities, suggests an increased awareness. Unfortunately, I do have to agree that this increased awareness could still ultimately move towards erosions. But, for the time being, we at least have a discussion initiated by two openly gay lawmakers.
Interestingly these two openly gay lawmakers initially agreed that transgender and transsexual people ought to be included in the bill. Barney Frank, who changed the bill to exclude them, says he did so in order to make some small steps forward. Tammy Baldwin, the other representative, means to introduce an amendment to include transgender and transsexual people again. Is this in some ways related to PME’s “Closet Case,” which is, according to Muñoz, a critique of an aesthetic belonging to the “normative and corporate homosexual”? In other words, what might be acceptable to the mainstream and therefore to lawmakers is a certain type of gay individual and not the varying and complex possibilities of identity referred to by Vaginal Davis? One can only hope that eventually the mainstream will embrace all of the complex possibilities for identity that there are. But, when and if it does, will the complexities get swallowed up again to create new sanitizations? Perhaps, this is what all artists work against. They “deny self” to “find self.”
Davis denies self through what Munoz refers to as disidentification, a process that resists the dominant cultural ideologies. Davis herself seems to facilitate disidentification through an appropriation of identities in a way that makes use of stereotypes, but also throws off these stereotypes by placing them onto the same body. Here I am thinking of her performance as Clarence who then morphs back into Vagina Davis. The stereotype is the ZZ Top like militia-man/ white supremacist: Clarence. But, Clarence is and has an unlikely object of desire. Vaginal Davis and Clarence desire one another in the same body. Thus, as Munoz says, cross-racial desire is addressed, and Vaginal Davis is the social-body. She performs two “blocs” and is an “organic intellectual.” This term, “organic intellectual,” indirectly originating with Antonio Gramsci, is particularly important. The action of linking not only the words “innateness,” “homeyness,” and “countryness” but also “organic” and “intellectual” works to give a sense of “real-ness” or a down-to-earth quality to the intellectual activity of cultural critique. This is important because it is necessary that everyone understand cultural critique so that perceptions of complexities of identity are able to change.