Angry White Man

I am disappointed that I missed the Munoz lecture because I find his article The White to Be Angry enlightening in the sense that the performance art of Vaginal Davis challenges and succumbs to the Marxist hegemony. As an offspring of an African American mother, Mexican American father, and the desire to live as white, Davis's disidentification serves to bring to light in the issues pertaining to the dominant ideologies that we live within today.

It appears that being gay and identified as a homosexual to sujected to the hegemonic viewpoints by the white, male-dominated society. By combining difference fragments of gender and race, Vaginal Davis (aka Clarence) becomes transforms not only from man into woman in drag but also from a black man to a white man. In essence, Dr. Davis brings to light the homophobia but also racial stereotypes of white people. Through the usage of humor and parody, Davis's performances is a terroristic attack on being masculine and white.

We see the disidentification and fragmention brought together in Davis's performance art actin "The White To Be Angry." Starting in the "Snow Period" in which Davis wants to associate himself/herself with the white militiamen in order to be associated with the hegemonic, ruling whiteness. By becoming Clarence, Davis is enraptured in an internal, subjective argument of being a white, masculine male vs. beings a gay, black and highly feminite drag queen. Also, I find it internesting that Dr. Davis does not because to aesthetically seductive in her transformation as womanly. Instead by costuming in minimalist fashion and makeup, Davis brings to light the abjected way of seeing and thinking about woman in how our dominant ideologies presupposes its mentality of what a woman should like like. Henceforth, subjecting what a woman should look like in the imago.

In the second part of the reading, Munoz reflects on Mark Simpson's book Anti-Gay which attempts to disassociate the hegemonic thinkings of homosexuality. Instead of Gay Pride Day, Simpson wants an Anti-Gay Pride Day which disavows the dominant thinkings how gayness. It appears that Simpon is trying to deconstruct the societal forces that has constructness the definition of what gay is. And this is a similar issue we saw in the Judith Butler article on feminism. In Foucaltian fashion, it appears that the description and identity of homosexuality is not determined by the communitiy of these labeled people but by the dominant people who are not ingrained or comfortable with these so-called alternative lifestyles.

I find the readings on Feminism and Gender & Race to be the most enlightening thus far for me because it disengages me from the ideologies brought forth in a white male dominated world. If I have learned anything thus far, it is that difference can be associated in how we read art and the signs it brings forth. Whether it is look at the performance art of a homosexual, terrroristic drag queen, an Impressionist painting by Monet, or a Puritantical Ansel Adams photograph, it has become tremendously important for me to understand the ideologies that have shaped the artist's work but the life of the work itself within a society that is so complex in terms of difference. And all of these differences are important and could be used to analyze any artwork regardleess of gender, race, and sexual preferences.

Vaginal Davis' Terrorist Drag

In Jose Estaban Munoz's article "The White to be Angry" he discusses the complexities of a gay indivudual identifying with dominant ideologies. He begins by saying that most individuals of a minority, whether it be racial or sexual, are faced with the decision of subscribing to a dominant ideology. And that when the individual does accept a dominant ideology they are denying a part of themself. He goes on to talk about Davis who is a drag queen performer. She uses her perfomances to "rehearse identities" that are not socially accepted with the intent of restructuring the image of the self and the social.

Munoz discusses the periods that Davis goes through in her life as a minority. She goes through what she call the "snow period" where she wishes that she were white or had a relationship with a white person so that she would feel validated or validated through association. The next stage experienced is counteridentification with the dominant culture in which she turns to her own community after being exposed to white culture.

Davis uses her drag performances not to "change the ideas of the spectators, but in order to trouble them, to stir up uncertain desire zones that they always more or less refuse to explore. The question is...to make bodies, all bodies, break away from the representations and restraints on the 'social body'". In this way Davis uses art (performances) not as a way to necessarily convey a idea, but as a way to compel viewers to rethink the ideas they already have.

Class and theory

How does theory and art history work with one another? Yes, I understand that there is theory in everything we do. However, I have come to the point where it is blurring the line a little. After many of these reading I sometimes wonder what does this have to do with art? I understand the methodologies and there relationship with art history.

After reading this last article I began to understand how and why we have the methodology of class and representation in art history. I also understood the meaning be hind class and art and social class and theory. I thought that it was interesting that people would link the two and make a huge debate about this subject matter. One question that I have is how and why we use this and also why don’t we use this more. I find when looking at art history texts that social relations and art history go hand in hand. I agree with Jenny that TJ Clark now make sense with his article that we read.

The article that we read this week talks about the social class and different types of social class that could get along or they don’t. When I began to read this article I was totally confused by the title and again what did it have to do with art history. It was not until that I read it for the seconded time that I got it and it made complete since. It was like a light bulb went off and I got it. I love the art that goes with the text and it make complete understanding of how and why we need social class structure and what it does with art.

I look forward to talking with you all about this topic.

Realization: I Think I Like It. . .

This article really got me thinking about class and theory. It is a relationship that I've been trying to make sense out of ever since we read T.J. Clark's essay a few weeks ago on where the subject of class was mentioned in relationship to Abstract Expressionism. It was an unexpected hit for me, so to speak, as I never thought of class in relation to art, other than if the subject of the painting was obviously representative of or targeted a specific class. And then theory- I've been trying to figure out its relationship to art and my own viewing and interpretation of art. I didn't think it would have as great of an impact as it has so far, and think it will even more as I start reading and understanding more. It has in a way, changed the way I think and look at art- I think in a good way.

So, how has the Vaginal Creme Davis article helped me figure out a small part of the relationship between class and theory? In the articles and excerpts we have read so far, there is the constant reference to social class. This article was no different. So now, more than ever, I wondered why? There was something I wasn't getting, something that wasn't clicking. Since the beginning, I've been trying to figure what our theory readings have to do with art. Even in the articles where critics have used theory in writing about art, I did not see the relationship. I felt so removed from the actual piece of art that sparked the discussion in the first place. So, in the beginning I saw theory as another way to interpret and derive meaning from art; a new way of looking and thinking about art. And, I still think this. But, as I kept reading this particular article, I couldn't help but wonder if theory in some way helps legitimize art, especially some modern and contemporary art that is thought by some critics as "un-avant-garde?" There are some pieces of art, especially contemporary art, that I even look at and wonder, "How is that art? What makes it special; beautiful?" And, now I think it is in the provoking of thought and the awareness about certain issues that make them art. There was something incomplete about how I used to look art. Using theory, even just reading theory has helped me come to this conclusion, and of course Vaginal Davis.

Vaginal Davis reminded me of a paper I wrote on Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" and how it was often referred to as "kitsch." Similarly to Chicago's "Dinner Party," I don't think Vaginal Davis is given enough credit by some critics in her ability to convey political and gender awareness and ideology through art. If art according to some critics is only suppose to be aesthetically beautiful and painted, then I think they are in some ways missing the boat. Often, especially with Chicago and Vaginal Davis, artwork becomes a symbol for something else that the artist is trying to convey. And, like a poet or musician conveys thoughts and ideas through words, artists do it visually. So, what makes art so powerful in its conveying of ideas? I think it is because art is visual. It is a personal expression like poetry and music, yes, but there is no denying its visual presence. The art is right in front of you- yours for the taking. Language is not an issue for art. It is accessible to all, and interpretation is possible for all. I think it is partly this accessibility that helps make art so powerful.

I know theory is not for everyone. The readings frustrate me no end. I'm looking up words in the dictionary every five minutes and then going back and reading the articles again and again. But, when I'm finished I feel so satisfied and intellectually stimulated. This sensation and sense of accomplishment is kind of like Roland Barthes, "The Pleasure Text." This class has really given me a new way of looking at art, and while this blog is not solely on Munoz or Vaginal Davis, this was the article that clicked theory for me, I think. It didn't click it quite as I hoped it would in terms of my complete understanding of theory, but I understand its importance and relation to art. I think I like it. . .

Terrorist Drag: Fantasy or Your Worst Nightmare?

Jose Esteban Munoz describes growing up in his “hermetically sealed” Cuban American community where punk rock was the only avant-garde he knew and the only cultural critique of societal norms that was available to him. He identified with it in a way reminiscent of Lacan’s mirror phase in which an infant identifies with the whole and competent image of self presented in the mirror which is at odds with the reality of an out of control baby’s body. Misrecognition allowed Munoz to imagine he was something that he was not. In order to find himself within punk rock, an offshoot of dominant white culture, he had to deny who he really was. But sometimes misrecognition can be conscious, a deliberate strategy to transgress the limits placed on the individual by the dominant culture.

Such is the case with Vaginal Crème Davis. To explain how Dr. Davis uses humor and parody as a form of terrorism to undermine both straight white culture and reactionary components of gay culture, Munoz introduces the term disidentification, a strategy employed by those in the minority to resist Althusser’s interpolating call of ideology that fixes a subject within oppressive discourses. Davis began by going through a “snow period” where he hoped to assimilate into mainstream culture through a white boyfriend who would confer validation upon him through association. This was followed by a period of militant counteridentification, or resistance against white culture, in which he identified with the Black Panther Party. However Black Power had undertones of homophobia so Davis disidentified with male dominated Black Power by selecting Angela Davis as his point of identification. He employed an “intersectional strategy” by acknowledging sexuality, race, class and gender as existing simultaneously in his identity formation.

Drawing on Gramsci’s term organic intellectual, someone who is directly related to rising classes or groups outside of the dominant power structure who establish a new hegemony, Munoz emphasizes terms used to critique Davis’s act, such as homey, innate, country, to play up his grassroots connections to punk rockers, queers and the African American and Latino communities. So Davis uses his diverse affiliations to create a “war of positions” in which multiple sites are engaged to bring about political transformation. Just as subordinate groups (like queers and blacks) are not monolithic unified entities, the self, constructed within ideology, can be fraught with contradictions.

Davis’ performance in White to Be Angry plays upon the contradictions of plural identities. As a 6’6” queer African American Latino male, Davis does not try to pass as a white male when he portrays white militiaman Clarence. Nor does he pass as a female glamour drag queen when he is Vaginal Davis. He may be a freak among freaks but this doesn’t destroy him. He uses it to assert his subjectivity, his sense of self, and to deconstruct those elements of culture that have been used to keep others like himself in subordinate positions. As Clarence, Davis appears in whiteface. Black skin, identifiable under white makeup, brings up fears of miscegenation, contamination of racial purity, one of the fears of white supremacists. In traditional black minstrelsy, whites dealt with the anxiety of potentially threatening black males by symbolically controlling them through degrading parody. Davis takes this white supremacist strategy and turns it on its head. His whiteface pokes holes in the white racist bogeyman, divesting him of his power and reducing him to a pitiful joke.

In Davis, the drag queen who creates a fantasy of femininity and desire in the male viewer, becomes the white man’s nightmare when dangerous qualities, like blackness and queerness, are grafted onto the body of fantasy (in this case his own body) and made explicit. Discomfort, and desire within that discomfort, unsettle categories of race and gender. As Munoz states, Davis “clears out a space, deterritorializing it and then reoccupying it with queer and black bodies” to be used in a war of positions against multilayered discriminatory ideologies.

NOTE: Just by chance, I ran across a later article by Kobena Mercer in which he revises his interpretation of Mapplethorpe’s photographs of black men explicated in “Imagine the Black Man’s Sex.”
He admits that part of the reason for the revision was that he didn’t want his black gay critique of Mapplethorpe to be used by Jesse Helms and the ultraconservatives in their cultural offensive to censor art on moral grounds. His new reading is more in line with Munoz’ article. See “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary” in Only Skin Deep of 2003 edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis.

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.