Enabling the body, unabling oppression

When McRuer and Wilkerson talk about “homonormativity” they refer to a normative discourse [existing/created] around homosexuality and homosexuals – perhaps even all sexual “deviants” in – that is derived from already preconceived constructs of gender, sex and sexuality within the hegemony of heteronormativity. This institutionalizes a certain idea/stereotype of homosexuality creating a standard, a normative. Identifying or characterizing lesbian or gay relationships in heterosexual terms would be an example of this, where [all] homosexual couples are portrayed as wanting a nuclear family and a middle class life. In this way, homosexual relationships are judged against heteronormative ideals, and do not instead challenge preconceived notions of relationships, power relations, gender and/or sex. At the same time constituencies are also depoliticized, because they are inserted into institutions and frameworks that are not put into question. As Duggan explains in her quoted exert in the article: “The new neoliberal sexual politics of the IGF might be termed the new homonormativity—it is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption'.” (9) Thus we can see how this helps in the continuation of the status quo and power structures that have [historically] marginalized homosexuals in the first place, and it creates – as usual- a dichotomoy of an acceptable and unacceptable homosexuality; one that can/will be tolerated and one that cannot/will not.


How can queer disability studies and activists/ism resist this co-optation, or comodification of their struggles? McRuer and Wilkerson, go back to the issue of privatization mentioned in the quote above. For them, the way in which resistance appears is by insisting that “gender, sexuality, and sex are issues of public concern [...] In this context queerness becomes an active public dissent from dominant systems”. (p 10) This entails a resistance against tolerance and the false notion of diversity. Because tolerance does not mean that the needs of such constituencies are met or that their rights are considered, it means that they are allowed to occupy a space so long as the foundations of the normative society are not threatened. The case of “Don't ask, Don't tell”, as Slavoj Zizek has stated, lies at the heart of this and is a prime example of tolerance understood in this manner. The authors extend this view of resistance beyond queerness to disability: “Such dissent, in our view, must be enacted as resistance to compulsory ablebodiedness, along with compulsory heterosexuality”. (p 10) This would involve a new type of visibility, or even more, a visuality, of disabled bodies.


I make the distinction between visibility and visuality because I think they each point out to different aspects of the resistance McRuer and Wilkerson call attention to. One is about reclaiming agency in representing one's experience and identity as disabled, and the other is about [re]constructing, or redefining, these very notions and modes of agency. In other words, this involves [re]claiming spaces, of [re]claiming images, but also of reconfiguring how and through what queer/disabled bodies represent and reclaim themselves. As the authors point out, disabled bodies have been and continue to be portrayed in in detrimental and insulting ways – similarly to queer bodies. They are “routinely infantilized, constructed as helpless and asexual or, alternately, as possessed of uncontrollable sexuality”. (p 10) This is what the authors mean by making things public. To openly begin to re-construct constituencies and to re-attribute lost power, to cease to understand disabled bodies as “powerless”, and/or as objects that must be always aided and assisted; something to be fixed. Most importantly, I think, there is a need to understand disabled bodies as capable knowing agents.


Below is an image part of a series by artist Holly Norris, which pokes fun at American Apparel ads and incorporates unrepresented bodies. The series is called American Able

As I mentioned earlier, the visibility being sought here is vast and multiple, it is physical and philosophical. At the intersection of visibility and visuality, I think is where Axis Dance Company comes into play (pun intended). On the one hand, the performances are incorporating bodies that have been usually excluded from the context of dance and other such forms of bodily expression. It is portraying disabled bodies in a different light and making them an essential part of a highly corporeal activity. I think what is most compelling to me about these performances, and what is most compelling about dance in general, is the dialogue between bodies. Here, dancers communicate with each other and actively move each other through the routine. They use each others' bodies as props and tools for movement and emotion; to each movement there is a reaction. If some of the dancers cannot stand on 2 feet, they have other means of moving themselves that allow them to use the space and the rest of the bodies around them. The dance performances are a tool for visibility, but at the same time they are a new type of visuality because they portray, or present – for lack of a better word - disabled bodies through an alternative medium, which is about visuality as much as it is sensory.



However, I think the performances are problematic in that they are narrow and limited in the space in which they appear. What is the effect of presenting these performances within the limits of a theater? Does one have to pay to get in and for how much? Where was this publicized? To whom? Furthermore, what are the implications of presenting themes of corporeal [dis]ability through modern dance, as oppose to another type of dance?All these questions are important in analyzing the impact and implications of these performances. Another problematic point has to do with the definition of disabled they choose to portray. We know that there are a variety of disabled bodies, as there are abled, that are not limited to only folks in wheel chairs or with prosthetic legs, but yet this is all we see in the performances. For example, what about bodies that don't have an arm, or a hand? What about for example, those who are deaf but can still feel the music? Like I said in class, I think the example set by Axis Dance Company is a good step into redefining modes of visibility and visuality of disabled or marginalized bodies, but it is by no means the only means of resistance nor should it be.


Since I quoted him, and he has been coming up EVERYWHERE in my life lately, here is a video of one of Slavoj Zizek's lectures. It is divided in several parts, but in this one in particular he talks about the idea of tolerance, politeness and diversity. Be ware, he is VERY intense and spastic, but a damn good cultural critic and philosopher.