What do Robert McRuer and Abbie Wilkerson mean by "homonormativity"? According to their article, how can queer disability studies and activism/art resist it? How might Axis Dance Company's performances be considered an example of "desiring disability" and how might they be an example of this type of critique of homonormativity (or not, if you think this is the case)?
According to Lisa Duggan, homonormativity 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” (qtd. in McRuer and Wilkerson, 9). In this form of politics, the homosexual population attempts to normalize itself and gain acceptance, not by fighting against the current system to prove its allowable difference, but by pretending that the difference does not exist, and feeding the current heteronormative system. McRuer and Wilkerson explain that this system is one of privatization, an exclusionary government system.
McRuer and Wilkerson do not approve of the disabled population conforming to society in such a way as homonormativity. Privatization of government programs acts to exclude those most in need of such programs, including the disabled, women, people of color, the poor, and those with HIV/AIDS. The biggest problem that I see with this is that, in many cases, a person in need of such programs could fall under all of these categories, and often do. If the system is privatized under the guise that a person should be able to be completely self-sufficient, those who are truly in need of government support would fall by the wayside. Such a system ignores the fact that there are people who truly cannot support themselves. Severely disabled people would fall into this category, and I think that this is a serious reason that McRuer and Wilkerson feel that the homonormative approach is not a good way of desiring disability.
To desire disability can happen in four ways: universalizing dismissal, fetishistic appropriation, neoliberal capitalism and militarism, and resistance (Class notes, 10/7/10). To the authors, resistance is the only acceptable way for desiring disability. In any other way, a disabled person would be ignoring their disabled status; they would be saying that it doesn’t matter that they are disabled, whether it be through tokenizing their position or dismissing it completely. Resistance, though, would be to fight against the norms, and therefore, the roles set out for disabled persons to fill. McRuer and Wilkerson propose that resistance take place as a “politicized disability rights movement” that would “continue to position itself to expose these contradictions in the system…and to engage in ‘practices of freedom’—practices that would work to realize a world of multiple…corporealities interacting in nonexploitive ways” (McRuer and Wilkerson, 14).
The resistance can take place in disability performance art, as it does with the Axis Dance Company. Their pieces seem to center around the members in wheelchairs, but not in a way that would tokenize the dancer’s condition. The disabled dancers work in a symbiotic relationship with the able-bodied dancers, such that, without the wheelchairs they occupy, the dances could not take place. The disabled dancers are a resistance because they refuse to take the normalized position of the quiet cripple in need of our help; they dance with the rest of the company of their own volition and with their own prowess. I feel, though, that McRuer and Wilkerson might see this as tokenizing in a different way. The need of a wheelchair is the only kind of disability we see. There is nothing to do with upper-body disabilities or those disabilities that go unseen.
To me, the problem of implementing the resistance as is applies to the Axis Dance Company is the fact that I do not understand interpretive dance. I find it interesting that some of the dancers use their wheelchairs as a tool for their art, but I do not watch them and think to myself, “Oh, way to resist normative culture!” I try to figure out what is going on, and since I cannot, I am not very interested in the performance. I feel that this art form is not very approachable for lots of people; in this way, as with the Avant Garde movement in the arts, I feel that many people would just think of this form of dance as some kind of revolt for the sake of revolt, and refuse to look for the meaning of it all.
As a member of the GLBTQ community, I find myself between giving in to homonormativity and attempting to resist it every day. I have found in the past several years, that the best way to have people listen to you is to show them something that they do not want to see.
Those are all victims of gay-bashing. In some cases, they were not even homosexuals, but were assumed to be because of their appearance. Are you sickened? I am. This is the world that we live in. Stare it in the face, and realize that normativity is not a safe place for anyone who cannot fit perfectly into the mold. Perhaps, as far as disability goes, a wheelchair is just what the doctor ordered. But what about the rest?
Works Cited
Class notes, Gendered Bodies in Visual Culture. October 7, 2010.
McRuer, Robert and Abby L. Wilkerson. "Introduction." Desiring Disability. Duke University Press, 2003. 1-23.
Do you believe that all resistance in this subject is resistance for the sake of resistance? In what ways might one resist and have it be viewed as important or serious instead of just a bunch of naive activism? The photos of gay-bashing are, in fact, difficult to observe, but is that then the manner in which minorities and their allies should resist? Is exposing the negative ways which heteronormative culture acts upon the other considered resistance? Is there a positive way that would do the same thing? Would showing value in difference and celebrating it in the public sphere carry the same weight and affect those who are uninformed as much as seeing a photo of gay-bashing?
ReplyDeleteI liked your last remarks about the wheelchair and the doctor. They go along with your general argument but they also remind us that "what the doctor orders", or stereotypes, social norms, they all change through out time. Indeed, what the doctor ordered at the beginning of the century is quite different than what it is ordered now. With this in mind we can understand why is so important to constantly revise and critique our position and to try and find multiple angles of resistance. This is why I think the questions posted above are really important to consider.
ReplyDeleteYou do a wonderful job here of explaining McRuer and Wilkerson's critique of homonormativity and their concept of "desiring disability." And I like your reading of Axis Dance Company too--you note some limitations of the medium they work with while also pointing out how they may fit some forms of resistance as well. Nicely done.
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