'There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. Jose Esteban Munoz 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. Munoz 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. By 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, and television, Munoz 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.' - from publisher's website

With biography of author.



Alternative title

Cultural Studies of the Americas

Access level

Onsite

Location code
REF.MUJ
Language

English

Publication/Creation date

1999

No of pages

229

ISBN / ISSN

9780816630141

No of copies

1

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Preface: Jack's Pluger

Introduction: Performing Disidentifications

Part I: The Melancholia of Race

Famous and Dandy like B. 'n' Andy: Race, Pop, and Basquiat

Photographies of Mourning: Melancholia and Ambivalence in Van DerZee, Mapplerthorpe, and Looking for Langston

Part II: Remaking Genres: Porn, Punk, and Ethnography

The Autoethnographic Performance: Reading Richard Fung's Queer Hybridity

'The White to Be Angry': Vaginal Creme Davis's Terrorist Drag

Part III: Critical Cubania

Sister Acts: Ela Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana

Pedro Zamora's Real World of Counterpublicity: Performing an Ethics of the Self

Performing Disidentity: Disidentification as a Practice of Freedom

Latina Performance and Queer Worldmaking; or, Chusmería at the End of the Twentieth Century

Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
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Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics

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