The Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Feminisms in Contemporary Performance

The purpose of this Handbook is to provide students with an overview of key developments in queer and trans feminist theories and their significance to the field of contemporary performance studies. It presents new insights highlighting the ways in which rigid or punishing notions of gender, sexuality and race continue to flourish in systems of knowledge, faith and power which are relevant to a new generation of queer and trans feminist performers today. The guiding question for the Handbook is: How do queer and trans feminist theories enhance our understanding of developments in feminist performance today, and will this discussion give rise to new ways of theorizing contemporary performance? As such, the volume will survey a new generation of performers and theorists, as well as senior scholars, who engage and redefine the limits of performance. The chapters will demonstrate how intersectional, queer and trans feminist theoretical tools support new analyses of performance with a global focus. The primary audience will be students of theatre/ performance studies as well as queer /gender studies. The volume’s contents suggest close links between the formation of queer feminist identities alongside recent key political developments with transnational resonances. Furthermore, the emergence of new queer and trans feminist epistemologies prompts a reorientation regarding performance and identities in a 21st-century context. Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures 1 Introduction: Queer and Trans Feminist Performance Introduction Cultural and Political Shifts Eclectically Academic Performance and Performativity Queer Feminisms Trans Feminisms and Trans Studies Intersectionality Healing in Queer and Trans Communities Toward Queer and Trans Feminist Coalitions and Solidarity The Structure of The Handbook Bibliography Part I Subversive Performance: Breaking Through Codes of (Un)Intelligibility 2 Butch Woman: A Meditation Meditation 2019 Psychosis Suddenly Last Summer at Bluefish Cove Vagina Duologues Appearances and Visitations 3 The Butch Monologues: Performance as a Bridge from “Border Wars” to “Playground” Introduction The People Part 1: Butch Identity and Its Place in a Context of Deep Tension Butch The “Temporal Paradox of Butch” Part 2 TBM: The Show Experiencing TBM Borders Part 3 What Can Performance, in This Case TBM, Do in This Context Borders: Past/Present and Tensions Conclusion Bibliography 4 On Translation: “Homo Inc.orporated: The Triangle and the Farting Unicorn” Introduction On the Politics of Translation Smaschieramenti in Bologna: The “Gender Strike” and the Paradigm of Gender as Work A Note on the Use of “Lesbians and Gays (LG)” as Distinct from “Queer” and “Transfeminist”. Part Three: Gender as Work: Smaschieramenti Making Money, upon Our Delicious Cooking, upon Our Smiles, upon Our Arses Going on Gender Strike «sciopero dei/dai generi» Bibliography 5 The Undisciplined Body: Phia Ménard and Her Experience of Organic Performance Resisting Queer: The French Experience Lending My Body to the Spectator, Feeling What I Feel, Seeing What I See Bibliography 6 Performing Improper Desires: The Unintelligibility of Convert Black Muslim Women Exaggerated Strangeness, Performativity, and Passing Racial Logics: Intelligible Blackness Becoming Unintelligible Subjects, Becoming Muslim: Mixing with the Wrong Others The Hijab as Trespass: The Incoherent Movement of Black Muslim Women’s Veils The Hijab as Drag? Unintelligibility: A Deliberate Subversion? Conclusion Bibliography 7 Im/Possible Un/Veilings: Asifa Lahore and British-Asian Muslim Drag Performance Framing the Veil Playing with Multiple Veils “Coming Out” of the Veil Hijabi/Hojabi Bibliography 8 Alienated Flesh at the Place of Trauma and Death: Unearthing the Black (Queered) In-Human in Suzan-Lori Parks’ One-Character Short Play Pickling Re-Tracing the Roots of Trauma A Re-Orienting Process A Different Grammar: Thinking Alienated Flesh Beyond Character Undoing Identity: A Queer(ed) Black Drama A Dramaturgy of Anti-catharsis Swerving Toward the Abyss Conclusion: Ending a World Without End Works Cited Part II Whose Queer Currency? Ex/Changing CIS White Fragility 9 You Can’t Hold My Baby: An Open Letter to Predominant White Institutions of Theatre Arts Bibliography 10 Activating Cis-White Fragility: The Oppositional Gaze in Travis Alabanza’s Left Outside Alone The Problem of Visibility The Gaze, Normativity and Fragility Queer Feminist Research Methods Left Outside Alone Queer Performance as Resistance and Survival Bibliography 11 Between Mess and Method: Performance Art Economix/tures Mess Method Messiness Methodological Mess Methods That’s Messed Up (In)Conclusion Bibliography 12 Whose Pride Is This Anyway? The Quare Performance of the #Black Pride4 Lesbian and Gay Assimilationist Politics: The Erasure of BQTPOC Queers Queering Socially Engaged Art Through Queer Antagonism The Black Pride 4: Disidentification and Utopian Imaginings The Future of Pride: Queer Afro-Futurism or Gay White Supremacy? Bibliography 13 It Happened to #Metoo: Queer Feminist Critique of Cisgender White Feminism Hashtag Feminisms White, Straight Celebrity Feminists Solidarity Matters Whitening Intersectionality Testimonials as Genre: Trauma and “Wound Fetishism” Violence Performed: Is a Burden Shared a Burden Halved? Feminist Organizing from the Margins Feminist Agonist Pluralism Toward Feminist Coalitions Bibliography 14 Lip-Syncing for Our Lives: Queering Dissent in Queer & Now a Lip-Sync Spectacular A Queer Dissent A Queer Company Queering Drag Lip-Syncing for Our Lives Mary and Oxum Ode to Judy Tundra Bridezilla The Dissenter’s Hope Bibliography Part III Queer Crossings and Transformations 15 The Case of Deborah de Robertis’s Performance Art, Nudity, and Institutional Reprisal Introduction: Deborah de Robertis’s Public Performances and Some Institutional Reactions Methodology: A Speculative Reading, Combining Radical Marxist Feminism with Queer Transfeminist Thought Mirror of Origin at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris (2014) Criminalisation and Biopolitical Management of Gendered Bodies Via Foucault Courbet’s Painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World) Paul B. Preciado on the Governing of the Sexual Organs Obedience in Hobbes and Androcentric Sovereignty Federici, Preciado, Bourcier on Capitalist Extraction and the Privatisation of the Body Foucault on the Heartlessness of the State/Organs Paul B. Preciado in Testo-Junkie and Potentia Guadendi “I Will Not Leave”: De Robertis’s Performance of Olympia Staged as Right of Reply to the D’Orsay Conclusion References 16 Deviants, Queers, or Scissoring Sisters of Men?: Translating and Locating Queer and Trans Feminisms in the Contemporary Arabic-Speaking World Introduction Cases and Incidents The (In)visibility of Trans* Feminisms The Issue of Performance The Politics and Performativity of Translation The Search for Authentic Sexuality Post-2011 Queer and Trans Feminist Activism The Power of Provocation Conclusion Bibliography 17 (Trans-)Forming Gender Ideologies Through Performance in Russia: Cyberfeminist Somatexts of the Maailmanloppu Theatre Preciado Meets Haraway in Saint Petersburg Zero Gravity: Documentary Readings of t[Torsos] Seven Predicates of Salome/OYAGG/Oh, You’re a Good Girl Conclusion Bibliography 18 I am Nepantla: The Bodies that Matter in Chicana/o and Mexican Art Introduction Who and How? Do not Miss the Lived Experiences Mural Painting as a Performative Art The Chicana/o Community at the Crossroad Debunking Mestizaje: The Theory of the New Mestiza The Mural Environment Walking Beyond the Tradition Mexico and the United States: Our Racist Ideologies Speaking Out: Does the Mestizo Exist? Conclusion Bibliography 19 Queerings and Crossings: The Post Natyam Collective’s “The Sins of Such Wonderful Flesh” The Process and the Piece Resuming: Long-Distance Creation and Development of the Piece (2018–2019) Getting to Know Maud Letters to Maud: “So, Why Do I Even Write to You, a Queer Ancestor I Cannot Respect?” Performing (Dis)respect Performing Spectatorship: Rerouting Reception and the Gaze Desire and (Dis)identification Conclusion and Future Possibilities Bibliography 20 Performing the ‘Pleasure in the Poetic’ Bibliography 21 Towards a Queer Laboratory Queering Grotowski A Laboratory of Powers Audiovisual Embodiment Bibliography Part IV Healing and Revolution: Activism as/in Healing 22 Healing Chaos in Motion Healing Chaos in Motion Through Performance 23 Adrian Piper’s Psychedelic Drag Introduction The Queering of Consciousness From LSD Self-Portraits to Psychedelic Performance Psychedelic Embodiment and the Erotic On Psychedelic Drag Conclusion Bibliography 24 Narcissism and Healing in Queer Feminist Cabaret in Australia Introduction Bibliography 25 Discursive Contortion and Healing Inhabiting Yoga Bodies Queerly Entering the Shala Yoga as a Support Technique in the Performing Arts Planning Which Postures to Perform Rolling Out the Mat—Addressing Gender and Sexuality in Critical Yoga Studies “It Can Be Practice by Anyone... Regardless of Sex”? “Women Need Yoga Even More Than Men”? Asceticism Reinterpreted—The Absence of Sexuality Filling the Gaps—Corporeal Experience as the Ground for Reinterpretation Breathing, Bhanda, Drsti—Guided Perception and the Bodies Within Embodiment and Technique—Possible Bodily Transformations Towards Self-Realisation—“Practice” as the Site of Self-Transformation Possible Affective Communities Discursive Contortion and Healing Relaxation—Towards a Conclusion Bibliography 26 Witnessing Rawness: Community & Healing Introduction Bibliography 27 Cuir Sudak Transpossessions and Other Magical Mutations (or, About the Practice of Healing the-Selves Otherwise) Bibliography 28 Decolonizing the University with DarkMatter’s Healing of/in Failure Introduction: DarkMatter and the Case for Failure The Belief in Possibilities: Failure as Utopic Decolonizing and Inciting/Insighting: Pedagogies of Failure Trans Performance Art and the Neoliberal University Trans Erasure and the “Will to Institutionality” (Ferguson 2012) (Trans)Gendering: A Decolonizing and Healing Project Toward a Healing of/in Failure Bibliography 29 Healing Through Art and Activism Introduction Part V Conclusion 30 Conclusion: Towards Queer and Trans Feminist Solidarity Where We’ve Been Where We Are Now? Whose Voices Are Still Being Silenced? Where Are We Going? What Is the Most Urgent Work? How Can Performance Studies Take Up This Work? Bibliography Index