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Performing Latinx? A self-reflexive sketch and what to do after
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Performing Latinx? A self-reflexive sketch and what to do after
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Content
Performing Latinx?:
A Self-Reflexive Sketch and What to Do After
By
Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC Roski School of Art and Design
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(FINE ARTS)
May 2021
Copyright 2021 Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III
ii
TABLE OF CONTEXT
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………….iii
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1
Constructing Identities and The Self: Erving Goffman………………………………………...…3
Habitus and Dispositional / Contextualist theory of Action……………………………………....6
Dispositional and Contextualist theory of Action……………………………………………...….8
Self-reflexivity for the viewer and me……………………………………………………….......11
Latinx or Mexican American: Mapping Development and Use………………………………....12
Of Coarse I am………………………………………………………………………………..….18
Establishing Authenticity as a Component of Identity……………………………………….….19
Existing in non-linear spaces…………………………………………………………………….21
Authenticity as Oppressive and Empowering: Authenticating the Dominated……………….…22
Shapeshifting: bridging the art / research gap………………………………………………..…..26
Vulnerable Masculinity…………………………………………………………………….…….28
Self-Reflexive Performance Art as Social Science……………………………………………....29
Conclusion: What To Do After………………………………………………………………..... 33
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..36
iii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure1 Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III, film still of Context, 2020……………………………..…11
Figure 2 Of Coarse I am. Film Still. 2020…………………………………………………….....19
Figure 3 He Cried, We Cried. Acrylic on Canvas. 6x12ft. 2017………………...……………....21
Figure 4 Two undiscovered Amerindians visit the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo by
Robert Sanchez. 1992…………………………………………………………………………....23
Figure 5 Man To Man. Film Still. Sean Doran & Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III. 2020-21……....25
Figure 6 Carmelita Tropicana. Chicken Sushi. Film still. 1989……………………………………...32
Figure 7 Indigurrito, Nao Bustamante, The Women’s Building, San Francisco, California. Photo
by D. Oviedo. 1992………………………………………………………………………..……..33
iv
ABSTRACT
This thesis is a sketch for a self-reflexive analysis of my, Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III’s
positionality within the field of contemporary art. Throughout the essay I locate my identity and
artistic classifications and their corresponding social historical trajectories. I use art history,
performance studies, sociological, and ethnographic research to showcase the complexity of
western classification systems as well as their abilities and limitations. Further, I use my cultural
and gender-based classifications as a launching point to showcase the interaction between social
projected categories/classifications and my experience of those classifications. Additionally,
deploying self-reflexivity and performance art as a tool to question notions of essentialism, found
within social categories I propose a framework that can assist in navigating narrow and reductive
categories/classifications. Lastly, I center art as a legitimate research method for exploring
pressing social phenomena relating to identity formation.
1
“I am Latinx/Latino.” This is a statement I find myself saying from time to time. In most
situations I find it easier to say this when speaking to cultural outsiders. In southern California it
may even be associated with more symbolic capital as opposed to Mexican and/or Mexican
American, which have negative stereotypes associated with them (i.e., little symbolic capital).
Sometimes I say I am Latinx to share a commonality with others who descend from south of the
US/Mexico border while showing sensitivity toward gender and sex exclusion (i.e., the use of the
“x” is generally thought to challenge the male/female dichotomy in the Spanish language). I also
use it when Hispanic isn’t the only category on official documents. As an artist but also as a
human being I’m interested in understanding if this term is an identity of mine and if not, what is
it? Throughout this essay I’ll be attempting a self-reflexive analysis of my association with
Latinx, its historical trajectory, and limitations. In addition, I will look at how art can be used as
a tool to navigate, change, and even create new identities in a hostile world.
Self-reflexivity according to Pierre Bourdieu encapsulates taking as an investigation your
own trajectory so as to understand the lens by which you view the world
1
. The artist Andrea
Fraser wrote about Bourdieu’s notion of reflexivity in her article “Artist Writes No.2 Toward a
Reflexive Resistance: “Above all, Bourdieu would be able to apply his ‘reflexive sociology’ to
sift through all the representations that have accompanied this global disaster, from the Right to
the Left through the Center, not only to parse their relative truths and falsehoods but also to
reveal the truth of the social structures and dynamics they enact, producing and reproducing the
very world they ostensibly abhor.”
2
As an artist who believes in social justice for subjugated and
1
Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation of Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 41.
“It is not the individual unconscious of the researcher but the epistemological unconscious of his discipline that must be
unearthed: “What [has] to be done [is] not magically to abolish this distance by a spurious primitivist participation but to
objectivize this objectivizing distance and the social conditions which make it possible, such as the externality of the observer,
the techniques of objectivation he uses, etc.”
2
Fraser, Andrea. Artist Writes No.2 Toward a Reflexive Resistance. (X-TRA. 2019) pg.3
2
oppressed groups I feel that it is important to “reveal the truth structures and dynamics” I enact
that may produce the very world I claim to oppose. A world rooted in racism, sexism, classism,
inequitable distribution of resources, hegemonic value systems, colonialism, that is essentially
those social processes which marginalize groups based on arbitrary and reductive classifications.
One major component of the self-reflexive framework requires a socio-historical analysis
of the conditions which created my disposition in social space. In other words, I need to
examine, through my own self-reflexive framework, established history, popular culture, familial
experiences, and research in identity and culture, all of which have influenced how I identify
myself. Another major component of self-reflexivity, once you’ve identified the conditions of
your disposition, is illuminating your various forms of capital with the intention of weeding out
those practices which are the most symbolically violent. For example, my training in academia
rewards me with cultural and social capital, which simultaneously reproduces the world which
creates the hierarchical binary between educated and non-educated, favoring the educated.
Another example, in regard to my identity are the masculine qualities I’ve been socialized to
perform, such as stoic, strong, etc. which rewards me and simultaneously reproduces the
devaluing of perceived opposite qualities (e.g. crying, vulnerability, etc.).This reflexive tool can
help to provide a context devoid of strict value systems of judgement (good/bad) by giving a
socio-historical account of action. This would be in opposition to the belief that people are
inherently good or bad.
Lastly, I want to make a case for art, as attached to larger epistemologies, as a legitimate
tool that can investigate, research, develop methods, solutions, and potentially even provide
answers to pressing social questions ranging across the human experience. That is, I want to add
to the growing conversation about legitimizing non-western, non-patriarchal, non/post-colonial
3
epistemologies as authorities on how to understand social phenomena. This project is in the face
of our current hierarchical model where specific epistemologies (e.g. western science) claim
dominance over others (e.g. Indigenous cosmoletics). Before we look at the socio-historical
space of Latinx we have to examine the tools which have been used in Western epistemologies to
make claims about other cultures. We have to consider if the tools are sufficient in encapsulating,
in entirety, a dynamic culture or identity.
Constructing Identities and The Self: Erving Goffman
I want to foreshadow the intricacies of “Latinx identity” or the “Latinx project,” depending
on whom you ask, with some core sociological frameworks centering on theories of action on the
individual and group level. As humans we use identity to locate ourselves in time and space
using self-affirmative statements like “I am this kind of person,” “I’m from this place and believe
these kinds of things.” We may act accordingly when faced with a context to gain the best
outcome. Tracing how an identity is formed in relation to forming a sense of self is crucial in
understanding Latinx identity. Looking at the work of sociologist Erving Goffman may give us a
framework to see how and why people act in particular ways, which then shapes their identity.
Erving Goffman is a highly regarded North American sociologist of the twentieth
century. One of his famed publications is called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(1956). In it he theorized human behavior using the theater as a metaphor to underscore the idea
of performance within social interactions. This contends with the idea of humans being born with
strict inherent moral behaviors and rather fosters the idea that behavior is learned and in turn
performed. Goffman asserts, “I have been using the term ‘performance’ to refer to all the activity
of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a
4
particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers.”
3
In relation to
identity this can mean performing certain key behaviors which align with your intended goals
(i.e., to have a desired influence). For example, a person may speak differently in different
settings (e.g. professional vs. friends, etc.) to present a self that is in tune with the specific
context. It could be said that the overall intention of such performances is to yield what Pierre
Bourdieu called “symbolic capital” which “refers to [the] degree of accumulated prestige,
celebrity, consecration or honour” which “is founded on a dialectic of knowledge and
recognition.”
4
That is symbolic wealth for specific situations.
Related to this concept of symbolic wealth, recognition in theater is key in allowing the
viewer to enter the performance. So too is recognition crucial in Goffman’s theory of
performance in the actors’ (the subjects’) ability to present a believable performance. Goffman
writes of the performance stating “when an individual plays a part, he implicitly requests his
observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to believe
that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess.”
5
When looking at the formation of racial identities such as Latinx it’s useful to think about
how an identity is produced or re-produced in terms of performance. For instance, consider Los
Angeles Dodger’s merchandise (e.g. sweaters, hats, etc.). Most groups who identify as Latina/o
would surely have a associative story regarding their proximity to the Dodgers as a symbol of
Latinx identity. To perform with the intention of entering this group of Latinx/a/o would be
updating your knowledge of the team or at least owning merchandise (and thereby gaining social
capital, per Bourdieu).
3
Erving Goffman, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Performances,” The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956;
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959), 32.
4
Bourdieu, Pierre, The Field of Cultural Production, (Columbia University Press, 1993), 7.
5
Erving Goffman, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Performances,” The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1956; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959), 32.
5
Outlining the various moments in which an identity is being performed is precisely the
task Goffman undertook. Goffman used the theatrical terms “front stage” and “back stage” to
further identify behavior essentially when an actor (individual subject) is aware they are being
observed by others and when they believe they are not. Front (front stage) refers to “the
individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the
situation for those who observe the performance.”
6
Goffman suggests that “social front can be
divided into traditional parts, such as settings, appearance, and manner….”
7
Back stage crudely
defined refers to those behaviors which are not dictated by front stage performance expectations.
For a university educated Latinx identified person, this could mean code switching among family
and the university (frontstage) and relaxing performative efforts when you’re alone (backstage).
Goffman describes it in this way: “A back region or backstage may be defined as a place relative
to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly
contradicted as a matter of course.”
8
The combination of these analyses is called the
dramaturgical analysis theory. This is helpful in thinking about identity and the self as not
inherently tied to any particular social behavior. That is, behavior and self are informed by
interaction and non-interaction. Goffman gives us an idea of how Latinx/a/o as a relatively new
term is becoming a potential identity complete with appropriate procedures for access. But it
may not take us far enough in scaling the complexity of the term, since Goffman was not as
interested in macro-level investigations of group action. If we are to make a fair assessment for
Latinx as an identity it is helpful to call on Bernard Lahire’s theory of “plural actors.”
6
Erving Goffman, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Performances,” The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1956; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959), 32.
7
Ibid, 39
8
Ibid, 69.
6
Habitus and Dispositional / Contextualist theory of Action
Erving Goffman helps sociology break away from its focus on group to group analysis
and was one of the first to think about the individual and what may influence the individual to act
in the manner which they did. A contemporary sociologist by the name of Bernard Lahire carries
on the theorical framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus” and “field theory” but also points out
its limitations due to its emphasizing of the importance of individuals as sociological objects of
study. Furthering earlier initiations by sociologists like Erving Goffman, simply put, Bernard
Lahire attempts to develop a framework that combines the importance of Bourdieu’s Habitus and
Goffman’s micro-level analysis. Lahire calls his theory a dispositional and contextualist theory
of action. To fully understand why the dispositional and contextualist theory of action is crucial
as a framework to investigate identity we have to briefly understand the importance and
shortcomings of Bourdieu’s Habitus.
Pierre Bourdieu considered habitus a “Structuring Structure,” “the product of the
incorporation of the structures of the fundamental distributions which organize the social order
(structured structures).”
9
Put in another way Bourdieu writes:
The specific logic of the field is established in the incorporated state in the form
of a specific habitus, or, more precisely, a sense of the game, ordinarily described
as a “spirit” or ”sense” (”philosophical”, ”literary”, ”artistic”, etc.), which is
practically never set out or imposed in an explicit way. Because it takes place
insensibly, in other words gradually, progressively and imperceptibly, the
conversion of the original habitus, a more or less radical process (depending on
the distance), which is required by entry into the game and acquisition of the
specific habitus, passes for the most part unnoticed.
10
Habitus is/was extremely important in establishing a framework by which to trace how
spaces of competition and their subjects ultimately reproduce each other. That is the subject
9
Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Mediations, (California: Stanford University Press. 1997), 98.
10
Ibid, 11.
7
enacts the necessary behavior of a field (space of competition) to gain capital (power, symbolic
or physical) which simultaneously reconstitutes the field and its various procedures. In terms of
identity and specifically Latinx as an identity, or even Chicanx we can consider the importance
within the group to reproduce behaviors to maintain a legitimate distinction from say Euro-
American identity. Being that imperial and colonial efforts gain from forgetting and erasing, the
strategy of claiming distinctions—such as the act of speaking Spanish in an Anglophone
country— carries with it a revolutionary act against being forgotten. Within the criteria of early
Chicanx/a/o identity there is symbolic capital gained in speaking Spanish in that you are
maintaining a practice which is distinct from speaking English which is contemporarily
associated to Euro-American colonialism. In this example the field is identity (Latinx, Chicana/o,
Mexican-American, etc.) and habitus is what tells you that speaking Spanish will harbor rewards
within the group and create friction within the dominant culture which is primarily English
speaking. Before this framework existed, we could have accepted that Spanish indeed articulated
an authentic form of Mexican-American identity (which many would have contended with
within the group as they may not have spoken Spanish but descend from south of the
U.S./Mexico border) rather than a socially constructed practice situated in generational contexts.
Habitus as a theory gives us access to explore those actions and dispositions thought to be
inherent in a person previously. But with all theories it comes with limitations.
One of the limitations of Bourdieu’s theory was his analysis of the individual as part of
one field (a centralized space of competition for symbolic or literal resources) which in turn
structured the individual’s disposition (i.e., set of actions by which to navigate the field) which
composed the habitus. The limitation was that Bourdieu’s analysis only looked at the
individual’s actions based on one singular field. For example, a writer would be examined
8
through the frame of the field of writing and less on the chance experiences outside of that
vocation which may leave an impactful impression. Put in another way habitus refers to the
information from a field internalized and practiced by the body. The issue with habitus was
thinking one field had sole dominance over the individual’s disposition. We will come to see that
many facets of life constitute an actor and that actors may experience many fields. When
examining Latinx Identity or any identity it’s important that we not limit our observation in a
similar vain. That is, we should not think that a person is any singular classification. Bernard
Lahire attempts a sociology of the individual as being influenced by many arenas of social reality
including multiple fields.
Dispositional and Contextualist theory of Action
Bourdieu could be said to account for the historical context which influences the group to
reproduce certain behaviors while Goffman looks at immediate context in how it will influence
the individual as well as how the individual will perform consciously. Lahire wishes to bridge
the dispositional (historical) and contextual (present moment) as a point of entry to understand
the individual. Nigel Rapport, in his written review of The Plural Actor writes of Lahire, “[h]is
book is an attempt to apply the latter’s [Bourdieu’s] theory of practice and habitus to areas
Bourdieu neglected such as crises of identity and maladjustments: individuals transplanted by
social mobility, migration, illness, and war that lead to them being out of place.”
11
Being that
Latinx is a migratory group descending from south of the U.S./Mexico border as well as those
who the border crossed over (i.e., indigenous groups in the southwest during the Mexican
annexation) this model is a crucial framework to analyze a theory of action for Latinx identifiers
and the nationalities, that is, identities which fall under Latinx.
11
Rapport, Nigel. Review of The Plural Actor, by Bernard Lahire. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17, (2011):
907-8.
9
To concisely layout Lahire’s theorical framework I want to use Caterina Trizzulla’s
publication titled From Bourdieu to Lahire: Social Determinism and Pluralist Consumer
Practices. Trizzulla summarizes a core component of Lahires theorical model as follows: “This
perspective involves retracing the trajectories of individuals in a chronological manner, and also
retraces the interaction between the different contexts in which individuals live or have lived in
the past. It is necessary to specify what these contexts are and the impact they have on the actors
concerned, but also, according to Lahire, to categorize the relationships between these
contexts.”
12
As stated above Goffman looks at the individual consciously acting to create an
impression, Habitus looks at how action creates the field and how the field creates dispositions
on a singular level, but I believe Lahire wishes to merge these frameworks as well as incorporate
others. Lahire wants to acknowledge that conventional data collection practices are highly
limited in scope. Such as quantitative data collection methods.
Using quantitative research methods (a core tool for measuring human experience in the
social sciences) leaves a major discrepancy in that statistics and averages determine generalities.
We can all attest that generalities commonly don’t account for our novel experiences. Put in
another way, it is easier to measure why a group will act in a particular way rather than for
individuals. Goffman, Bourdieu, and many researchers use qualitative data collection. Which I
should mention yield worthwhile results but at a cost. Its challenging to study the causations of
individuals because there are so many variables at play (what was the temperature during the
experiment, are they well fed, did they have a bad bus ride, etc.). Lahire wants to clearly identify
that this is an issue. He states in his book The Plural Actor, “[t]he theory of fields resolves a
whole series of sociological problems, but generates its own in so far as (1) it ignores the
12
Trizzulla, Caterina. “From Bourdieu to Lahire: Social determinism and pluralist consumer practices,” Recherche et
Applications en Marketing, no. 31 (2016): 94
10
ceaseless transitions made by agents belonging to a field between the field in which they are
producers, the fields in which they are mere consumer-spectators and the many situations that
cannot be related to a field…”
13
The plural actor, taking from our earlier examples of dodger
merchandise and speaking Spanish may find legitimacy as an Latinx, Mexican-American,
Chicanx, etc., for the fact that they can now choose if they want to reproduce these cultural
attributes or not. They can feel relief knowing that they are not chained to these expectations, nor
expected to preform them but can if they choose to do so. Believing you have to perform in a
particular way based on your social classification can feel restrictive and limiting (e.g. Chicano’s
should know Spanish). Lahire sets-up a similar conflict:
But the plural actor is not necessary a double agent. He or she [or they] has
embodied several repertoires of schemes of action (habits) that do not necessarily
produce (major) suffering, in so far as they can quite well coexist peacefully when
expressed in social contexts that are different and separate from one another, or
lead only to limited and partial conflicts in one or another particular context or
domain of existence (many women, for example, are caught between the desire or
necessity of work outside the home and the desire or necessity of domestic
investment, thus living in these two spaces different “forms of oppression.”
14
The reflexive purpose of outlining these theories together is to contribute to the ongoing
conversation regarding the general perception both for the in-group and the out-group on identity
and cultural practices, specifically in this case regarding how I perceive my identity and culture.
The effort here is to complicate the observation by preventing the desire to come to absolute
conclusions. In regard to my masculine classification this framework allows me to feel free in
not having to reproduce performances of toughness, emotionlessness, etc. or to feel stuck in a
reductive classification. But rather it should open a conversation about what a human is or does
13
Lahire, Bernard. The Plural Actor (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001) 30.
14
Ibid, 37.
11
without narrow cultural constructs. Further it should give the observer a framework from which
to experience the ‘other’ beyond narrow classifications.
The framework proposed by these sociologists places my relation to the categories like
Latina/o, Latinidad, Hispanic in a precarious position. It helps us question the legitimacy of the
terms as a functional identity. We can ask truly if Latinx constitutes an identity at all or if it is
merely a term made for others to place us in the field of racial/ethnic relations. As an artist who
explores my internal and external boundaries and borders I’ve intuitively felt the lacking in terms
to describe or incapsulate my totality as a living complex organism.
Self-reflexivity for the viewer and me
Figure1 Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III, film still of Context, 2020.
This intuition manifests as artistic projects exploring the very technologies used to make
distinctions such as identity/non-identity or culture “A”/culture “B.” For the video performance
titled Context (2020) I draw on my personal yearning to take as my subject how the body is
perceived in a hyper-classist/sexist/racist society (i.e., the United States). I’ve called myself
Latino in particular situations. But what does that mean for me and those I’ve expressed this to?
What does it mean that my physical features represent “Latino” to an American audience? In the
video I repeat the phrases “what do I see?,” “why do I see that?,” and “is that really there?,”
12
layered on top of video of me (a Mexican-American) sitting and facing the camera straight on
with my eyes closed.
The question “what do I see?’ is both for the viewer and myself. I want to call on a
questioning of the information we’ve learned throughout life in order to categorize what we see
(e.g. I see an apple because my culture has called that object an apple and I interact with it based
on how the dominate culture has taught me to interact with it). Asking “why do I see that?” starts
an internal conversation about how you’ve come to learn to perceive. That is, who or what taught
you to categorize and apply valuations. And asking “is that really there?” puts those external
educating factors in a suspect position. As the video continues there is a slow zoom toward the
subject. Eventually the video and audio start to become more and more warped and distorted
until the figure becomes unrecognizable and inaudible. The goal is to demonstrate the fickleness
of perception. Questioning your intellectual trajectory is part of the self-reflexive practice as well
as the practice being outlined in this essay. If not as a daily practice at the very least, we need to
be conscious of the limits of our understanding when in an authoritative position. We should be
curious about the information we carry with us and project on to the things we interact with.
Where might your context end and the other begin? Here we should consider how self-reflexivity
(i.e., an internal social-historical investigation of our own social positionality in relation to
others) may play a part in identifying the trajectory of our value systems. And by value systems I
mean those psychological structures that help us navigate the world and make identifications
with or distinctions from “outside” elements, our dispositional/contextual motivations. For me as
a cultural producer my self-reflexive practice puts into question my identity and rightfully as
we’ll see shortly.
Latinx or Mexican American: Mapping Development and Use
13
I have not only learned to claim Latina/o/x from peer groups or popular media but from
family, a non-field. I remember hearing many elders say, “We are Latino, Mijo!” It was said in
such a way to demonstrate and reinforce pride for who I/we are and to assert that we descend
from a culture and epistemology different from that of Anglo-Euro America. My family’s history
in the United states goes back only 55 years to the late 1960’s. They came to a Los Angeles
where Spanish in school was punished and where racism was openly rampant. This was also
during the rise of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles, wherein Mexican Americans were
creating an identity for themselves. Problematically, not everyone (including my family) had
access to participate in the movement although it may have been felt in different ways by
different groups. Those who were forced to assimilate to survive, which is the process of
suppressing one’s cultural values and practices in order to align with the dominant practices,
could anchor to a sense of pride in their cultural trajectory as the movement was making
headlines in multiple news outlets. In other words, those forced to assimilate didn’t have a
chance to grasp the specifics of the movement’s more nuanced ideologies but did get a sense of a
group who fought to define who they were and where they came from. When I hear an elder say
“We are Latino, Mijo,” I recognize this context of struggle, assimilation to survive, and
resilience. And this is how I’ve come to use the term. This is not to say my family also doesn’t
and didn’t use Chicano, but it has become rarer over the years. Chicano as a category has been
heavily criticized since the 1960’s for excluding groups outside of the Mexican diaspora. In the
shuffle to find a more inclusive term, “Latina/o” has resurfaced as “Latinx” to be more gender
inclusive.
In explicating the complexity of the term Latina/o/x I want to call on the work of Tatiana
Flores in her publication Resisting Categories, Remapping Knowledge. Early in the article Flores
14
states, “With few exceptions, Latin America was presented as a geographical given, assumed to
encompass only the Hispanophone and Lusophone territories south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Even within such a demarcation, entire regions, such as Central America and the Andes, were
essentially invisible.”
15
This invisibility is due to the exclusion of black people from the shapers
of the term Latin-America. Flores quotes historian Ben Vinson saying “when race and/or
ethnicity have entered… [cultural studies] analyses [of Latin America], the indigenous
population which has arguably had a more prominent long-term demographic impact on the
region, has frequently enjoyed priority,” concluding that “it has long been possible to do Latin
American history without referencing blackness or the African diaspora.”
16
In the case of the
Chicana/o category, the same holds true. Flores continues, exclaiming “[t]he problem, ultimately,
is that Latin America is an inherently racist construct. It’s very name points to its Eurocentric
nature.”
17
The term “mestizaje” is a construct and was created to make visible the mixture of
Spanish colonialists, Americans, and indigenous populations but was also linked to the
exclusion of black peoples within the diaspora. Mestizaje was a core philosophy of Chicanos in
the U.S. at the time. The goal was to acknowledge that people within this category are
multifaceted and complex not just American, Mexican, or indigenous but all three simultaneous.
But as mentioned above this rarely if ever included Afro-Mexican diaspora. For myself, I have to
be wary of how I am being categorized when making art work. Am I making Chicanx art work,
Latinx artwork, what am I carrying with me when claiming these categories?
Flores quotes Silva Rodriguez Maeso and Marta Araujo elaborating on their concept of
“Eurocentrism” regarding the historical use of Latina/o: “The ‘Latin’ in Latin America refers, of
15
Tatiana Flores, “Resisting Categories, Remapping Knowledge.” In The Routledge Companion to African American Art
History, edited by Eddie Chambers, 134, Routledge Press, 2019.
16
Ibid. 136; Flores is citing Vinson III, Ben. “African (Black) Diaspora History, Latin American History.” The Americas 63, no.
1 (July 2006). 1–18.
17
Ibid., 136
15
course, to the descendants of the Roman empire, a foundational civilization of Western Culture.
The terminology derives from France’s colonial ambitions in the nineteenth century and was
employed to describe the ‘Latin race’—emanating from Italy, France, and the Iberian Peninsula
–in opposition to Anglo-Saxon North America and the British empire.”
18
As we can see Latinx
shares this history and I as a person who publicly declares it.
Laura E. Gomez, a professor of law, sociology, and Chicana/Chicano studies, explores
Latina/o along a different line, marking its legal trajectory in Los Angeles. In her book Inventing
Latinos: A Story of American Racism she traces the trajectory of Latino/a as a racial category that
originated in the 1980’s asserting “Fifty years ago it would have been nonsensical to hear anyone
refer to ‘the Latino Population]” For one thing, only in 1980 did the federal government begin
counting Latinos, and that shift did not immediately trickle down to state and local
governments.”
19
As a racial category for groups to be placed in, Gomez reviews the primary
purpose of racial grouping in the US stating
Race is about power, including the power to decide when and how to classify
people into this or that racial category and what those very categories are. We
think of race categories as essential and immutable. As reflecting notions of
blood, stock, ancestry, and DNA. But they are actually political categories,
reflecting the power one group (whites) to define other groups as inferior to them,
as less fully human.
20
Connecting to Flores, who posits Latina/o as a dominated-dominant group because of its
exclusion of African descendants and proximity to whiteness, Gomez speaks of its dominated
position in the United States. Considering this point of departure for Gomez we can assume that
18
Tatiana Flores, “Resisting Categories, Remapping Knowledge.” In The Routledge Companion to African American Art
History, edited by Eddie Chambers, 134, Routledge Press, 2019. Flores is citing Maeso, Silvia Rodríguez and Marta Araújo.
“Eurocentrism, Political Struggles and the Entrenched Will-
To-Ignorance: An Introduction.” In Eurocentrism, Racism and Knowledge: Debates on History and Power in
Europe and the Americas, edited by Silvia Rodríguez Maeso and Marta Araújo. Basingstoke and New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 1–22.
19
Laura Gomez, Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2020), 10.
20
Ibid, 6.
16
part of the identity of Latinx folks is a proximity to subjugation and authority (dominated-
dominant). Latinx identifiers maintain power in the exclusion of black peoples claiming a closer
proximity to whiteness. But that proximity is still a subjugated position. In the chapter titled
“We Are Here Because You Were There,” Gomez outlines who has fallen within the category of
Latina/o, tracing its conception as a political sorting device, aligning her argument with that of
Flores. Summarizing the introduction to the chapter, Gomez identifies Mexican, Puerto Rican,
Cuban, Dominican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, Honduran, and Nicaraguan as the primary
demographics of the Latinx category in the U.S.
21
I want to note that this observation may be an
extension of the problem Tatiana Flores is attempting to illuminate as it does not include places
like Haiti, Columbia, Brazil, or other countries with large black populations. But we should
consider that Gomez is spanning the demographics common in the U.S. and not all of the
Americas. Continuing from the first chapter Gomez follows the migration histories that are the
direct result of US interaction and imperial conquest noting Latina/o is used to span many
groups. She defines it in this way:
Think of the Latino category as fabricated and flexible rather than as immutable
and fixed. Like all racial categories at their origin “Latino” is a political and social
construction rooted in a particular time and place and cognizable only in relation
to other known racial classifications. Yet to say races are invented is not to say
they are insignificant or without effect. Race isn’t in our heads because it’s “real,”
race is real because it’s in our heads.
22
This flexibility leads us to contemporary developments relating to those in the U.S. with
histories from south of the U.S./Mexico border or those who the border crossed. As we
discussed, race and cultural actions come to be consecrated or sanctioned as a result of human
interaction. Recognition, to connect to Goffman, Bourdieu, and Lahire, requires collective
21
Laura Gomez, Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2020), 11.
22
Ibid, 11.
17
relations. This points to the discrediting of essence and inherency and toward group recognition
to produce identity. This space of precarious and evolving categorizing lines up well with
cultural theorists such as José Esteban Muñoz who, in his recent book The Sense of Brown,
outlines his theory of the “Brown Commons” as signifying at least two things. One is the
“commons” of brown people, places, feelings, sounds, animals, minerals, flora, and other
objects.”
23
“Brown people” here doesn’t mean necessarily a specific skin complexion or nation
but rather a constructed category which encompasses many transitory groups furthering in my
opinion Gomez’s idea of Latinx but drops the historical relation to anti-blackness. Muñoz goes
on to say, “[h]ow these things are brown, or what makes them brown, is partially the way in
which they suffer and strive together but also the commonality of their ability to flourish under
duress and pressure.”
24
We can see that, as mentalities switch and evolve, theorists share the
common theme when thinking of speaking for the experience of migrant communities from
south of the U.S./Mexico in that they want to create a unifying term to foster solidarity and
connection. In this vain I want to bring in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa.
Anzaldúa’s theory of “Nepantla” refers to a middle space (“borderland”) originally
theorized to incorporate the mestiza experience (specifically for Mexican Americans). For
Anzaldúa it is existing as a bridge in between two places.
25
It bridges the gap between
contradicting positions (conquered/conqueror, US/Mexico, etc.). In the book Teaching Gloria E.
Anzaldua, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Freyca Calderon-Berumen, and Karla O’Donald describe
Nepantla as “…being a part of the borderlands demands—in addition to many other things—an
assessment of the performative acts of our continuous crossing. We recognize different living
23
Munoz, Esteban Jose, The Sense of Brown (Duke University Press 2020), 2.
24
Ibid, 2.
25
Anzaldua, Gloria, The Gloria Anzaldua Reader, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009), 243.
18
worlds and spaces while we also share ambiguity, ambivalence, and fragmentation.”
26
This
flexibility, suffering, and liminal state existence is supported in my view by the aforementioned
sociological theories of Lahire’s dispositional/contextualist theory of action. Gomez, Munoz, and
Anzaldua specifically make the choice to use metaphors and language like “flexible” to allow the
organic nature of identity to grow. Latino/a in the case of Flores suggests forms of stagnation.
The issue is when we fall into stagnated notions of identity or frozen criteria which individuals
feel required to follow. We can see the effort made by colonial and imperial forces in
maintaining an image of a subjugated group through popular media, institutional policy, and its
usage of stereotypes as Flores makes clear. This process becomes violent when those stereotypes
and fabricated images start to become considered as authentic attributes to which a person
adheres their identity. For example, as mentioned above I utilized the term ‘male’ to describe
myself and all of its socially constructed attributes. In other words, I believed machismo
(referring to the type of masculinity developed by Latino communities) was inherent in my body.
Of Coarse I am
As mentioned earlier in this essay, I’ve felt when categories of which I am placed in
haven’t fully represented me in a holistic manner. And I have also experienced the way that
sometimes accepting that partial depiction nonetheless garners social benefits. The performance
piece called Of Coarse I am (2020) is a take on the social reward system for harmful behaviors.
On the one hand I will call myself something (e.g. Latinx/o or manly), act accordingly, gain
access to the larger group but at the expense of someone or something else (e.g. the black
experience or my feelings). In the performance I drag my body across cement floor by rope and
pull myself up a wall. This is a physically demanding task. But I fail to get completely off the
26
Edited by Margaret Cantu-Sanchez, Candace De Leon-Zepeda, and Norma E. Cantu, Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldua: Pedagogy
and Practice for our Classrooms and Communities (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2020) 15.
19
ground, alluding to the in-between state of ethnic or labor exceptionalism in the U.S.. You either
complete the task or it’s worthless. The task here conceptually being identity. The environment is
of a concrete wall and a serape (type of blanket found in Mexico among other places) alluding to
spaces working class Chicanx navigate and the feeling of being “walled in”.
Figure 2 Of Coarse I am. Film Still. 2020
This question of performing the proper procedures of different social spaces brings up the
idea of authenticity. The question of “am I doing it right?” circles the brown borderlandian’s
mind. Reflexively, though, we have to ask who defines authenticity and where does it come
from?
Establishing Authenticity as a Component of Identity
Let’s begin by establishing authenticity in relationship to identity and the self as a
moving target of sorts, as Lahire would have us think. Meaning: as soon as somebody attempts to
locate it, to define it, it moves. Robert A. Peterson in his article In Search of Authenticity locates
authenticity as a socially constructed concept, quoting Lionel Trilling who states that
“[a]uthenticity is implicitly a polemical concept.”
27
Peterson himself claims that, paradoxically,
authenticity only comes up “…when authenticity is put into doubt.”
28
This points to authenticity
27
Peterson, A. Richard. “In Search of Authenticity.” Journal of Management Studies 45, no.5 (2005): 1083.
28
Ibid, 1084.
20
as existing in a space of debate, in human interaction where performances are recognized or not.
In Search of Authenticity reviews the various techniques used in claiming authenticity whether in
the entertainment industry, product industry, or advertising. Peterson, in setting the stage for
authenticity’s market usage, underscores that authenticity is often used to establish a person,
place, or things connection to revered histories, “real” lived experiences, to ideas of earnest-ness,
truthfulness, and so-fourth.
29
Put in another way, in relation to identity, authenticity is used to establish a sense of trust
that, for example, that a person is from a particular lineage, or was educated or socialized in a
way that fits the claim or context that will yield the best results for the person claiming the
category of authentic (this takes us back to field theory). Unfortunately, a category can be
thought of as freezing a person or thing in a particular context with specific boundaries. For
example, if you claim to be of a particular ethnicity you must adhere to practicing some of those
cultural practices or you may be put into question regarding the authenticity of your connection
to that ethnicity. Qualities in question for the Latinx in Los Angeles might include speaking
Spanish, eating or being knowledgeable of particular foods, or places, etc.
Amelia Jones alludes to the use of authenticity in race and gender identity in how during
the late 1970’s the queer performer Fabulous Sylvester helped in articulating through
performance a “paradox of LGBT identity politics that defined this moment in American culture,
where the yearning for authenticity to claim public space was continually undermined by an
understanding that sex/ gender identity was always in process, relational, unstable, and linked to
the newly invigorated concept of queer.”
30
In this particular context, the “authenticity” which
29
Peterson, A. Richard. “In Search of Authenticity.” Journal of Management Studies 45, no.5 (2005): 1085.
30
Amelia Jones, “Genealogizing,” In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer
Performance (London: Routledge Press, 2020), 1-9.
21
wanted to claim space in 1970’s America was white, heteronormative, patriarchal, and
homophobic. In other words, dominant American institutions wanted to and still use the concept
of authenticity to demarcate the perimeters of social behaviors. The queer community along with
other civil rights empowerment groups have wanted to destabilize and unfreeze the dominant
notion of what it meant to be authentically American as well as human and claim authenticity as
an evolving concept. It is at this juncture that we find the polemical nature of authenticity as a
force that can be used to suppress or to empower, depending on the context. This paradox and
juncture is not dissimilar to where Latinx identity politics finds itself today particularly within
the geo-political landscape of los angeles and the continuous struggle to attain a sense of
authenticity and representation regarding identity.
Existing in non-linear spaces
Figure 3 He Cried, We Cried. Acrylic on Canvas. 6x12ft. 2017.
Authenticity, from the outside in, wants to locate something. It wants to suggest that there
are check-points to identify a claim to something. My painting series portraying the co-existence
of multiple environments, stylization, and the use of social-realist figures points to an
undefinable moment, a non-linear moment. But this doesn’t exclude my own version of
authenticity being that we want to remove the need for authenticity to become stable and fixed.
22
He Cried, We Cried is a painting of my late father. He is placed in environments which
were significant throughout his life. The environments are all present at the same time. They are
painted in a cartoon style signifying constructed realities. His life and experience of the world
was not linear. You could find spaces where he checked the criteria for Chicano, Latino,
Mexican-American and others where he diverged. I’ve painted many other family members in
similar styles. This painting series calls on the desire for consistent acknowledgement of the
complex context of a person. Each painting is an invitation to question what we know of a person
to ask ourselves what we might be bringing to the experience of it. In the words it’s easy to see a
person in the moment but its difficult to see them in their multiple contexts, their depositional
and contextual context. At the same time we can see ourselves in the moment and forget about
our multiple contexts. This can be damaging as seen by our last president who only saw so many
groups as one thing (e.g. drug dealers, gang-members, rapist, free-loaders, the list goes on). It’s
even more frightening when those stereotyped groups start to see themselves as those one-
dimensional stereotypical traits. Dramaturgical theory, habitus, and the dispositional/contextual
theory of action give us a way to combat these reductive classifications in that we come to see a
person beyond our own biases. When thinking about my relation to the categories I claim I think
about how those categories affect my image of myself and how they influence me to behave in
the world. I care about my “authenticity” maybe because it is being put into question, as Peter
Richardson suggests. I don’t speak Spanish fluently but my entire family does. How do we come
to see ourselves in relation to dominant notions of authentic group behavior?
Authenticity as Oppressive and Empowering: Authenticating the Dominated
The nation-state wishes to reproduce what is favorable for its health. Settler-colonial theory
situates that type of “health” on the over-simplification and freezing of living subjugated peoples
23
and cultures. Authenticity, in this sense, can be used to oversimplify a group. One example is
the idea of the model minority (i.e., exceptionalism). Although adhering to the categories of
model minority may wield rewards in the larger societal structure this dismisses the lived
experiences of those who fall outside of the projected identity. On one side we have American
social science, history, and policy written through the colonial lens professing knowledge and
understanding of subjugated groups, groups those in power dominate. That is, those in power
believe they understand the innate truth or authentic reality of a group they do not belong to. I
want to highlight here that the social sciences in the early nineteenth century legitimatized itself
as offering an official epistemological truth. That is, social scientists believe their investigatory
techniques are the best and only tools which lead to truth. Coming out of this notion of legitimate
institutions as repositories of truth or authenticity American institutions up through the 1970’s
subjugated women, LGBT people, and groups of color from claiming a sense of authentic self
because of the prevailing definitions of normalized behavior: White middle to upper-class male.
Figure 4 Two undiscovered Amerindians visit the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. (1992) Photo by Robert Sanchez.
The artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña performed a relational art piece
thought of by Pena as a “reverse ethnographic” study
31
. Here the artists present themselves as
31
Fusco, Coco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TRD 59, no. 4 (1994): 143.
24
undiscovered tribe members from an imaginary island. They put themselves in a cage and
allowed viewers to in interact with them, by feeding them, taking them on walks, etc. This was
reminiscent of the actual European expositions showcasing foreign or “ethnic” object, animals,
and even peoples. The artists believed the work would be understood as fake but where surprised
to find how many viewers, especially in the professional academic world, believed it to be true
32
.
This performance puts into question the outsiders’ abilities to know truth, to know authenticity.
On the other hand, the “othered” or subjugated group can also claim a right to
understanding themselves and their experience as the truth and their identities as authentic. Both
the outsider and group member can claim a sense of authenticity. In her essay “The Theorist and
the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance,” Stephanie Nohelani Teves poignantly
frames how authenticity is used both to dominate and as a self-determining form of resistance
stating on one side of the dichotomy,
In many places, the Indigenous subject has been quantified by blood quantum or
other juridical means that position Native people as always vanishing and in a
constant state of having to prove their indigeneity, particularly in settler-states.
The role of performance is critical in this sense because, as Elizabeth Povinelli
illustrates, Indigenous groups are forced to show themselves as worthy and these
performances are sanctioned by the state through a multicultural imaginary that
defuses struggles for liberation and ensures the functioning of the modern liberal
state.
33
In other words, the settler-colonial state has legislated a fabricated vision of indigeneity or
“Nativeness” which not only freezes a group but simultaneously benefits the state. The same can
be said of the Latinx racial category as mentioned by Flores and Gomez. Fusco and Pena also
explore this idea in their piece above as “natives on display” for the purpose of performing the
observers’ narrow native fetish. Teves goes on to say the liberal colonial-settler feels obligated
32
Fusco, Coco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TRD 59, no. 4 (1994): 144.
33
Stephanie Nohelani Teves, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama
Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018), 133.
25
to “understand the Native.”
34
This form of understanding reaches into the depths of colonial
anthropology, which, as Teves suggests, “wants to contain ‘the Native’ by demarcating what
types of Native identities and performances are legally permissible and worthy of recognition by
the settler-state.”
35
Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in her book Decolonizing
Methodologies, furthers this idea in the 2000’s by stating that “[t]he purpose of commenting on
such a concept is that what counts as ‘authentic’ is used by the west as one of the criteria to
determine who really is indigenous, who is worth saving, who is still innocent and free from
western contamination.”
36
The Latinx, Chicanx, brown body in the U.S. finds itself doubly
removed from state sanctioned indigeneity and because of colonialism from a clear history of
their ancestry. This important point here is how these fabrications of “real” identities made from
outside groups (i.e. colonial/imperial) can also be absorbed by people on the inside as Teves
makes clear “[t]he lived experience of Natives rubs up against the massive archive of visual
imagery that marks Native people as closer to nature, disappearing, and/or duped. Natives
internalize these stereotypes in multiple ways. Once internalized, they keep communities
demobilized, contained, and static.”
37
In the brown/latinx sense Spanish becomes a mark of
authenticity or Dodger association.
Authenticity can also paradoxically be used to combat the internalization of negative
stereotypes. .”
38
Teves points out the poststructuralist theories which “debunk binary opposition
and any fundamental stability underlying any such signs in general, including the supposedly
34
Stephanie Nohelani Teves, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama
Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018), 133.
35
Ibid, 133.
36
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, (London: Zed Books, 1999), 77.
37
Stephanie Nohelani Teves, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama
Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018), 138.
38
Ibid, 137.
26
stable and essential content of identity and subjectivity,”
39
which for colonized groups means
rejecting their historical trajectories and reliance on them to form a sense of indigeneity.
40
Authenticity in this sense (claimed by indigenous people) can function to counter the settler-
colonial frame of native authenticity. A dominated group can break the frozen frame set upon
them and self-determine the parameters of what authentic means to them, in Teves’s case
indigenous authenticity. Teves writes:
Indigenous authenticity is a complicated, necessary, and messy response to
representations that posit Natives as somehow less-Native when they perform in
ways that defy dominant representations of themselves. As Rey Chow has
explained, when Natives step out of the frames made for them, they are subject
to attack as their authenticity and backgrounds are evaluated.
41
In my case not speaking Spanish puts me in question within the larger group. Frames
such as those of Teves and Lahire complicate the legitimacy of this questioning. This
“messy” space which the performance of authenticity finds itself is the perfect grounds
for theoretical art performances to navigate. It’s a place where art not only functions as
an aesthetic expression but can explore and pose solutions for social issues in ways
conventional research cannot. It can be an epistemological tool that provides alternative
methods to investigating social phenomena.
Shapeshifting: bridging the art / research gap
Epistemology refers to the methods and beliefs by which a person or group comes to
understand the world. For some, science explains why things happen, for others, maybe their
religion, if not a religion maybe a culture. Yet for others, such as gang culture the circumstances
39
Stephanie Nohelani Teves, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama
Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018): 136.
40
Ibid. 137
41
Stephanie Nohelani Teves, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama
Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018), 137. Teves is citing Rey Chow from. “Where Have All the Natives Gone?” In Writing Diaspora:
Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1993), 27–54.
27
and traditions of the culture provide answers for why things may be the way they are and how
you must proceed to succeed. Cultures in this sense are dynamic belief systems (i.e.,
epistemologies) contextually developed. What we want to pin down here is how certain ways of
knowing are legitimized or delegitimized.
Aimee Cox’s book Shapeshifter is an ethnographic study (which is a branch of
anthropology) performed in what ethnographer and performance studies scholar Dwight
Conquergood calls a mode of “co-performative witnessing.” Shapeshifter does this in relation to
Black female youth as world shaping agents, working in direct opposition to the majority of
research regarding black female youth experience. Cox sets the historical social science context
relating to the experience of Black female youth as all but non-existent or worse a backdrop
narrative to legitimize racist theories of societal deterioration and covertly uphold white middle-
upper class supremacy
42
. Its only until relatively recently that studies have surfaced to account
for decolonial perspectives regarding black female youth. Cox is interested in the theories and
methods used by black female youth in shaping the world in which they are placed in. Cox’s
writes:
Shapeshifting describes how young Black women living in the United
States engage with, confront, challenge, invert, unsettle, and expose the
material impact of systemic oppression. Shapeshifting is an act, a theory,
and, in this sense, a form of praxis that—although uniquely definitive of
and defined by Black girls—reveals our collective vulnerabilities.
43
Just like Anzaldua, this framework validates the actions involved in being in multiple
spaces. People shapeshift because they have to operate between the world which see’s them as
negative stereotypes and their internal space. Where they know their worth. Pulling from Cox’s
theory I want to put forward that the arts can similarly “engage with, confront, challenge, invert,
42
Cox, Aimee, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship, (US: Duke University Press, 2015), 11.
43
Ibid, 7.
28
unsettle, and expose the material impact of systemic oppression.”
44
I want to mark the arts as an
action and as a theory that can form praxis that reveal our collective vulnerabilities.
Vulnerable Masculinity
Figure 5 Man To Man. Film Still. Sean Doran & Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III. 2020-21
Taking the performative expectations of my classification as a “cis-heterosexual male”
and my internal space as objects of study I collaborate with Sean Doran, a fellow artist. In Man
To Man, my collaborator Sean and I perform crying to each other on opposite sides of the
country. Sean is in Vermont and I in California. Our performance is an acknowledgement of the
emotional suppression taught in western culture to bodies labelled as male. Calling on Bourdieu,
this form of emotional suppression is the normative habitus in masculinity, especially in the U.S.
While interrogating this plight we also provide a theory of praxis, the act of crying for what
seems to be no reason, while also showing our own vulnerabilities through the act of crying. I
44
Cox, Aimee, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship, (US: Duke University Press, 2015), 7.
29
want to acknowledge that our performance was made possible by generations of feminist
literature, which heavily investigated the legitimacy of sex and gender as categories along with
their assigned performances.
In preparation of the performance we had to practice a level of self-reflexivity to come to
understand the origin of our relation to crying. It exposed many deep-seated practices we very
much carry on a daily basis (through our habitus). The development of the piece was a process of
deep internal research with hard moments of vulnerability. For example, the males in my family
never cried unless they were inebriated or someone died. Rage was the most acceptable emotion
(beyond laughter). The result of witnessing this influenced the suppression my emotions to such
a degree that I believed, at points, that I literally didn’t have the emotional capacity to cry. Sean,
a white cis-heterosexual male, on the other hand was in touch with his ability to cry but was
punished for it. Our goal was in line with Cox’s description of engaging, unsettling, challenging
the very structures which maintain our participation in not only the subjugation of our emotional
selves but also the oppression of the very group Cox aims to illuminate and legitimize.
Self-Reflexive Performance Art as Social Science
When I speak of “self-reflexive performance art as social science” I draw on specific
theoretical concepts. Self-reflexivity, as noted at the beginning of this paper, refers to the
theorizing of Pierre Bourdieu. The sociologist Loic Wacquant frames self-reflexivity in this way:
“Its primary target is not the individual analyst but the social and intellectual unconscious
embedded in analytic tools and operations.”
45
In practice this means “taking as your subject
(while analyzing other social phenomena) your own social and intellectual trajectory” so as to
navigate your position as an authority figure (i.e., historian, anthropologist, sociologist,
45
Pierre Bourdieu & Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1992), 36.
30
professional, artist? etc.) to re/produce symbolic violence.
46
Performance art refers to the
theorizing of Amelia Jones’s “body art” or “conceptual body”: “The body is conceptual in that it
is mobilized by the artist in order to explore conceptual themes and structures in the art world
while the performative projects also work to achieve activist goals.”
47
When I speak of social
science I mean those fields dedicated to the study of why people do the things they do. This
includes anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the like. Self-reflexive performance art posits
the practice not only as an aesthetic endeavor but as a theorical research-based tool set complete
with plausible principles for social phenomena. Self-reflexivity is summoned to acknowledge the
performance artist’s power in a dominant yet dominated position. In other words I second the
notion that the body is a legitimate instrument of analytical observation and theorization which
can be expressed through alternative methods then what is currently established as professional
theorizing (i.e. written or spoken).
This framework which we are unfolding, that is self-reflexivity grounded in a
dispositional/contextual theory of action gives us a chance to see 1) Identity, especially
categories like Latinx are socially constructed and rooted in oppressive histories, 2) that they are
imbued with standards that potentially don’t benefit the group to which it is being projected, 3)
because of its constructed reality, constructed by humans for that matter, that it is fallible and 4)
most importantly it can be opposed and changed. Enter now performance art as a theorical
framework to explore the limits of socially constructed identities.
Performance art can be a powerful tool in exploring and expanding the limitation inherent
in said categories with defined boundaries. As mentioned briefly above Latinx was not invented
by the people who currently occupy adherence to it. It was a political designation to form a group
46
Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Mediations. (California: Stanford University Press, 1997), 119.
47
Jones, Amelia, In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance, (London: Routledge, 2021), 109.
31
to distinguish it from the institution of “whiteness” and away from “blackness.” With any racial
category, limits and boundaries begin to form which allows others to enter the group or be
denied entrance. Often these boundaries can be considered violent in their dismissal of novel
experiences. I will refer to these boundaries as toxic identity norms. Alicia Arrizón details how
select queer Latina performance artists utilize performance to navigate such toxic identity norms.
In her essay Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage Arrizón goes on to connect the action of
self-identification to a political one in that this action especially in terms of self-proclaimed
sexuality happens within a social framework where white heterosexuality is an “absent
paradigm”. That is, it is implemented as the universal. Supporting again Gomez, Flores, and
Munoz in that the brown commons or Latinx experience is grounded in struggle. The technology
of self-representation utilized by the performance artist is an act of power “In this sense, the
gendered self is understood within a representational subjectivity in which the “real” person
becomes the metaphor. Clearly, this approach involves a total rethinking of the gendered self as
an autobiographical subject: the performative subject cannot be constructed separately from her
sexuality, race, and ethnicity.”
48
These ideas are in line with feminist theories of intersectionality
but also dispositional and contextualist analysis. Taking from Lizbeth Goodmen’s idea that the
technology of self-identification is both political and representational Arrizón believes that
women of color can utilize this with their racialized and sexualized bodies and disrupt and
challenge dominant systems of representation. We can hear Cox’s analysis of the power
‘shapeshifting’.
48
Alicia Arrizón, chapter 5, “Self-Representation: Race, Ethnicity, and Queer Identity,” Latina Performance: Traversing the
Stage (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. Press, 1999): 136.
32
Figure 6 Carmelita Tropicana. Chicken Sushi. Film still. 1987
One of the performance artist Arrizón uses for her analysis is Alina Troyano a.k.a
Carmelita Tropicana. Arrizón conceptualizes how that through performance Carmelita Tropicana
explores the in between space or Nepantla (my interjection) of existence as a queer Latina.
Where at one moment she identifies as Latina but is simultaneously denied and questioned under
the gender and sex norms of Latino identity. Arrizón writes how Carmelita is living and
becoming through so many contradicting experiences and the ability to self-identity is at the core
of Carmelita Tropicana. Arrizón Goes on to write about Tropicana’s “staging system” in her
performance Milk of Amnesia stating, “[t]his system of production has become a self-conscious
convention with a developing theory of its own. In practice, it has influenced an evolving
performativity as an awareness of the political referentiality of various representational
alternatives presented by the multiethnicized body.”
49
49
Alicia Arrizón, chapter 5, “Self-Representation: Race, Ethnicity, and Queer Identity,” Latina Performance: Traversing the
Stage (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. Press, 1999), 156p.
33
Figure 7 Indigurrito, Nao Bustamante, The Women’s Building, San Francisco, California. Photo by D. Oviedo. 1992
Munoz adds to this idea of the artist in exchange with the world formulating observations
of toxic identity norms at one end and on the other expanding new ways of being. When talking
about Nao Bustamante’s Indigurrito (1992) Munoz asserts “The vulnerability artist is projected
upon by the world, and she also projects out. She is interested in addressing a negative aspect,
and her character attempts to naively cleanse men of their ugly feelings, specifically white
guilt.”
50
The self-reflexive performance is essentially the artist’s ability to be keenly aware of
their position and proximity to the issues under investigation. Fusco, Pena, Bustamante,
Tropicana, and I hope myself know where we fit or don’t fit within these toxic identity norms
and create living theorical conversations about the nature of said toxicities while at the same time
theorizing new possibilities.
Conclusion: What To Do After
As a self-reflexive sketch this thesis was an exploration of my relation to identity
classifications. I set out to understand how I see myself beyond my biases and preconceived
notions. A primary goal was to create a framework which detached my identity from notions of
inherency or essence. Through this exploration I hope the reader can also gain an understanding
for the extremely complex construction of a person. As it did for me, I hope this gives the reader
50
Munoz, Esteban Jose, The Sense of Brown, (Duke University Press 2020) 52.
34
a lens by which to be skeptical of one’s own value judgements. Nina Sun Eidsheim, in her book
The Race of Sound writes “Unless I am aware of my beliefs, I am imprisoned by them.”
51
Additionally, it was a review of how artists can provide effective strategies and research
methodologies when faced with serious social issues.
When thinking ‘what do I do after’ self-reflexivity I believe Eidsheim’s book provides an
interesting perspective. In The Race of Sounds Nina Sun Eidsheim investigates an overlooked
social space where race is continually reproduced and constructed. That is, the space of sound,
specifically the spoken word. Filling a previous void Eidsheim provides a methodology for the
purpose of illuminating the “phantom genealogies” of the communal processing of spoken
words, or music by black artists in this case. Eidsheim posits the notion that sound, when
classified, is culturally produced, and understood. This claim is directly opposed to the common
understanding that sounds carry inherent qualities of a person. Eidsheim provides us as readers
with a self-reflexive framework when engaging in listening calling on what she calls the
“acousmatic question” and action of “pausing”. Both these concepts engage the listener as a
producer, as an agent in the construction of the reception of a sound as opposed to being passive
observers. She wants us to ask ourselves what we are bringing when we categorize sounds and
how we may be reproducing arbitrary, even violent classifications systems.
I wanted to, in a sense, illuminate the “phantom genealogies”
52
of my classifications. For
example, If I believed my classifications without any level of suspicion, I am liable to never be
aware of how those ways of being (i.e. identifying) play a larger socio-historical role, which in
51 . Eidsheim, Sun Nina, The Sound of Race: Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, (Durham: Duke University Press
2019), 199.
52
Ibid, 61-91.
35
turn may perpetuate gross inequalities. Works like Arrizón, Jones, Teves, Bourdieu, Eidsheim,
and others mentioned in this paper all work to critically examine overlooked social areas, areas
which have historically benefited from their discreet positionings. Exposing these discreet
positions is a worthwhile endeavor, especially if they are carried through us and enacted by us
without our knowing. What can be done after you uncover your own “phantom genealogies” is
consciously engage in actions that don’t perpetuate the symbolic violence that may exist in those
classifications. Lastly, we may want to look to the arts and creative practices to provide
contextually appropriate responses to our “phantom genealogies”, as well as potentially
dreaming up new ways of being altogether.
36
Bibliography
Anzaldua, Gloria, The Gloria Anzaldua Reader, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009).
Arrizón, Alicia, chapter 5, “Self-Representation: Race, Ethnicity, and Queer Identity,” Latina
Performance: Traversing the Stage (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. Press, 1999).
Bourdieu, Pierre, The Field of Cultural Production, (Columbia University Press, 1993).
Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Mediations, (California: Stanford University Press. 1997).
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation of Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1992).
Cantu-Sanchez, Margaret, Candace De Leon-Zepeda, and Norma E. Cantu, Teaching Gloria E.
Anzaldua: Pedagogy and Practice for our Classrooms and Communities (Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press, 2020).
Cox, Aimee, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship, (US: Duke
University Press, 2015)
Eidsheim, Sun Nina, The Sound of Race: Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music,
(Durham: Duke University Press 2019).
Flores, Tatiana, “Resisting Categories, Remapping Knowledge.” In The Routledge Companion
to African American Art History, edited by Eddie Chambers, (Routledge Press, 2019).
Fraser, Andrea. Artist Writes No.2 Toward a Reflexive Resistance. (X-TRA. 2019)
Fusco, Coco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TRD 59, no. 4 (1994).
Goffman, Erving, Introduction and Chapter 1, “Performances,” The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1956; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959)
Gomez, Laura, Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (New York: The New Press,
2020).
Jones, Amelia, In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance, (London:
Routledge, 2021).
Lahire, Bernard. The Plural Actor (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
Munoz, Esteban Jose, The Sense of Brown (Duke University Press 2020).
Peterson, A. Richard. “In Search of Authenticity.” Journal of Management Studies 45, no.5
(2005).
37
Rapport, Nigel. Review of The Plural Actor, by Bernard Lahire. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 17, (2011).
Teves, Stephanie Nohelani, “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of
Performance Studies,” TDR: The Drama Review 62 n. 4 (Winter 2018).
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples,
(London: Zed Books, 1999).
Trizzulla, Caterina. “From Bourdieu to Lahire: Social determinism and pluralist consumer
practices,” Recherche et Applications en Marketing, no. 31 (2016).
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This thesis is a sketch for a self-reflexive analysis of my, Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III’s positionality within the field of contemporary art. Throughout the essay I locate my identity and artistic classifications and their corresponding social historical trajectories. I use art history, performance studies, sociological, and ethnographic research to showcase the complexity of western classification systems as well as their abilities and limitations. Further, I use my cultural and gender-based classifications as a launching point to showcase the interaction between social projected categories/classifications and my experience of those classifications. Additionally, deploying self-reflexivity and performance art as a tool to question notions of essentialism, found within social categories I propose a framework that can assist in navigating narrow and reductive categories/classifications. Lastly, I center art as a legitimate research method for exploring pressing social phenomena relating to identity formation.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Sanchez, Jose Guadalupe, III
(author)
Core Title
Performing Latinx? A self-reflexive sketch and what to do after
School
Roski School of Art and Design
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Degree Program
Fine Arts
Publication Date
04/06/2021
Defense Date
04/06/2021
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
art,authenticity,border theory,brownness,Chicana,Chicano,Chicanx,Colonialism,contemporary art,de-colonialism,dispositional and contextual theory,dramaturgical theory,gender,habitus,Hispanic,identity,identity classifications,Latina,Latino,Latinx,masculinity,Mexican,Mexican-American,Nepantla,OAI-PMH Harvest,Painting,performance,performance art,performativity,phantom genealogy,queer,Race,self-reflexivity,social science,video art,vulnerability
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Advisor
Jones, Amelia (
committee chair
), Arceneaux, Edgar (
committee member
), Bustamante, Nao (
committee member
)
Creator Email
josegsan@usc.edu
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-440007
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UC11667816
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etd-SanchezJos-9408.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-440007 (legacy record id)
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Sanchez, Jose Guadalupe, III
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Tags
authenticity
border theory
brownness
Chicana
Chicano
Chicanx
contemporary art
de-colonialism
dispositional and contextual theory
dramaturgical theory
gender
habitus
Hispanic
identity classifications
Latina
Latino
Latinx
masculinity
Mexican
Mexican-American
Nepantla
performance art
performativity
phantom genealogy
queer
self-reflexivity
social science
video art
vulnerability