Disidentification and Feminist Performan

Disidentification
Introduction to talk:
Thanks very much to Pepita and Yasco for inviting me here today and to you
all for being here this evening.
So, my concern is whether
1. performance art can serve as a productive way to rethink the dominant

tropes, images, and works that are tied to the construction of women’s
identity – particularly Muslim women’s identity in the American
mainstream to reveal their constructedness.
CUE SLIDE
2. it is my belief that when we view that we view hegemonic

representations of women, and women in Islam without suspicion –
overwhelmingly women are framed along 3 lines – as victims, threats,
or invaders - echoing Orientalism. It is these very intersections that I
want to counter
3. A number of thinkers such as Eve Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz,

and Judith Butler suggest that disidentification not only invites us to
embrace but also to reject hegemonic imaginings of identity, serving as
a rhetorical practice that we can either work with or against.
4. In her video performance, Semiotics of Islam: A Primer for Kuffar

(2014), Fouzia Najar demonstrates the concept of disidentification: she
both embraces and rejects the fictional figure of the Muslim woman that
haunts the Western imaginary and illustrates the power of performance
as a tactic of social transformation.
5. It is my supposition that in the West (Western Europe and North

America), when we think of veiled Muslim women we often think about
a series of complex imaginings that emerge as a result of mediatized
texts and images that are about Islam. In these representations we are
offered particular views of how we are to think of Muslim women, to
represent them, and as a result we are often limited by a particular
vision of them.
6. Najar’s performance makes visible the crisis that surrounds the

representation of women in the America mainstream mass media,
particularly veiled Muslim women intervening within essentialist and
static tropes that reduce identity to archetypes and at the same time
reify them.
7. Her performance is a contemporary retelling of Martha Rosler’s
Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) where viewers are offered a response
to hegemonic imaginings of women but through performance viewers
can reconsider them.
8. Rosler’s work is a landmark of the feminist art movement, addressing

the bourgeois conditions and privileges of white American family life.
She made visible how the roles relegated to women during a particular
time and space are restrictive and offers possibilities for how they can
be seen and transcended through critique.
9. Pioneering contemporary critique via satire, she pokes fun at the social
construction of women as housemakers.
10. Najar too embraces similar concerns providing viewers a way to rethink
the dominant tropes, images, and words that are tied to Muslim
women’s identities and reveals their constructedness.
11. This I argue is achieved through art practices that work against notions
of exclusion and essentialized identities through, disidentificatory
practices.
12. Yet Najar’s performance differs from Rosler’s leaving behind the
frustration and anger that are key to her text - which locates her within
the realm of the bad subject who counter identities - and instead
deploys a more somber and playful attitude to illustrate how these tired,
old stereotypes endure and are the result of modernist paradigms
(civilizing missions, orientalism, xenophobia, and border anxieties) that
are fueled by the media.
13. How do we as viewers work with or refuse the claims of identity that
are tied to the fictional figure of the Muslim woman that dominates the
Western imaginary? How can performance help viewers to negotiate
dominant and minority constructions of ethnic identity and offer other
possibilities for transformation?
14. Today I want to consider the specific relations between reading

identity, as that which makes meaning, and the production of Muslim
identity in the West. I argue that the forms of cultural production
favored in the Semiotics of Islam serve as a productive tool for
deploying cultural criticism as Najar’s performance intervenes within
the prevailing, yet still worryingly powerful orientalist tropes that frame
Muslim women, particularly veiled women, and represent them as in
need of “saving,” “emancipation” and/or “liberation.”
15. Najar challenges the conventions that limit Muslim women in America
and she cultivates elements taken from the tradition of feminist
iconography explored in Rosler’s work.
16. I read elements of the performances in relation to each other illustrating
their modes of resemblance as a way of situating the Semiotics of
Islam within the greater context of feminist performance art while
analyzing it theoretically via the concept of disidentification.
17. I look to the work of José Esteban Muñoz and his discussion of
disidentification where one can transform ethnic minority identifications
by not standing with or against them in Disidentifications: Queers of
Color and the Performance of Politics (1999). Muñoz’s work on
disidentification is significant as it serves as a way of negotiating
dominant and minority constructions of ethnic identity and it offers other
possibilities for transformation through performance.
18. Informed by Rosler’s semiotics of the kitchen and counter-

disidentifcatory practices I read these works in relation to each other.
Here the possibility to contest and to move away from the power of
normalizing discourses – steeped within the confines of the dominant
ideology is performatively possible.
To this end, I want to begin my presentation with a discussion of

disidentification and then will transition to the performances
themselves – Semiotics of the Kitchen (YouTube) and Semiotics of
Islam (Vimeo).
1. A closer look at disidentification through the lens of Muñoz will allow us to

understand how minority subjects can resist the normalizing discourses of
dominant ideology performatively.
2. Resistance through performance is a productive way of contesting

hegemonic modes of identification.
CUE SLIDE: Disidentification
3. Disidentification, Munoz proposes, is a “performative mode of tactical

recognition that various minoritarian subjects employ in an effort to
resist the oppressive and normalizing discourse of dominant
ideology” (97).

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Disidentification

So, my concern is whether

1. performance art can serve as a productive way to rethink the dominant

2. it is my belief that when we view that we view hegemonic

3. A number of thinkers such as Eve Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz,

4. In her video performance, Semiotics of Islam: A Primer for Kuffar

5. It is my supposition that in the West (Western Europe and North

6. Najar’s performance makes visible the crisis that surrounds the

8. Rosler’s work is a landmark of the feminist art movement, addressing

14. Today I want to consider the specific relations between reading

18. Informed by Rosler’s semiotics of the kitchen and counter-

To this end, I want to begin my presentation with a discussion of

1. A closer look at disidentification through the lens of Muñoz will allow us to

2. Resistance through performance is a productive way of contesting

CUE SLIDE: Disidentification

3. Disidentification, Munoz proposes, is a “performative mode of tactical

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