Abstract
This chapter is based on the criticism that the thought of Judith Butler makes to the notions of identity. The identification is emphasized as a conceptual resource that queer theory has used to conceive the possibility of dismantling the violence that emerges from that normative logic that makes the identity constructs supposedly essential, fixed, stable, and coherent, whose border is drawn by the repudiation and exclusion of the other. From a photograph of Lariza Hatrick, contributions are outlined that tend to point out the insufficiency of postulates that do not make radical criticisms of the limits ordered by the one and the other. In this line, the notion of diaspora of identity is offered, capable of sustaining an ontological critique of the notion of identity without neglecting the materiality of bodies marked as abjects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
From our perspective, adopting a cuir perspective does not imply abandoning any theoretical frame generated by hegemonic knowledge factories (located in the Global North). The incorporation of local intellectuals does not guarantee an epistemological overturn capable of subverting hegemonic takes (even within the field of queer studies). We trust the potential of challenging the theoretical categories that we count on with local aesthetical-political proposals. We cannot think outside of the prevailing categories – regardless of their geopolitical origin – but we can critically scrutinize said categories from aesthetic expressions stemming from epistemological Souths.
- 2.
Identification is a psychological process in which the self is constructed throughout life. The self assimilates an aspect of another subject. Kaja Silverman (1996) notes the frequent “incorporative logic” through which an “external” element is incorporated into the “internal” psychic organization. Silverman emphasizes the fact that identification also functions through an “excorporative logic” that allows the link with what is different and a transformation that shakes the permanence of the same in the heart of identity.
- 3.
Butler (2007, 2008) indicates the existence of a discursive space in which the intelligible – what counts as human – is articulated. This matrix of intelligibility has been called one -frame of reference from which all differences are organized. All lives that do not meet the normative requirements of this (heterosexual) matrix are constituted as other, or abject.
- 4.
Trava is the short version of the term travesti but also covers the category of transgender. The travesti collective has appropriated this denomination as an identitary claim that positively resignifies its strong derogatory and injurious component.
- 5.
The concept of cathexis refers to the psychic energy that connects with objects (other people, body parts, representations, etc.).
- 6.
Hatrick publishes part of her work on her Instagram account [https://www.instagram.com/larizablood/]. There, she describes herself as “Third-World non-binary Wittigian lesbian” and her work as “lesbian images, dissident to the cisheterosexual norm.”
- 7.
Marica can be roughly translated as faggot and torta as dyke. Trava was covered in footnote 2. However, we choose to name these identities in Spanish in order to preserve the several sociocultural and historical meanings that they convey. These reappropriations of slurs are deeply rooted in Latin American dissident history.
- 8.
Drive refers to a constant force whose source lies within the body. Through drive’s path, sexual satisfaction is attained. According to Freud (1920), drive exceeds and ruins, from the interstices, the normative representations that the self imposes upon sexuality. Drive is a persistent call to a state of stillness and full satisfaction (unattainable), the backdrop that shakes all psychic life. Drive takes us, through the unstoppable realization of desire and fantasy, to a point where the self, its identities, and (hetero)normative mandates shatter.
- 9.
Theorists such as Leo Bersani (2010) and Lee Edelman (2004) subscribe to the antisocial thesis of queer thought (Bernini, 2015). They note that Butler heads for the utopian horizon of social rearticulation where multiple identities can legitimately coexist. In the eyes of a queer antisocial positioning, Butler’s proposal is frustrating because it shatters the critical potential that the queer element brought along in its early 1990s version. If queer promised a frame to embrace all radical oppositions to the norm, its own unfolding degraded before the force of the taxonomies that Foucault well pointed out in the components that weave together the apparatus of sexuality.
References
Aulagnier, P. (2007). La violencia de la interpretación. Del pictograma al enunciado [The violence of interpretation. From Pictogram to statement]. Amorrortu.
Bernini, L. (2015). Apocalipsis queer: Elementos de teoría antisocial [Queer apocalypses: Elements of antisocial theory]. Barcelona.
Bersani, L. (2010). Is the rectum a grave? And other essays. University of Chicago Press.
Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. Columbia University Press.
Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.
Butler, J. (1994). Against proper objects. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 6(2–3), 1–26.
Butler, J. (2007). El género en disputa. El feminismo y la subversión de la identidad [Gender trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity]. Paidós.
Butler, J. (2008). Cuerpos que importan. Sobre los límites materiales y discursivos del ‘sexo’ [Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex]. Paidós.
Butler, J. (2009). Marcos de guerra. Las vidas lloradas [Frames of War: When is life Grievable?]. Paidós.
Cano, V., & Fernández Cordero, L. (2019). Vidas en lucha. Conversaciones [Struggling lives. Conversations]. Katz.
Cavarero, A. (2009). Horrorismo: Nombrando la violencia contemporánea [Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence]. Anthropos.
de Lauretis, T. (2008). Freud’s drive: Psychoanalysis, literature and film. Palgrave Macmillan.
Deleuze, G. (2002). Diferencia y repetición [Difference and repetition]. Amorrortu.
Edelman, L. (2004). No future: Queer theory and the death drive. Duke University Press.
Flax, J. (1990). Thinking fragments. Psychoanalysis, feminism and postmodernism in the contemporary west. University of California Press.
Freud, S. (1905/1979). Tres ensayos de teoría sexual [Three essays on the theory of sexuality]. Obras Completas, Tomo VII. Amorrortu.
Freud, S. (1915/1979). Pulsiones y destinos de pulsión [Instincts and their Vicissitudes]. Obras Completas, Tomo XIV. Amorrortu.
Freud, S. (1920/1979). Más allá del principio de placer [Beyond the pleasure principle]. Obras Completas, Tomo XVIII. Amorrortu.
Gilroy, P. (1994). Diaspora. Paragraph, 17(3), 207–212.
Grosz, E. (2001). Architecture from the outside: Essays on virtual and real space. MIT Press.
Halperin, D. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography. Oxford University Press.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women. Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language. Columbia University Press.
Lacan, J. (1988). Escritos I [Écrits: A selection]. Siglo XXI.
Lorey, I. (2017). Disputas sobre el sujeto. Consecuencias teóricas y políticas de un modelo de poder jurídico: Judith Butler [Disputes about the subject. Theoretical and political consequences of a model of juridical power: Judith Butler]. La Cebra.
Martínez, A. (2018). Medusa y el espejo cóncavo: la raigambre normativa de la violencia sobre el cuerpo [Medusa and the concave Mirror: The normative roots of violence on the body]. Universitas Philosophica, 35(71), 21–52.
Newton, E. (1972). Mother camp: Female impersonators in America. University of Chicago Press.
Sedgwick, E. (1993). Tendencies. Duke University Press.
Silverman, K. (1983). The subject of semiotics. Oxford University Press.
Silverman, K. (1996). The threshold of the visible world. Routledge.
Weir, A. (1996). Sacrificial logics: Feminist theory and the critique of identity. Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Martínez, A. (2022). The Diaspora of Identity. A Cuir Look upon Identifications in the Photograph of Lariza Hatrick. In: Chaparro, R.A., Prado, M.A.M. (eds) Latinx Queer Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82250-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82250-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82249-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82250-7
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)