PISSAR's critically queer and disabled politics

Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 156-175

  West, Isaac ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

Author keywords

Bathrooms; People with Disabilities; Queer Politics; Space; Transgender genderqueer

Indexed keywords

EID: 79960463896     PISSN: 14791420     EISSN: 14794233     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14791421003759174     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. I consciously employ "people with disabilities" and "disability" over other terms because these are the terms preferred by the majority, if not all, of the authors I cite. As with all identity categories, we must be attentive to linguistic self-determination and the culturalpolitical work performed by these identity markers. Unfortunately, according to Simi Linton, many terms meant to mark the agency of those with disabilities (such as "differently-abled" or "physically challenged") "convey the boosterism and do-gooder mentality endemic to the paternalistic agencies that control many disabled people's lives. " Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 14.
2. As Robert McRuer explains, LGBTs and people with disabilities often serve as metaphors for the other through "conflation and stereotype: people with disabilities are often understood as somehow queer (as paradoxical stereotypes of the asexual or oversexual person with disabilities would suggest), while queers are often understood as somehow disabled (as an ongoing medicalization of identity, similar to what people with disabilities more generally encounter, would suggest). " "Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence, " in Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. Sharon Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002), 94.
3. For more on the anxieties generated by queer liberalism, see David Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz, "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?, " Social Text 23 (2005): 1-17.
4. Like Santiago Solis, I use "hetero-corporo-normativity" to highlight the interrelated logics of able-bodiedness and heterosexuality. "Snow White and the Seven 'Dwarfs'* Queercripped, " Hypatia 22 (2007): 129. I add "homo" to this term to mark the potential for sexual minorities to participate in these normativities.
5. This list is adapted from one generated by Carrie Sandahl, "Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer? Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performances, " GLQ 9 (2003): 26. There are, of course, important differences between these two populations. As Ellen Samuels notes, the commonalities are strained when issues such as visibility and coming out are factored into the analogy for there are a number of disabilities that are not optically obvious. "My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming-out Discourse, " GLQ 9 (2003): 233-55. Thus, while many of the disability issues discussed here involve physical impediments created by human-designed architecture, I understand "disability" as a category of identification that encompasses more than physical impairment.
6. Rob Kitchin and Robin Law, "The Socio-Spatial Construction of (In)Accessible Public Toilets, " Urban Studies 38 (2001): 289.
7. "Genderqueer" often refers to individuals who refuse traditional sexual and gender markers such as "woman" or "man, " and the attendant gender expectation with these categories.
8. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 117.
9. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), xix.
10. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 36.
11. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 35.
12. Certeau, Everyday Life, 35.
13. Steve Pile, "Introduction: Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance, " in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith (London: Routledge, 1997), 16.
14. Steve Pile and Michael Keith, "Preface, " in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith (London: Routledge), xi.
15. While not considered in the text, two strands of inquiry in communication studies are notable exceptions to this rule. First, numerous essays have dealt with the connection of memory, identity, and place/space in venues such as museums and memorial sites. Second, critics concerned with counterpublics have taken up the issues of rhetoric and space in a sustained fashion. Most notably, Phaedra Pezzullo's ethnographic study of toxic tours poignantly captures the transformative possibilities of cultural performances in the spaces of corporate pollution. Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007). My essay complements this work by attending to the mundane production of identity in the unremarkable spaces of everyday life.
16. Raka Shome, "Space Matters: The Power and Practice of Space, " Communication Theory 13 (2003): 40.
17. Raka Shome, "Space Matters: The Power and Practice of Space, " Communication Theory 13 (2003), 40.
18. Raka Shome, "Space Matters: The Power and Practice of Space, " Communication Theory 13 (2003), 43.
19. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 149.
20. Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces, " Diacritics 16 (1986): 23.
21. David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London: Routledge, 1995), 72.
22. Ruth Holliday and John Hassard, "Contested Bodies: An Introduction, " in Contested Bodies, ed. Ruth Holliday and John Hassard (London: Routledge, 2001), 13.
23. Jodie Marksamer and Dylan Vade, Gender Neutral Bathroom Survey (San Francisco: San Francisco Human Rights Commission, 2002), n.p.
24. Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 22.
25. Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 20.
26. Richard M. Juang, "Transgendering the Politics of Recognition, " in Transgender Rights, ed. Paisley Currah, Richard Juang, and Shannon Price Minter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 247.
27. Kath Browne, "Genderism and the Bathroom Problem: (Re)Materialising Sexed Sites, (Re)Creating Sexed Bodies, " Gender, Place and Culture 11 (2004): 338.
28. Patricia Cooper and Ruth Oldenziel, "Cherished Classifications: Bathrooms and the Construction of Gender/Race on the Pennsylvania Railroad During World War II, " Feminist Studies 25 (1999): 15.
29. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 24.
30. Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 149.
31. Doreen Massey, "Entanglements of Power: Reflections, " in Entaglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000), 282.
32. See also, Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), 25-30, 45-8.
33. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 7.
34. Lise Nelson, "Bodies (and Spaces) Do Matter: The Limits of Performativity, " Gender, Place and Culture 6 (1999): 331-53.
35. Robyn Longhurst, Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries (London: Routledge, 2001), 5.
36. Lynn Stewart, "Bodies, Visions, and Spatial Politics: A Review Essay on Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space, " Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995): 610.
37. Brett Genny Beemyn, "Making Campuses More Inclusive of Transgender Students, " Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 3 (2005): 81-2.
38. Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson, "Calling all Bathroom Revolutionaries, " in That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Mattilda (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004), 190.
39. Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson, "Calling all Bathroom Revolutionaries, " in That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Mattilda (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004), 189.
40. Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson, "Calling all Bathroom Revolutionaries, " in That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Mattilda (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004), 192.
41. Twyla Ilyne Johnson, "Aunt Flo Faces Unending Flow, " Daily Nexus, January 23, 2003, http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a_4255 (accessed June 15, 2007).
42. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 191.
43. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 193.
44. "PISSAR Mission and Goals, " http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/_schess/organizations/pissar/mission.html (accessed June 15, 2007).
45. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 194.
46. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ",194.
47. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 193.
48. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 193.
49. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 194.
50. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 194.
51. "PISSAR Patrol Checklist, " http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/_schess/organizations/pissar/checklist. htm (accessed June 15, 2007).
52. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 196.
53. Alison Kafer, "Compulsory Bodies: Reflections on Heterosexuality and Able-Bodiedness, " Journal of Women's History 15, (2003): 82-3.
54. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 197.
55. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 25.
56. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 21.
57. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 21.
58. Chess, et al., "Calling all Bathroom, " 197.
59. Chess, et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 201.
60. Chess, et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 201.
61. Chess, et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 200.
62. Chess, et al., "Calling all Bathroom, ", 200.
63. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 28.
64. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 33.
65. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 31.
66. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 35.
67. "PISSAR Mission and Goals. "
68. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathrooms, " 197.
69. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993), 228.
70. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993), 230.
71. Janet Jakobsen, "Queer Is? Queer Does? Normativity and the Problem of Resistance, " GLQ 4 (1998): 511-36.
72. Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 30.
73. Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 30.
74. "PISSAR Mission and Goals. "
75. Michael Brown, Replacing Citizenship: AIDS Activism & Radical Democracy (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 15-14.
76. Michael Brown, Replacing Citizenship: AIDS Activism & Radical Democracy (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 184.
77. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathrooms, " 192.
78. Chess et al., "Calling all Bathrooms, ", 191, 201.
79. "Minutes from Eucalyptus Meeting, " July 23, 2003, http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/_schess/organizations/pissar/Eucalyptus%20Meeting.htm (accessed June 15, 2007).
80. "Minutes from Eucalyptus Meeting, " July 23, 2003, http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/_schess/organizations/pissar/Eucalyptus%20Meeting.htm (accessed June 15, 2007).
81. Transgender Law and Policy Institute, "College/Universities and K-12 Schools, " http://www.transgenderlaw.org/college/index.htm (accessed June 15, 2007).
82. Patricia Leigh Brown, "A Quest for a Restroom That's Neither Men's Room or Female's Room, " New York Times, March 4, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/national/04bathroom.html?ex_1184212800&en_80c1b6e99582ed3c&ei_5070 (accessed June 15, 2007).
83. Lisa Mottet, "Access to Gender-Appropriate Bathrooms: A Frustrating Diversion on the Path to Transgender Equality, " Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 4 (2003): 744.
84. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Queer Performativity: Henry James's the Art of the Novel. " GLQ 1 (1993): 14.
85. Judith Halberstam, "Shame and White Gay Masculinity, " Social Text 23 (2005): 220, 224.
86. Judith Halberstam, "Shame and White Gay Masculinity, " Social Text 23 (2005), 224.