A Living Legacy: What Disidentification Will Continue to Mean for Queer Performance Artists of Color

Abstract

Jose Esteban Munoz was a trailblazer for scholars/artists/activists of color, particularly those of us who identify as Latina/o and/or Latin American. He made space for those of us who have felt or who continue to feel we will never have one or that are in a constant battle against erasure. He fought against the violence of the times, both epistemic and material, and his work remains timely and timeless. Though his physical presence left us far too soon, we continue to turn to his scholarship to make sense and to create breath, or spaces of ease from which to think. As a genderqueer person of color who straddles the lines between academia and performance, fortified by activism—my own and those of fellow comrades—I will always be an outsider. It is scholars like Munoz who have helped me feel some sense of temporary belonging in scholarly worlds. It is a border existence and I like it this way. I identify first and foremost as a performance artist, second as a scholar, and always an activist. In January 2014, I became the newest addition to the radical rebel international performance troupe La Pocha Nostra—a clumsy horizontal democracy that is the greatest chosen family I have ever known or could ever possibly come to know. I have found my spaces where I can exist comfortably, uncensored, and supported, but not without firm guidance and mentors. I have also learned and continue to learn to articulate the agency of these groups and spaces and why they matter.