Performing Virtuosity: Queer Embodiment and Administrative Violence at the US–Canadian Border

Abstract

While attempting to cross through the US customs checkpoint in October 2012, Canadian transsexual performance artist Nina Arsenault was detained and interrogated by border security. In addition to being targeted as a transgender woman, Arsenault was also forced to prove her validity as an artist before she was allowed passage into the US, and was subsequently subjected to an intensive artistic evaluation. This article recounts the details of this previously undocumented incident, exposing the scenario as a vivid example of administrative violence precisely because the proscriptive methodologies used by border security refuse to acknowledge Arsenault’s queer form of embodiment. Incorporating extensive interviews in order to recreate the scene from Arsenault’s perspective, Gillespie shows how queer bodies are forced to repeatedly perform virtuosity as a survival tactic at the borders and blockages of normativity. Gillespie argues that in questioning the validity of Arsenault’s queer artistic work, the agents were also inherently questioning her validity as a productive citizen and positioning her as a deviant body.