X-Men Evolution: Mutational Identity and Shifting Subjectivities

Abstract

Discourses of identity, as articulated through media culture, are contested and unstable sites of struggle. Individuals are hailed by multiple subject positions with varying degrees of recognition, misrecognition, rejection, and/or identification. From this process, identity continually (re)emerges as individuals accept, reject, and negotiate a variety of subjectivities. To enact a critical intervention adept at tracing these shifting discourses the author uses mutational identity to analyze the politics of representation within the X-Men trilogy. A specific focus on the mutational concept of evolution directs attention to the mobility and mutability of subject positions across space and time. The analysis highlights the role of citizenship and mobility in constructing recognizable, heroic subjects before turning to trace the racialized and gendered trajectories available as discursive resources for identity negotiation. The resulting insights of this analysis detail the strategies used to perpetuate dominant discourses of identity, offering a nuanced illumination of the processes used to continually re-imagine Whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. The conceptual flexibility offered by mutational identity highlights the speed and scale at which subject positions evolve to maintain hegemonic relations, while also illuminating subjective ruptures and the nodes of resistance already existing in/through discursive formations.