Before reading “From Homoerotics Of Exile
To Homopolitics Of Diaspora” by Sima Shakhsari I was not familiar with queer politics in the context of Iran. I appreciated that the article allowed me to delve into thinking critically about a complex issues by framing the topic in an easily understandable fashion. The part of the article focused on the hanging of Ayaz Marhouni and Mohamad Asgari, two men assumed to be gay and rapists of a young man. I was especially intrigued by how the iconography of these two young men’s images were used to make political statements on both sides of the fence. Shakhsari argued Iranian governement represents itself as a “gran prison for queers”, in Iran the images of Marhouni and Asgari were used for the purposes cautionary propaganda. However, in Washington D.C. the images were used for purposes of protesting against the murdering of Marhouni and Asagri. I am looking forward to lecture and hearing more about Shakshari’s choice to protest against the protesters in D.C. I am a little confused by her choice and would like to her firsthand about that particular experience.

Shakhsari: The Iranian queer community became a hyper-visible political contender after 9/11 through internet blogs and transnational publications.

Taylor: Post colonial migration, capitalism, and political change allowed contemporary artists to critique hegemonic structures and create art that was individualistic.

I thought Shakhsari’s From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora: Cyberspace, the War on Terror, and the Hypervisibile Iranian Queer should be applauded for giving insight into the queer community as an academic subject and its transnational political contender and social influence. However, the article didn’t prove there was a shift in the representation of the Iranian queer community, since they are still marginalized within Iran due to religious and social norms, and did not offer a significant source that the Iranian queer community became visible or “hypervisible” in an international arena or instilled in a international public knowledge. This could stem from the perceived notions of blogs as a non-academic form of publication that is largely drawing from personal opinion.

Parsi, head of the Iranian Queer Railroad, has seemingly become a figurehead for the group of Iranian queers, appearing to be the sole representative basing his organization in Canada for queer refugees. I wonder if there are more outlets for the queer community besides Parsi, and if there are issues or beliefs in the Iranian queer community that Shakhsari could not represent. For example, why did the Iranian queer become an issue of importance at American university commencement speeches and use 9/11 as a significant demarcation of visible change? Did the Iranian queer community feel misrepresented during the heightened political turmoil of the War on Terror, and wasn’t receiving any address by the government? How has their representation changed post 9/11, and why was this an important issue that needed to be addressed? Shakhsari notes that “the shift to the homopolitics of diaspora does not suggest that Iranian queers have only become political subjects after the war on terror, but that they have been recognized for their political usefulness in liberatory missions” (33). Are Iranian queers only applauded for their liberatory missions or actually have a larger political usefulness in social and political change? True, the Iranian cyberspace may be a new frontier for challenging heteronormativity, but I did not see how their importance and visibility began in the wake of 9/11.

Taylor gives background to various artists who paved the way for performance art such as Carolee Scheemann.

Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique of art museums disrupts the audience’s notion of authenticity and authority.

Fred Wilson counteracts Maryland’s colonist history and focuses on racial victimization, anonymity, and the influence of slavery.

Response:

Fraser and Wilson use the basis of their performance art by having the museum act as the actor, in which they commentate or position items in a particular fashion. In this way, they themselves are not necessarily performing but the museum is, on which they act as the intermediate between the relationship of the viewer and the museum. The question of artistry is questionable for some who believe that their work is not art, for it doesn’t involve any craft and only manipulation of objects or words to create the work. However, in this manipulation, the viewer (sometimes) becomes aware of the authority placed onto them as the viewer and the authority automatically given to the museum and its employees.

Wilson’s performance is clear, for he arranges items found in the archive and pairs them with another or positions them in a certain way, as to provoke a historical narrative that often is in contrast with the typical grandiose or “extension of European history” narrative of museums. Wilson’s rendition encourages the viewer to contemplate the forgotten, transgressive times of American history, by highlighting black servant faces within portraits of a large white family, and positioning finely crafted wooden chairs that mark American artistry around a somber, formidable whipping post.

Wilson turns Native American Tobacco store figures away from the viewer.

Fraser calls into question the authority placed on the patron and the authority granted to the museums employees, for the patron expects the usual tour of what works to pay attention to, which are famous etc. However, she offers little consolation and rambles about facts about the history of the museum itself, as she did in Hartford, or about herself, as a Daughter of the American Revolution, boosting not only her claim of artistic authority but of genealogical heritage to the town itself.  She becomes unnecessary and almost a nuisance, distracting the patrons away from the art encouraging them to question her presence and her academic ability.

Fraser talks to a group of museum patrons.

Lopez: In the wake of an international, male-led smear campaign against Alma Lopez’s 1999 digital print, Lopez’s commentary offers insight into the underlying patriarchal ethos which disables a portion of our society from seeing “Our Lady” as anything other than a “tart”, “stripper”, and “devil.”

Latorre: In Guisela Latorre’s piece we see how the double exclusion of Chicana women from both patriarchal discourse and the White, middle-upper class-oriented feminist movement gave rise to politicizing and decolonizing methods of creativity in the world of Chicana art.

This week’s readings for our class interestingly coincide with a handful of articles assigned in my WGST Women and Health course, specifically on the topic of “rape culture.” The great sense of horror that I felt reading through Alma Lopez’s piece about the threat of censorship by art institutions, the vilification of the female body, and the candid condemnation of any threat to a patriarchal, Chicano society is almost identical to the feelings I experienced reading through an article on “rape culture” in India.

The WGST article that I am specifically referring to was written in response to the tragic gang rape that occurred on a public bus in New Delhi late last year.

(http://prospect.org/article/purity-culture-rape-culture)

Just above, I’ve posted the link about this barbaric crime to help initiate my argument that the hostile, cultural climate that Alma Lopez describes in her article, Silencing Our Lady, parallels the “rape culture,” (referenced in the link) that maintains a sense of entitlement for men to denounce women and their bodies as inferior, defiant, and worthy of corrective abuse.

According to my WGST article entitled, Purity Culture is Rape Culture, rape, in its modern form, is not about sex, it is about power. “Rape culture lives anywhere that has a ‘traditional’ vision of women’s sexuality. A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture. In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure…This attitude gives men license to patrol-in some cases with violence- women’s hopes for controlling their lives and bodies.”

Referring back to Lopez’s article we see this concept of “rape culture” play out comfortably in the society that she grew up in. A society in which woman’s bare breasts, exposed legs and belly are seen as “offensive” and blasphemous while the male nude is anointed as god-like in countless religious institutions across the nation sounds a lot like a society that promotes violence against women.  A society wherein a rape survivor who to tell her story is held “on trial” for putting herself in a dangerous situation sounds a lot like Lopez’s reality. Any society that is threatened by the voice and agency of women is definitely a society that we should be concerned about.

I suppose I write all of this to say that I am just as disturbed by Lopez’s testimony as I am by the countless articles I read on the normalcy of rape in patriarchal societies. I feel relieved by the fact that the art institution chose not to remove Lopez’s work, despite the violent opposition. However, in the end, it is the sizable body of people who fervently resist the right of a woman to create a positive and empowering image of herself that really makes me shutter.

In the article “Chicana Art and Scholarship on the interstices of our discipline” Latorre explores the concept of intersectionality as it pertains to Latina women as members of the art world. Latorre argues Latina artist use art as an outlet for social commentary on both their experience as women and Latino. Latorre suggests some Latina artists feel obligated to use their talents as artists to call attention to the injustices that affect marginalized groups of people. This concept of using art for social commentary reminds me of the art exhibition “ Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” I went to at MoMA Ps1 in New York City. Similarly, art works displayed in this exhibit all made social commentary on the social injustice issues facing Black people in Los Angeles from 1960-1980. I feel partitas offer invaluable contributions to the advancements of their race and gender when they utilize their art for social commentary., especially when they are minority female artists. Their art captures the raw emotions of historic events that textbooks leave out and are unable to convey. For this reason I cherish art created by artists from marginalized groups because it allows me to step back in time and feel what they must have been feeling during the time of their struggle when the art was created.