“The Battle of Proper Names”

In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida’s most influential work regarding linguistics and writing, he spends time describing a story of anthropological warfare between French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, and the Nambikwara people of Brazil, whom he studied. Derrida refers to a scene called “The Writing Lesson” from Strauss’s book The Savage Mind, in which he describes a forbidden interaction between the young girls of the Nambikwara and Strauss. The Nambikwara people do not use “proper names” when they refer to each other; they instead use a set of designated nicknames, which preserves a sense of structure within their community. The forbidden interaction occurred when Strauss discovered that he could get the proper names of the tribe from the young girls in the form of a game. Strauss admitted to manipulating the youngsters in order to gain access to the information that the Nambikwara had always kept private. After the elders discovered the alliance between Strauss and the girls, his “sources off information dried up”. As I read the account of the violation that occurred to the Nambikwara community and Derrida’s understanding of their ability to “obliterate” or “arche-write” (discussed below) their own language, I instantly began to think about the various naming rituals that occur within the queer, trans and performance communities. Performing a chosen name or identity is an opportunity for that person to embody a persona that mimics or represents who they really are, and this performance timeline can be flexible.

If a non-ally asks a trans person for their “real name”, this is a cultural violation and is viewed as highly offensive. Surely if Strauss were to study transgender people today, his sources would be dried up and his funding reneged. Within queer culture (which includes trans identities), names and nicknames – given and taken – are swapped and appropriated at a rapid pace. It can be difficult to keep up with a community who values identity fluidity as a Christian might value their relationship with God. That is to say, naming within queer communities is taken very seriously, even if comical, or highly unusual names are taken by a queer or transgender individual. The process of taking on a new name or a moniker occurs within drag communities as well. For drag performers, assigning or receiving a name can (and often does) include a tongue and cheek reference to historical and pop-cultural events or can be a derivative of a celebrity name. Often a drag queen will pick a name or be given one by a friend or "drag mother" , not too unlike the naming purposes described by Strauss.

Theorist Erving Goffman wrote about self-representation in our daily interactions in the 1959 essay Presentation in Everyday Life. He describes the various ways we may alter our behavior in order to 1) conform to society’s expectations based on our presentations and 2) to elevate our social ranking amongst our peers.

“I have said that when an individual appears before others his actions will influence the definition of the situation which they come to have. Sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing himself in a given way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them a specific response he is concerned to obtain…This kind of control upon the part of the individual reinstates the symmetry of the communication process, and sets the stage for a kind of information game-a potentially infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery.” (5-6)

Certainly one, who inhabits a trans identity, enters this “infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery” beyond what Goffman refers to as daily interactions. This calculating manner, this self-expression takes on more gravity and necessity when one’s generic daily interactions have the potential to put one at risk of discrimination. Adopting a new name is critical to navigating and simplifying these daily interactions. For transgender people, changing one’s name and pronouns presents a rupture to the various systems and institutions that monitor identity. This process bares a striking resemblance to the obliteration of language that Derrida refers to in The Battle of Proper Names. “Arche-writing”, which to him is a notion of writing that insists that the violation that “the written” introduces between what is intended to be conveyed and what is actually conveyed, is typical of the violation that affects the status quo, including the notion of self-presence. Taking on a different identity, name or nickname that does not categorically fit anywhere (eg, names/identities like Gender Trash, Pigeon and Home Fries) an “infinite referral” - it never arrives at meaning in of itself. These nicknames can be for play or for real and their intention is to disrupt the preconceived notions of who a person is and can be.

“Representation always has an agenda.”

There is a growing body of artistic work regarding intersectional identities being produced by emerging artists of various racial, sexual and gender identities. These investigations into embodiment, perception and representation are being manifested visually and sonically; interestingly, with a shared thread of aesthetic quality. Artists like James Spooner, director of Afro-Punk, VenusX of Ghe20 Goth1k, a queer sound project based in NY, Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler, director of Still Black: a portrait of black transmen, and Wu Tsang, a trans artist and filmmaker based in LA, employ music, fashion, and anti-colonialism liberally throughout their work. This effective blend of style and substance represents the cutting edge of community organizing, sociology and pop culture today. For these artists, their work is as much about exploring gender and sexuality as it is about being a person of color in America. These artists are my peers (some, more direct than others) and are a fantastic point of reference for my work. While I have mentioned several artists of influence to me, Wu Tsang is of particular interest and will be the focus of this essay.

Tsang’s work is focused on intersectional identities and spans a variety of mediums, including documentary film, queer nightlife, sound art and community organizing. I was first introduced to Tsang’s work in early 2011, when Original Plumbing Magazine (a zine dedicated to FTM sexuality & culture) published an interview with him about the context of his inspirations. For him, self-representation and context is a performance in and of itself. Gay bars and clubs had long been considered one of the only safe spaces to be or perform all aspects of one’s queer life. However, race and class continue to divide queer communities; it was this recognition that made queer nightlife organizing the nexus of his experiences as a trans person of color and the art that he would begin to produce. “I didn’t see enough INTERSECTIONAL thinking happening around race, gender, and class stuff in a way that was accessible and entertaining.” Tsang said, “That was something WILDNESS taught me: you can be dealing with the HEAVIEST stuff but still in a way that is passionate and fun.” Indeed, there is something profound about inhabiting a misunderstood body, or presentation, in that you are either to be feared or exotified…but rarely equal. That realization is the heaviness that Tsang refers to. My experiences in Boston have been equally frustrating and became my call to arms to create spaces in which I could feel comfortable and understood in all of my complexities as well.

Tsang presented a performance as a part of his artist in residency at the New Museum in New York City this past June. “The Table” is a series of sound experiences based soley on improvisation. The Table session brought together four DJs/producers in a five-hour performance in which they worked to create a unique, energetic and seamless soundscape. Participating DJs included KINGDOM (Ezra Rubin), NGUZUNGUZU (Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda), and TOTAL FREEDOM (Ashland Mines). On the table, there were a variety of digital instruments at the DJ’s disposal. Hip Hop, R&B, House, and "nu whirled" music samples were performed and remixed live to create an unidentifiable aural exploration.

Tsang’s collaboration with these up and coming DJs is part of an ongoing series of parties/sounds/experiences that began between them in Los Angeles. The sonic qualities of this emerging bass music sound are also defiantly intersectional. Compositions borrow polyrhythmic, global sounds like Kuduro, Moombahton, Bubbling and Reggaeton and are chopped, screwed and juxtaposed with Western House, Pop, RnB, Club, Rave, Footwork and Ghettotech music. The queer/trans artists and DJs in effect “queer” this music by liberally using Ha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m32Z-htDAok samples which appear in nearly all Vogue/Cunt beats; popularized in black and latino queer ball scenes, a la Paris is Burning. The following link to NU LIFE Mixtape Vol. 1 is a great representation the sounds coming from several emerging queer artists in the bass music scene.

I believe Tsang's refusal to accept the limits people impose on his various identities is successfully manifested through his journeys into the intersection of race, gender, class, visual culture, music, fashion and night life. He is unable to compartmentalize all of these influences, because they are inextricably linked. They are dependent on each other in order to tell a complete story about who he is, and the communities he creates.

Finding The Thing Itself

When I was writing my thesis proposal I was challenged with deciding which aspects of LGBT life to focus on. The “minority narrative” - and I mean this in the broadest sense - is always focused on hegemonic power dynamics and its various consequences. This pattern of storytelling has resulted in a templatization of documentaries that focus on minority people. It has in a sense, become a caricature of itself – a trope. Simply do the following:

1) Name the minority population of interest

2) Summarize its cultural history

3) Frame its fight for cultural heritage/preservation within a filter of struggle

4) Site instances of cultural assimilation as progress (against all odds)

5) Remind the audience that the fight is not yet over

This may seem like a crude assessment of the “minority narrative” - I of course do not wish to down play the realities of discrimination which clearly continues to affect a great many people, but it almost appears as if there is no other discourse in which to discuss the minority. The consequences of difference dominate these narratives; no one appears to illustrate what it actually “feels” like to live in between gender, race and class. The emotions that govern that space, the urgency, the split decisions that one must make when navigating various public spaces – these experiences are most potent to me and are the most difficult to emulate, both in writing and in mediated visual culture.

This “feeling” I believe, is the “essence” that Giorgio Agamben refers to in his discussions of Plato’s Seventh Letter and the nature of “The Thing Itself”. Agamben writes, “Each being,” Plato writes, has three things which are the necessary means by which knowledge of that being is acquired; the knowledge itself is the fourth thing; and as a fifth one must posit the thing itself, which is knowable and truly is.” (2, assumed pg. #) The first three things are the name, the definition and the image, with the fourth thing being knowledge itself – the first three things combined. These are the basic items needed to acquire knowledge. The fifth thing is the realm where my inquiries lie. This I believe, is the space of queer and racial performativity, where the intricacies of intentional and unintentional “passing” - defined as the ability of a person to be accepted as a member of a different racial and/or gender group – can be explored. It is also within this realm that Jacques Derrida’s comments on the “feelings of the mind” in Part 1: Writing before the Letter in On Grammatology make sense in developing my work. He writes, “The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence” (11) Thought and “mental experiences” are the most pure form of language. Unhindered by speech and writing. I believe the experience of passing from one gender to another, this “transparence” contains the “essence”, the Thing Itself.

One of the best visual examples of this essence is the film Pi; a story about a numbers theorist who believes everything in nature can be understood through numbers. I am reminded of a scene which shows us that “math is in everything” http://bit.ly/QvaDP . It is here that we see an exchange between the protagonist Max, and a friend, about the secrets of the Torah and its alleged hidden mathematical messages. What I find interesting here is that Max feels isolated and trapped in his own mind, fixated on discovering the truth of nature itself. I liken my gender experience to this scene – feeling out of body, realizing deep down inside that you know something that no one else does, and that you’re understanding of this goes beyond language or communication – it is a gut feeling. A knowing. A sixth sense.

This knowing is the fifth thing, a potentiality. Agamben goes on to say “For everyone a moment comes in which she or he must utter this ‘I can’, which does not refer to any certainty or specific capacity but is nevertheless, absolutely demanding.” (Part 3) This sentence perfectly describes the moment of “actual potentiality”, someone possessing both the wherewithal to actualize a potentiality and the wherewithal not to do so. Potential is the ability to be “ones own lack”, galvanizing an alternate existence. Not just living, but being. Acquiring this fifth thing can only come from giving in to fluidity and mystery, which is in essence, truth.

At All Times, It Isn’t There

One of the most interesting things about inhabiting multiple minority identities is that my understanding of what is true or false changes quite often. This is not a result of confusion but rather, the result of the constant realization that everything we learn is equally true and false. The way knowledge is collected and learned is reliant on systematic categorization. It is inherently easier for human beings to see the world as a series of binary opposites, and much of how we experience life is filtered through this expectation. But my life experience tells me otherwise. The best way for me to convey this idea, that everything is both true and false, I must speak on how I experience gender, as it an excellent example the necessary systematic binary opposite (male/female).

It is not difficult to see how reliant our world is on this binary; our policies, our architecture and our personal relationships are based on it. So when an individual, or group of people challenges this system, the very foundation of our society, economics and psychology are called into question and is at risk of being dismantled. It is thus, “dangerous” to be the linchpin in this deconstruction and I happen to be one of those pesky people who inhabit space in what Derrida refers to as an “Eccentric Circle”. Within his arguments on deconstruction, Derrida tells us that the very condition of deconstruction is already at work within the system to be deconstructed and in fact, it may already be at work – not in the center, but in an “eccentric center” – participating in the construction of what it, at the same time threatens to deconstruct. Derrida’s focus of deconstruction was on speech, writing and semiology, but the ideas behind post-structuralism can be applied to anything we relate to, whether its through text or visual signs.

In the book Structuralism and Post-Structuralism for Beginners, author Donald Palmer breaks down Derrida’s central argument on deconstruction – shattering structuralism’s reliance on binary opposites to define language, communication, systems and human relationships. “…speech and writing have the same essential features – that is - there is no CONCEPT of writing that essentially distinguishes itself from speaking. Both are SIGNS. Both depend on their REPEATABILITY for their usefulness. Both are RELATIONAL, which means that in the case of both speech and writing there is never an ORIGINAL PRESENCE; there is in both cases a PARTIAL PRESENCE and a PARTIAL ABSENCE.” (130)

In my case, both male and female are SIGNS that are dependent on each others difference to make meaning of each other. This makes them RELATIONAL to each other, as male has no meaning with out it’s opposite counterpart female, and vice versa. What is interesting here is the acknowledgement of a partial presence AND partial absence that rings most true. I identify as gendequeer: someone who inhabits both male and female sensibilities/qualities or none of either. This inhabitation can shift often and at any time. This is the “Eccentric Circle” and this existence is also a “potentiality”.

Giorgio Agamben wrote about a concept of Potentiality, in which he attempts to go beyond the binary. “Agamben specifies a mode of existence of potentiality: potentiality is the “existence of a non-Being, a presence of an absence,” that is to say, a form of privation (179). Potentiality is an existence of a non-Being because to say that something has potential implies that this potentiality exists but that, at the same time, it does not exist as an actual thing.” (Paul Nadal, http://bit.ly/ixgLQM) This mode of existence, is what I referred to earlier in experiencing life not as a series of true or false ideas, but as true and false ideas. Within this space of the true and the false is the potentiality – the presence of absence, and the absence of presence.

To be genderqueer or androgynous, or to transition from one binary opposite to another, one must inhabit a liminal space at some point, or in Agamben’s opinion, at all times. It is in the space where all reality is suspended, assumptions are questioned and crushed and weight of “the binary” is constantly pushed against you. It is here that the idea of “perpetual becoming” exists, because I will never arrive to N end point. My body, my presentation and my thoughts will never plateau, as I deconstruct gender on a daily basis. This “Eccentric Circle” is the “perpetual becoming”, a “potentiality”.