Muñoz, J. - " Performing Disidentity: Disidentification as a Practice of Freedom"

This text was really fascinating for me. So often in ETHN, I feel that we miss out on queer analytical text and frameworks, so I was glad that this text was on our syllabi for this quarter...

-The way disidentification was explained to me, "you do it all the time." I think of how it relates to interpolating parts of our self to a body of knowledge or a system, but at the same time knowing that there is a gap/dislocation from that larger system. For example, in intersectional theory, there is an assumption that all parts of a subject intersect and exist at the same time, and that all those parts need to be performed or exposed in each instance. But with disidentity, we can understand how a self is produced by a minoritarian subject existing in these majority structures. In this way, we can relate to a majoritarian identity in pieces, without completely assimilating or rejected that identity. This contradictory way of understanding identity becomes a form of survival and resistance, especially for queer bodies of color, as people live and exist within a fluid spectrum of inconsistent identity practices.

• For example, our reading on feminist appropriations of economic theorists can be an example of disidentification. Hughes and Blaxter reupholster traditionally male-dominant scholarship to for a feminist agenda, disidentifying with Bourdieu's positionality but also using his work to build upon it.  

-Multiculturalism vs radical multiculturalism - Gonzales-Torres defines this as a reaction to corporate multiculturalism, "radical multiculturalism is focused on relational or intersectional aspects" (167). This reminds me of how critiques of "multi-culty" POC interactions are actually very white readings of POC spaces. Often times, these critiques assume that POC are never in contact, and when hybrid cultures or political possibilities are formed, they're dismissed as "multicultural" instead of inclusive and representative of different solidarities. So, as Muñoz writes about the difference between critical multiculturalism and a reductive multicultural pluralism, I found myself nodding my head. It reminds me of the foundational womyn of color feminist work in "This Bridge Called My Back", which positions womyn of color solidarities based on the positions of difference as well as similarity. I think in reductive multicultural pluralism, difference is blurred out to privilege and highlight similarity, but in actual POC spaces -- POC do work together inclusively, and do so understanding positions of difference (for example, I'm thinking of SAAC). 

"Conquest", Andrea Smith

-US tests weapons on indigenous peoples in the Americans; military and nuclear testing also takes place almost exclusively on Native lands.

Brings up a form of coloniality that we have to think through again, as traditional models of colony:metropole (most often in regards to colonization from Western Europe) and settler colonialism, to have a more complicated understanding of how coloniality functions to economically support the nation-state within the contemporary moment. In the case of U.S. settler colonialism for Native lands, Smith argues here that consolidating "empire within borders" supports military expansion internationally, so that the struggle for Native sovreignty intersects with multiple internationalist ("nation-state") issues, but also complicates the idea of what liberation can look like. 

"Feminist Appropriations of Bourdieu", Christina Hughes and Loraine Blaxter

In this piece, one thing that stood out to me was Hughes and Blaxter's writing on the academic field and social capital -- "whilst social capitalists are infused with a concern to reduce inequality, 'there is little sense of its structural, rather than personal, origins" (111). In this feminist reading of Bourdieu's working of social capital and what it means to be a practicing intellect, I wonder how social capital functions within the academy. Which bodies can never assimilate into the academic institution, because of the structural processes of the university? Meaning, which bodies can never amount social capital for mobility within the academy?
As I was reading this article, I was a little confused about the usage of "appropriation" to think about Bourdieu's theorization. From my understanding, the use of "appropriation" was a way to incorporate "male" theory into feminist theorizing, in a way reupholstering traditionally male-dominant scholarship to fit a feminist agenda.