You Belong Here

As we were completing the signage for the 2005 Spiral Workshop show, a painting professor walked up to me, shook her head and commented: “The Spiral show used to be so beautiful. … It’s become so strident.”

It had been a bleak year politically—Bush was re-inaugurated, U.S. actions had turned widespread world sympathy after 9/11 into widespread antipathy through engaging in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that continued to cause terrible civilian casualties, No Child Left Behind was undermining more progressive school reform efforts, millions were without health care, public housing was being torn down at a faster rate than it was being replaced. … The themes of the Spiral groups that year reflected the cultural and political questions of the times—Chromophobia: Painting in a Culture of Fear; Counterfeit Evidence: Re-rendering Reality; Drawing Danger: Making Monsters; and Subversive Identity: Breaking Culture Codes. The youth artists had responded to the projects with interest and passion—producing some truly thought-provoking work.

I was surprised by the professor’s dismissive statement, but not disconcerted. Knowing that artists labeled as strident in their times have often been historically vindicated—artistically and politically—I laughed off the remark. I easily found words to challenge the assumption that it was a “non-political” position to encourage youth artists to focus on making aesthetically pleasing artwork while their futures were being undermined by political decisions that were siphoning away resources needed for education, health care, and other social programs. I felt comfortable with being strident in these times.

Claiming words once meant to harm—queer and Chicano are two very successful examples of this cultural move—is a resistance strategy that challenges conventional discourses of de-legitimization by enthusiastically turning pejoratives into praise. “Yes, we are odd.” “We are hybrid.” “We are unassimilated.” These are powerful statements that sidestep arguing one’s case within the cultural and ethical frameworks of those who stand in judgment. However, it’s important to recognize that the success of such a strategy of resistance is often rooted in agonizing personal and collective examination of the psychological effects of such terms.

Another scene at an MFA critique: an older professor chastises me with cold calmness for being rude, for beginning to speak before he has finished. I had dared to interject a comment into one of his lugubrious pauses after he had made a remark stated as a universal truth—a remark that I (and some others present) considered to be sexist and intellectually outmoded.

Now I stood potentially shamed in my department by my deportment. I was publicly branded as a loud-mouthed woman, an uncouth working-class interloper into the world of high culture. Why should anyone listen to you? You clearly demonstrate that you don’t belong here.

I am grateful to anti-racist and pro-women movements—politically, culturally, artistically—because these have helped me to see and shape who I am internally and socially. Through the field of Cultural Studies, I came to understand that styles of speaking and responding are culturally determined—that when I “rudely interrupted,” I was engaging in “overlapping,” and that this was a legitimate and patterned form of verbal exchange for collaboratively generating meaning, a style of conversation often utilized by black people, Jewish people, and urban people of various ethnicities

I came to understand that as I learned to fit into university life, my goal also had to be to sometimes “retrofit” the university—to encourage this social intellectual system to remain relevant through encouraging it to respect and incorporate a wider range of communicative strategies—especially those strategies that do not disguise emotion and positionality under a studied calm or those that overemphasize individual over collaborative making of meaning.

What makes your ears hot or your palms sweaty? When a word or a phrase hits you upside the head, when it penetrates your consciousness, wounds your heart—it has often generated an experience of shame that has deep roots. We can be cognizant of what is occurring; yet the experience is still real—we feel it in the body. The consequence is often some form of...