The One True Dave

I have been staring at the blank screen for close to an hour grappling with how to respond to this article.  I was only introduced to the study of affect as a theoretical approach a couple months ago and fear I may be leaping into this idea prematurely.  I am deeply affected by this article.  I’m not trying to sound clever.  I mean, this article had a great effect on me upon reading it and it has stirred deeply held emotions for me.  This article, of course, is not about me.  It is engaging with Melanie Klein (who is extending some of Freud’s ideas), Gayatri Spivak and Hortense Spillers’ work on the subaltern and racial performativity, Eve Sedgwick’s work regarding reparation and Jennifer Doyle’s use of Fredrick Jameson’s work on history.  Munoz bookends the article by describing Nao Bustamante’s installation work involving depression and uses Klein’s ideas furthering the “vicissitudes of racialization and ethnic particularity” to discuss what he calls “brown feelings.” (676)  An aspect of the article I found exciting and useful to my own position is this strive to create scholarship “outside the parameters of positivism, [a position] associated with the universal white subject.” (678) Munoz works to create “racial formations not hamstrung by positivism.” (679)  In particular, I am grateful for Munoz’s statement regarding “sharing a particular affective or emotional valence” (682).  This is a concept I find very helpful in my own positioning.

I firmly believe in post-positivist scholarship and the need for exposing ideologically motivated falsehoods, omissions and hegemonic manipulation behind positivism.  In fact, I look to a scholar like Dwight Conquergood as a prime example of someone who is diligent in his efforts to position himself well, to be honest and respectful regarding his research subjects.  I admire the auto-ethnographic approach I was first introduced to in his writing and see how it could be a useful tool for scholars like myself to legitimately contribute to discussions of race, gender and queerness.  Munoz doesn’t cite Conquergood, but I offer his example as a parallel and constructive addition to the scholarship Munoz advocates.

There are three main reasons why this article affects me deeply.  First, I have had three depressions in my life (involving medication) and know the difficulty of conveying the reality of a subjective malady like depression to a skeptical outsider.  Second, I took a fantastic class with Jane Heather at the University of Alberta on Feminist Theory and Performance in 1996.  I grappled incessantly with the question of how I, as a man, can contribute positively to the feminist agenda.  With Professor Heather’s guidance, the solution we reached for the purpose of the class was that I facilitated a collective creation (using the RSVP cycle) dealing with the creation of femininity in media, kid’s toys and peer pressure.  Third and most importantly, I have a “brown” family and yet I am grappling with similar questions of how I can positively contribute to racial discourse.  I am white but my family is many shades of brown.  My father-in-law (Brad) and I are the milk in our café-au-lait group.  My mother-in-law (Zetta) is three quarters Wapishana First Nations from what used to be British Guiana.  She says that people with darker skin “have more flavor.”  That would mean Brad and I are “flavorless” or vanilla at best.  I am, regardless of my good intentions, representative of white patriarchy.  Here, again, I look to Conquergood as a thoughtful and respectful example to emulate.  Hearing Zetta’s subjective position reinforces, for me, Munoz’s call for a dismantling of positivist (assumed white) enframing.  Lindsay Westbrook’s “mistake” of thinking Bustamante was “wiping her eyes on a Mexican flag hanky” (686) gives us more insight into Westbrook’s perspective of racial performativity than Bustamante’s piece alone.  This is extremely important ideological evidence that would be discredited and omitted by positivist discourse.  What I take from this is to work diligently at positioning myself well in my writing; meeting my fears, prejudices and subject position directly and critically; and to not deny or hide who I am and what I feel.