Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness
This story of drag kings and queens at Cleveland, Ohios most popular gay bar reveals that these genres have little in common and introduces interperformance, a framework for identity formation and coalition building that provides strategies for repairing longstanding rifts in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness is the first book centered on queer life in this growing midwestern hub and the first to focus simultaneously on kinging and queening. It shows that despite the shared heading of drag, these iconically queer institutions diverge in terms of audience, movement vocabulary, stage persona, and treatment of gender, class, race, and sexuality. Horowitz argues that the radical (in)difference between kings and queens provides a window into the perennial rift between lesbians and gay men and challenges the assumption that all identities subsumed under the queer umbrella ought to have anything in common culturally, politically, or otherwise. Drawing on performer interviews about the purpose of drag, contestations over space, and the eventual shuttering of the bar they called home, Horowitz offers a new way of thinking about identity as a product of relations and argues that relationality is our best hope for building queer communities across lines of difference.
The book will be key reading for students and faculty in the interdisciplinary fields of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; performance studies; American studies; cultural studies; ethnography; and rhetoric. It will be useful to graduate students and faculty interested in queer culture, gender performance, and transgender studies. At the same time, the clear and relatable writing style will make it accessible to undergraduates and well suited to upper-level courses in queer theory, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) identities, performance studies, and qualitative research methods.
Katie Horowitz is Assistant Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Writing at Davidson College, where she writes and teaches about intersectional queer, feminist, and transgender theories, body politics, and radical social movements. Her work has appeared in Signs, Porn Studies, and CrossCurrents.
Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
Feminism, Republicanism, Egalitarianism, Environmentalism
Bill of Rights and Gendered Sustainable Initiatives
Yulia Maleta
Ungendering Technology
Women Retooling the Masculine Sphere
Carol J. Haddad
Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians
Abigail Gardner
Sexual Violence and Humiliation
A Foucauldian-Feminist Perspective
Dianna Taylor
Gender, Sexuality and the Cultural Politics of Mens Identity in the New Millennium
Literacies of Masculinity
Robert Mundy and Harry Denny
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness
Katie Horowitz
Re-writing Women as Victims
From Theory to Practice
Maria Jos Gmez Fuentes, Sonia Nez Puente and Emma Gmez Nicolau
https://www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Research-in-Gender/book-series/IRG
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness
Katie Horowitz
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2020 Katie Horowitz
The right of Katie Horowitz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Horowitz, Katie, 1981 author.
Title: Drag, interperformance, and the trouble with queerness / Katie Horowitz.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Interdisciplinary research in gender | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019028168 (print) | LCCN 2019028169 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138327344 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429449314 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429830310 (adobe pdf ) | ISBN 9780429830297 (mobi) |
ISBN 9780429830303 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Male impersonatorsOhioCleveland. |
Female impersonatorsOhioCleveland. | Queer theory.
Classification: LCC HQ76.25 .H685 2020 (print) |
LCC HQ76.25 (ebook) | DDC 306.760109771/32dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028168
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028169
ISBN: 978-1-138-32734-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-44931-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
This book would not have been possible without the love and support; the investmenttemporal, intellectual, and financial; the friendship, mentorship, dedication, knowledge, confidence, influence, and advice of more people than I could reasonably thank in this space. But here is a start:
To my first professor of queer theory, Henry Abelove, for teaching me to think and setting me on my lifes course,
To everyone at the 2009 University of California Multi-Campus Research Group in International Performance Culture who read my earliest musings on this topic and affirmed that this work was worth doing, and especially to Leo Cabranes-Grant for encouraging me to think dangerously,
To the dedicated librarians at the Bancroft Library, the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, UNLV Special Collections, and Tulane Special Collections, for their careful assistance through the alternately maddening and exhilarating process of archival research, and to the friends and relatives who generously opened their homes to me while I did that research,
To the grad school friends who challenged me, commiserated with me, suggested readings to me, and read drafts of this project when it was still a baby dissertation, Chris Atwood, Marc Boucai, Liz Mesok, Ivn Ramos, April Sizemore-Barber, Sri Devi Thakkilapati, Damon Young, and especially Radhika Natarajan, who suggested I start writing about drag in the first place,
To my advisers at UC Berkeley, Judith Butler, for her critical insights and inspiration; Catherine Cole, for introducing me to performance studies and taking even my wildest ideas seriously; and Linda Williams, for taking a genuine interest in me early on, going to bat for me time and again, and modeling how to be a scholar, teacher, mother, and life-loving person all at once,
