Ethnographic representation has been soundly criticized for making conditions of colonialism and imperialism more possible, and for recreating Others as static and objectified bodies, even as ethnographers attempt to work against this very problem. Historically, representations by Western ethnographers have authoritatively created people of color, women, queers, and the colonized as decidedly less human, or at the very least, less historically situated than themselves. Edward Said, in a Reference Said1989 essay, critiques ethnographers for precisely this point, as they attempt to represent cultures previously unfamiliar to them (205–25). He writes that one of the strategies that Western ethnographers have employed was to “focus more or less exclusively on practice, as if practice were a domain of actuality unencumbered by agents, interests, and contentions, political as well as philosophical” (Said Reference Said1989, 211). For Said, this focus on practice has merely obscured relationships of power and politics. Said's critique of the field of anthropology has both haunted and propelled the way I engage with the ethnography of moving bodies, most recently as I read Ramón Rivera-Servera's Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance Sexuality, Politics.
This book is relevant to dance and performance studies, Latina/o studies, and LGBT studies as it intertwines themes crucial to each discipline through an analysis of queer latinidad's “theories in practice.” Throughout the book, Rivera-Servera dwells deeply in practice, not to obscure relationships of power and politics, but to highlight them as he historically situates queer Latinos in global cityscapes. Rivera-Servera weaves together the micropractices of queer latinidad with the macropolitics that target queer Latinos in the urban spaces of Chicago, New York City, San Antonio, Austin, and Phoenix. He conceives of queer latinidad as a counterpublic, an action, “a model of social engagement” not necessarily defined through identity, but “more open to improvisational, at times accidental, routes to the formation of community and home” (69). Notably, Rivera-Servera situates his lens of practice in both dance studies and Latina/o studies, fields that he purposefully tangles throughout the book, citing both Susan Foster's conceptualization of choreographies of protest and Cherríe Moraga's understanding of “theories in the flesh” (18) as he “proposes a model that privileges the body and its actions and conduits of knowledge about the world. It is in the acts of performance that I situate both theory and the potential interventions queer latinidad can make in the public sphere at large” (18). For Rivera-Servera, practice is active, enmeshed in the interactions of everyday life, convivencia diaria, he writes, in reference to its usage by anthropologists Milagros Ricourt and Ruby Danta (38–9).
Rivera-Servera's theorization of convivencia diaria is most profound in his depiction of homophobia along his walk on the way to a queer nightclub in Brooklyn in 1999. The young Latinos outside the neighborhood bodega hail Rivera-Servera as queer, taunting his “effeminate straddle,” while at the same time recognizing his privilege as a blanquito, a light-skinned Puerto Rican man from the neighborhood. “My neighbors often perform these piropos or spoken flirtations with tilts of the head to the side, backs slanted with concave chests, forward thrusts of the hips, and slow but firm rocking of the torso with arm extensions to the side” (138). They “playfully flirt” with Rivera-Servera, who remains “relatively comfortable” (138) with these neighbors. As he writes them into the ethnography, he neither flattens nor demonizes but rather humanizes them as they push Rivera-Servera away and pull him toward them in their mockery. Farther into his walk, Rivera-Servera contrasts these young men with others who accuse him of being a “faggot” or a “gringo,” not at all playfully or flirtatiously. Knowing when to engage with his Latino neighbors and knowing when to quickly pass the less familiar bodies that hurl insults require what Rivera-Servera calls a “dancerly strategy that pays attention to the nuances of moving from one place to another” (141). The poignant details of the walk emerge from Rivera-Servera's own bodily familiarity with the performance of queer latinidad in urban spaces.
The vivid everyday life interactions along this walk to the club demonstrate that the clubs as queer spaces harbor bodies that seek to escape the onslaught of homophobia just outside the door. In addition to the homophobia, queer Latinos also navigate the politics and materiality of gentrification and anti-immigration movements. In this sense, the queer nightclub dance floor becomes a utopian space, a safe haven, for Rivera-Servera and the dancers who constitute the culture of the club. For Rivera-Servera, utopia becomes possible through the practice of social improvisation: “The performances of utopia in the club rehearse strategies of survival and interconnectedness that might enable the emergence of queer pan-Latina/o communities beyond it” (150). He is unwilling and perhaps unable to present queerness and latinidad as separate spheres precisely because he finds his own body at this intersection. In doing so, he establishes that queer bodies inform practices of latinidad, and Latino bodies matter to theorizations of queer urban spaces.
Following scholars Alicia Arrizón and José Muñoz with a scholarly offering on queer latinidad, Rivera-Servera extends the scope to include nightclub spaces in Chapters Four and Five. I regard Chapter Five, “Dancing Reggaetón with Cowboy Boots,” as one of Rivera-Servera's major interventions in the fields of Latino studies, LGBT studies, and dance, particularly with its focus on the politics of class and immigration. In this chapter, he looks at the relationship between two queer Latino nightclubs in Phoenix, and addresses the ways in which the materiality of perceived differences, including class and citizenship, points not simply to the heterogeneity among Latinos, but the ways that hierarchies form within latinidad. The friction unfolds between the Mexican ranchero Club Zarape and the pan-Latino contemporary Club Karamba, two-working class, queer, Latino-based clubs that share a parking lot. Their club cultures are differentially affected by the anti-immigrant politics of the city, as well as the class-marked aesthetics of each space. Rivera-Servera's analysis shows that the contrasting club aesthetics produce friction between the two spaces based on class status.
Rivera-Servera writes of the subjects in the ethnography with generosity and respect, historically and politically situating them so that the reader might empathize with their varying positions, their creative movement choices, and their desire to form community performing queer latinidad. In critiquing this interdisciplinary work, I would only ask for more. While some ethnographers err on the side of being too self-reflexive, Rivera-Servera could have further engaged readers by including more of his own body in relation to others, particularly in the chapters on nightclubs. What is Rivera-Servera's relationship to participants at Club Zarape and Club Karamba? To what extent do women in these spaces affect his representation of queer latinidad? Regardless of my desire to delve further into the nightclub scenes, Rivera-Servera has extensively researched and deftly represented queer latinidad through quotidian practices encumbered by “agents, interests, and contentions,” in which the bodies of queer Latinos are anything but static. It is not surprising that Performing Queer Latinidad has won multiple awards: the Congress on Research in Dance's Outstanding Publication Award, a special citation from the Society of Dance History Scholars, a Lambda Literary Award for LGBT studies, and a Latino Studies Section of Latin American Studies Association Award for best book.
