{"id":1126,"date":"2022-11-17T21:35:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T02:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2022-11-17T21:35:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T02:35:27","slug":"breaking-the-binary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/11\/17\/breaking-the-binary\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Binary"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The Mythic Being<\/a><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe Mythic Being,\u201d which is a series of cartoons and performances by Adrian Piper, has many overlapping themes with our class. To examine these themes, I would like to use the piece from Eve Sedgwick, \u201cQueer and Now.\u201d \u201cThe Mythic Being\u201d is a character played by Piper, who is a lesbian, woman-identifying person. They are characterized by a large afro, a mustache, and sunglasses, as well as stereotypically masculine actions such as catcalling. Piper\u2019s goal with this piece is to garner audience reactions and blur the lines of people\u2019s perceptions of gender identity. She does this as she is tired of identifying within her norms as a black, lesbian woman and is instead able to examine the world as a straight, masculine man. She examines how reactions she gets as male presenting are different from those she gets in her everyday life.

In relating Piper\u2019s work to Sedgwick\u2019s piece, I find that much of the motivation behind the Mythic Being could be Piper\u2019s distaste for her own female identity as well as feeling as if she does not belong within the norms of being a woman. Piper switches between her male persona and her female persona to represent her own fluid identity, and that she cannot be constrained the norms imposed on her as a black, lesbian woman in the 1970s. Sedgwick\u2019s piece establishes that queerness refers to \u201cthe open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone\u2019s gender, of anyone\u2019s sexuality aren\u2019t made (or can\u2019t be made) to signify monolithically\u201d (Sedgwick 8). One aspect of queerness and gender identity is fluidity, which Piper uses the Mythic Being to explore. Sedgwick, with her definition of queerness, explains that one\u2019s sexuality and gender is to be determined by oneself, which Piper explores. The Mythic Being represents Piper\u2019s own fluid gender and sexuality, which is essential to queerness according to Sedgwick.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mythic Being \u201cThe Mythic Being,\u201d which is a series of cartoons and performances by Adrian Piper, has many overlapping themes with our class. To examine these themes, I would like to use the piece from Eve Sedgwick, \u201cQueer and Now.\u201d \u201cThe Mythic Being\u201d is a character played by Piper, who is a lesbian, woman-identifying … Continue reading Breaking the Binary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}