for the thesis (due April 1, 2007)

part of my thesis introduction

now...which part? i don't know...lol

(2 Samuel 13)

Tamar is sent on a "pilgrimage"[1] that is fraught with religio-cultural implications, an idea which I appropriate to make the claims about journey and return, memory and loss, bodily conquest and shame. She is not only sent to the house of Amnon but is likewise sent away, sent back to her place of origin to tell the story, to give testimony, to tell of the horrors of Yahweh and the abuse through tradition. The reader is only privy to her voice in the moments of conquest but not allowed to understand the psychological affects that conquest imbued on her; we do not hear her speak when the pilgrimage is completed.

Contemporary discourse of identity politics and power structures tend to focus on the momentary ruptures of identity, of the proclamation of the self above the demoralization of the identity, of the disruptive character. Though I initially sought to focus on how her Tamar's voice evinces through the space of silence, allowing her character to be disruptive of her own cultural normativity, I have switched gears. Though I do not seek to be dismissive of her forceful claims of religious and cultic practices that should have buffered her from harm and victimization, I want to look at the journey from rape to home, the return of the pilgrim to the place of origin.

It is in what should be home, the sanctuary of her brother Absalom's quarters, where she exists as a desolate woman. What does this intimate about the curious tension between performance of the self and of culture in diverse spaces? It is through this journey back toward the home that a new identity must be inculcated. An integration of the self must occur within a culture that not only gave Tamar context for speaking against her ill-treatment gesturing toward liberation but also the same culture which allowed for the abuse occur wholesale, that allowed for her to perform an identity of desolation.

What is the process of reorienting the self to "home" once an occasion for liberation has occurred? How is the normative tendency of looking for occasions of liberative and disruptive acts damaging by way of minimalize the agency that must be invoked for the process of reintegration? Decentering the romantic notion of prolific moments of identity ruptures and instead focusing on mundane, recurrent, daily performance of reorienting the once ruptured self backward towards normative, oppressive space and performance, what do we learn of identity formation? Is Tamar's cry, removal of headdress and placing on of sackcloth and ashes a performance of lament for what has already occurred or a recognition of the amount of agency needed to go back home?

Instead of simply asking how identities are negotiated, this explication tries to ascertain how identities are consolidated, purposefully foreclosed and agentially neglected in ways that "aspire"[2] to norms that are deemed damaging. Moreover, what is remembered and forgotten in the Tamar character that allows her desolation to take residence in her being. I want to purposefully utilize the definition of desolate: "joyless, disconsolate, and sorrowful through or as if through separation from a loved one." Here, I am positing the separated loved one in this discussion to be the realization of her voice in the space of Amnon's house. Amnon's house functions in a very peculiar way: it allows for voice to be heard but also is the site of victimization.

Performance creates but that which is created is multivocal, to be sure. As an example, Tamar asserts that "such a thing" is not to be done in Israel. At the moment she utters the cultural understanding of rape, she performs knowledge of the text and tradition, she advances the voice of the woman's body. This is a momentary rupture of normative identity for women in the biblical writ. But is this all that is performed? In her statement regarding what is right and good in Israel, Tamar oscillates between disrupting and venerating her tradition and culture. By citing Israel as her context, she implicitly displays that the culture and tradition is not to be challenged and rather tries to function through the constraints of the culture.

For the purpose of this study, I want to ask how this procedure of pilgrimage is replicated in the lives of black queers whom are religiously oriented. Looking particularly at the black Christian religious tradition, this exploration will make meaning from the peregrinations of black queers from the momentary ruptures back to the church. As one such example, I note the usage of gospel music in black gay clubs such as the Clark Sister's You Brought the Sunshine or Kirk Franklin's I've Been Looking for You.

E. Patrick Johnson focuses on the performance of gospel music in the space of the seemingly profane black gay club (during Atlanta Pride, he records) as a bringing the spirit and the flesh together in an orgiastic moment.[3] The focus of his work is on how the performance of queer gender utilizing gospel music disrupts notions of the queer body, the bifurcations of soul from flesh in normative Christian discourse and how these moments are evinces of agency.

However, I am very concerned with the return from the club to the church, from the moment of disruption to reorientation into a normative community. Though it can be said that a (dis)orientation occurs in both directions (i.e., that the black queer must orient the self situationally, whether in the church of the club and must perform and reform the self whenever they move to places of antithetical appreciation and acceptance of the body, of sexuality, of religion and spirituality), I want to focus squarely on the pilgrimage back to the church, the religio-cultural tradition.

Just as the scripture positions Absalom's house as home for Tamar, I position the church as home for the black queer within this discussion. I posit it as home because 1) the church was instructive for those with whom I interviewed long before they had knowledge of their sexuality, 2) the resonance of church within the larger black community as a socio-political force, no matter how elusive that force is today, 3) the family members of those whom I interviewed are generally all still very active in black churches so the discourse is located for the interviewees outside the walls of a church and lastly 4) many of the interviewees attend a variety of church communities or "miss" the communities of this sort if they don't attend one currently.

Thus, I approximate home with the place that is radically involved in identity formation from a young age. I want to hone in on the agency that is called upon to go back to the church continually, to continually cite it in daily life. Even gospel music in the black gay club speaks to the power of home as nurturing and sustaining. The purpose of the exploration, then, is to ask questions regarding identity (re)formation from the momentary rupture back into a normative posturing of the self. I want to ask how are black queers existing within, and in some ways advancing, the norms in which we inhabit.

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[1] See Charles Long's Significations (1980) for a discussion on pilgrimage and the religious implications.
[2] Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety (2003)
[3] Feeling the Spirit in the Drark. Callaloo 21.2 (1998) 399-416