ramblings: on homoeroticism and black barbershops

barbershops are locations of generally accepted homosocial and homoerotic conversation and behavior. there are scores of men at any given time of day who generally dress nicely to go TO the shop in order to impress their fellow patrons...they know each other. they develop close, intimate relationships with each other all based on weekly visits to the barbershop. many times, dudes IN the barbershop aren't there to get a cut or trim but just for conversation.

now.

the conversation almost DAILY delves into discourse of sexuality generally and homosexuality (or queer sexuality) particularly. there has not been ONE time when i have gone to barbershops where someone's sexuality was not made a spectactle by either 1) praise(e.g., for being a player, for having many hos, or purporting a big dick, etc) or 2) castigation (e.g., not manly enough, too girly, a "faggot", etc).

however, the close proximity of male bodies to other male bodies whilst engaging in this particular discourse of sexuality should be puzzling and is quite contradictory. consider how the barber, often engaging in low conversation with a particular client, has to touch the face, the neck, the ears...these are erogenous zones, to be sure. also consider how the barber has to lean his body in to the body of the client. the three feet of personal space is invaded in the client-barber context...

but it is also invaded in the client-client context. they have to sit on benches or chairs directly next to each other. knees inadvertently touch. there are pats on back (e.g., "atta-boy!", etc)...

yet the most inciting conversation ever to be had in a barbershop is that of sexuality. either the praise for overt heterosexuality or the disdain for homosexuality; it is still the ideas of sex that proliferate daily...

and it makes dicks hard...

i am interviewing a bunch of black gay folks re: their relation to black churches. i read two homophobic passages from sermons to them and ask them how it makes them feel. i have often heard that, while it seems to be castigatory on the one hand, that it is often a turn on...it often HEIGHTENS ones awareness of their own sexuality and causes them to want to engage in sexual activities that are seemingly "off limits" allthemore.

i conceive of the black barbershop as a sacred AND safe space for men to purport heterosexuality all while devling deeply yet covertly into homoerotic/homosocial behavior patently...what makes this space different from a football or basketball lockeroom (for me) is that the barbershop is a public space that is literally put on display for everyone to walk past, nod, peer into and calls for outsiders to participate...

yet, there is this sexual discourse of sexuality that permeates the walls...

the day that i openly declared that i was gay without shame was the single most hurtful day to the men in the barbershop. not because i was gay but because i *SAID* i was gay and somehow, all of their sexualities were called to the fore...they got scared...they dismissed me in unbelief. they stopped speaking to me. they looked away from me because *THEY* were shamed through what *i* said...

so yeah...the black barbershop is a space that begs to be understood with its more sexual undertones...

White Hallways and Performance of Mental Health

Walking down the hall to visit the Counseling Center in Cox Hall (CS) at Emory University was startling the first time; it continually is on each subsequent visit. Cox Hall is an inviting building with walls that are generally warm and welcoming. Yellow ochre, sage green, mauve, deep red, electrifying blue, eggshell, soft pink and wood tones cover most of the walls, ceilings and floors. Upon my first visit to the CS, I spent approximately 20 minutes inside the computer lab next to the hallway which I will describe below. In the computer lab, the variety of colors to which I referred above were all apart of this room’s canvas. The little white that was there covered the Apple computers, sheets of paper and other miscellaneous objects. The hallway perpendicular to the one which leads to the CS has comfortable couches and wall colors, again in these comforting tones.

What I found most intriguing is the hall leading to the CS. It appears to be a white tunnel: white floors separated approximately every three feet with a black horizontal line; to the left, windows which look onto the computer lab which, after about 12 feet disappear, a wooden door separating the windows of the lab from an expansive whitewashed wall; to the right, windows which look outside to a white building on the left; a ceiling of white tiles; at the end of this “tunnel” are white walls which stand perpendicular to the hallway. Everywhere I looked, I was enclosed by this whiteness. But what does it signify? What does this white tunnel perform?

I would like to discuss two different aspects of the performance of this particular location or “space”. I utilize E. Patrick Johnson’s understanding of space as he quotes Vivian M. Patrkaka: “space produces sites for multiple performances of interpretation, which situate/produce the spectator as historical subject”[1]. As such, I want to 1) analyze what the space performs on the subjects that walk through it, particularly clients of the CS and; 2) analyze what the subject performs as a result of passing through the space. More generally, I seek to find the relationship between subject and space which encloses the subject.

The white walls, floor and ceiling seem to turn the space into a virtually unending corridor. As the walls close in on the subject, they also open outward towards nothingness; it seems to be unending. In this, I mean that there is no possibility of escaping the whiteness except through color, which eventually ends in this hallway. I postulate that the whiteness of this passageway serves to heighten the awareness of particular bodies to the counseling which they will engage within moments of walking down that hall. The only way out this whiteness is to turn around and return to main hallway or to enter the CS; either reject or receive mental help. Whiteness serves as language and “language can effect action”[2].

It is necessary to note is that there are various subjects that will walk down that particular hall and conceive of nothing strange. A service worker of Emory who mops floors throughout that building may simply not pay attention to the aesthetic qualities of the hall (or lack thereof). Psychologists and staff that work within the CS may view this corridor as nothing more than a daily procession to a biweekly paycheck. For one who believes that CSs are for “crazy people” possibly will stay clear of the hallway altogether, seeking to avoid the foolish persons that need that sort of mental help. In other words, my reading of the hallway is not the only reading. It is literally a space that allows for multiple performances.

For clients of the CS, the white corridor may serve as a gentle reminder of the nature of the visit to Cox Hall – mental health therapy. The hallway’s stark contrast to the other walls, floors and ceilings within the building make this particular passage holy, sanctified and set apart. Just as the hallway is a separation from the rest of the building, those walking to the CS are set apart, are staged as actors within this pallid theater. In this way, I believe that both the hallway and the client participate in a “potential reciprocal gaze” in which a client looks at and is affected by the white hallway but the hallway equally “looks back” and is affected by the client[3].

In as much as there is the potential reciprocal gaze, the client of the CS not only is the “center of attention,” but likewise the hallway acts as the center and centering of attention concurrently[4]. It grabs the attention of the client to recognize one’s own subjectivity within the space but also the sheer divergence of this space from others within the building.

From my personal conversations, it seemed that therapy and counseling were not things that people talked about openly. I remember continually hearing a close friend say weekly that she had been to her counseling appointment and that it was helpful. To me, it seemed to be something that should not be discussed in public. As such, mental health fit within the paradigm of other health issues – the realm of the private. Therefore, my experience is that this hallway, expansive though it may be, performs this sort of bifurcation of public and private realms. Because it so severely deviates from the norm established in the rest of the building – all of the other colorful spaces and walkways are “public” (e.g., computer labs, banquet halls, food courts) – the white hallway serves as the antithesis, the realm of privacy. The white corridor performs a pathological discourse and intimates at the psychological difference of those who choose that hallway as a means to mental health therapy.

My views of the white hallway are affected by what Joseph Roach calls the “kinesthetic imagination” where “Its truth is the truth of simulation, of fantasy, or of daydreams, but its effect on human action may have material consequences of the most tangible sort and of the widest scope”[5]. My kinesthetic imagination envisages the white hallway as a part of the visual imagery of television: whiteness of hospital walls; whiteness of sound-reducing, cushioned walls and floors in mental hospitals; whiteness of straightjackets. Though the whiteness of this particular hallway is imagined through fantasy, it affects how I literally approach the space. I become overtly aware of my subjectivity, of my being constituted as a mental patient, as a client of the counseling service.

As well, part of my kinesthetic imagination is influenced by my identity as a black, queer man. Because homosexuality was pathologized as deviant in religion and medicine, and because queers have historically been maligned as psychologically abnormal, I envisioned that the hallway “looked back” on my personhood and performed an analysis on my sexuality.

My own experiences within this particular hallway are likewise influenced partially by my destination. If this same white hall were in a restaurant or classroom building, changing the destination, my experience within the space would be likewise different. However, this hallway seems to lead one only to the CS and nowhere else. Thus, the kinesthetic imagination causes me to imagine this space as functioning with the health infrastructure, mediating between wellness, sickness and death. This is an example of “the performer’s interpretation [which] is itself informed by a long line of preceding interpretations. The audience draws both on this tradition and on the performance itself in its interpretation”[6].

But how do I reflect the performance of the space on my identity? How does my performance within the space buttress what I have described thus far? Within this space, I am calm, full of anxiety (i.e., “who will see me”), and am acutely aware of my location and proximity to other persons, to color, to my destination, and from my starting point. The blank walls, ceiling and floor serve to give me time to gather my thoughts and build courage to enter the CS, to wonder about the direction which that particular session will take. The darker a color is, the more it absorbs heat energy; black attracts and retains the most sunlight, white reflecting antithetically. Metaphorically, the white walls do not absorb my thoughts or energies but force them to bounce and reflect off the walls and be reabsorbed into my body as I am normally the only one in the space. In the space, I am trying to expunge thoughts but my body serves as receptacle to them.

How does one return from the CS to society? How is one reoriented from this sealed, secluded, secretive room, through a white tunnel, back to color, to life, to reality? One is never the same, to be certain. Similar to what Briggs says of a talk when an elder interjects and adds wisdom and knowledge, “The talk returns to the present, but is no longer the same”[7]. Is the imposition of the moment of counseling and therapy atemporal? Does it take place sometime outside time, outside place? Because the CS is off to the side, out of the way, out of sight, I believe it correct to say that while time does progress, the CS serves to stop time for the client. The client, once leaving, must catch up to reality when walking away from the CS to color. Tissues to wipe the face, headphones to appear “normal,” and the fixing of clothes all serve clients to reintegrate them to real time, to real reality.

The corridor appears to house “archival memory” as it is an entity believed to be “resistant to change”[8]. Yet, the movement away from the CS radically changes the way a client views the corridor. It no longer traps but allows time to ponder and to move back into the familiar. Once serving as a terrifying reminder of one’s difference from “normal” (thus, the need to receive therapy), the hallway on the peregrination towards color is therapeutic. It is still set aside from elsewhere, but moreso to cover the possible embarrassment of the visit.

Diana Taylor says that performances “function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated or…‘twice-behaved behavior’”[9]. Additionally, instead of focusing on performances as either true or false, performance studies asks how “efficacious” a particular performance is: “In their respective historical and cultural contexts, various kinds of performances are efficacious in all sorts of ways”[10]. Simply, when performance is the analytical framework of analysis, one asks if the performance successfully completes its intended goal.

What is social knowledge, memory and identity is transferred though the passage from the beginning of the white corridor to the CS and back? Are the performances, both of the client and the hallway, efficacious; do they reach their intended goal? These answers will vary according to the particular subject and how they interact with the whitewashed environment. However, my experience is that knowledge of health, sickness and death are contained in those walls and I respond to these archived memories. The performance of the space is efficacious in that it forces me to realize that I am not stumbling haphazardly into the space but am purposefully choosing the intended destination. Likewise, my performance within the space readies me for the impending conversation.

Generally, what is the relationship between subject and space which encloses the subject? I believe that they both play a role in the act of transferring knowledge, of inhabiting and creating archived memories, and influence each other in the efficaciousness of performances. Subjects do not just walk into spaces and the spaces remain unchanged. There is social interaction within space, even if the “social” interaction takes place between the subject’s mind and the spaces physical limitations. The kinesthetic imagination influences what the subject brings into the space and how the subject subsequently reads the space; the space envelopes the subject, creating particular responses. They both exist in reciprocal relationship, playing off, in, and through each other.

____________
[1] Johnson, E. Patrick, Feeling the Spirit in the Dark, Callaloo, (1998), 400.
[2] Briggs, Charles L., Competence in Performance: The Creativity of Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 8.
[3] Kapsalis, Terri, Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 26.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 27.
[6] Briggs, 19.
[7] Briggs, 1.
[8] Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 19.
[9] Taylor, 2-3.
[10] Sax, William S., Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.

Review: Latino Pentecostal Identity - Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society by Arlene Sanchez Walsh

In the last days
God pours out God’s spirit upon all flesh
Sons and Daughters prophecy
The elders see visions
The youth, dreams[1]

Modern day Pentecostalism sees itself as an extension of the Luke-Acts narratives. It is an open-ended book with a seemingly anticlimactic ending, Paul proclaiming the gospel through his personal expenses. The beginning of the book is much more fascinating: tarrying in the upper room, the tongues of fire resting on heads, the speaking in various languages proclaiming the wondrous works of God and Jesus the Christ, 3000 persons baptized and added to the church during that glorious first day. Because of the open-ended, almost seemingly unfinished, structure of the Luke-Acts accounts, modern day Pentecostals live into the history, appropriating the memories of Luke, making them their own. The narrative is ongoing and we modern-day Pentecostals are apart of the story.

For the crux of Sanchez Walsh’s analysis, Pentecostalism seems to be locally and experientially based. The “Pentecostal baptism”[2] or “Spirit baptism” refers to speaking in tongues as evidence of the Holy Spirit living in the lives of believers. Spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healings – both of the self and of others, interpretation of tongues, dreams, visions and words of knowledge along with tongues serve as the foundational understanding for an analysis of Pentecostal experience[3]. Biblical authority and inerrancy are tangentially mentioned but there is a privileging of the experiential nature of Pentecostalism.

In my estimation, SW intimates that Pentecostalism exists as one expression on the continuum of Evangelical Christianity. It is the expression of the spiritual gifts that creates a Pentecostal episteme – a uniquely Pentecostal system of understanding and body of ideas which give shape to the knowledge of any given time – not the theological constructs surrounding it. More poignantly, the performance of gifts creates a system of knowledge of the self within the framework of a religio-cultural tradition. The more (or less) pronounced and encouraged the exercising of spiritual gifts within a particular church community, the more (or less) charismatic and thus Pentecostal, they are. Latino Pentecostals exercising the gifts of the Spirit fashion their identities in ways that either rupture or foreclose ethnic identity.

Praise & Worship – Methodological Approaches

In many church services recounted by SW and those with which I am familiar from my life, the time of praise and worship, singing of praise songs, contemporary hymns and exhortations, frames the service, or, “sets the atmosphere for worship.” Praise and worship during a service allows the congregation to “bring in their wandering minds” and begin to reflect communally. Responses to those moments by the audience can gauge the intensity of the rest of the service. Fervent singing, dancing, hollering and raising of hands are all signs of connection with the community of worshipers and with God. Songs are utilized to invoke memory of one’s history with God, with self and with their sinful past. They likewise point to a victorious present and a hopeful future. What can we learn of SW’s approach from the PW paradigm?

In my purview, SW uses historical analyses as a Praise and Worship moment. She grounds her work by looking at the history of Latino Pentecostals in the United States. She wants to create a collective memory that subverts dominant discourse and accepted notions. A collective memory which 1) does not assume, quoting Alice Luce, that the “color line had been washed away in the Blood,” [4] but rather questions beliefs that Pentecostalism was a race-neutral spiritual practice; 2) decenters Azusa Street as the birthplace of modern-day Pentecostalism, rather placing it as part of a mythic imaginary[5]; and 3) disrupts the idea that Pentecostalism is a new phenomenon for Latinos.[6] She wants to untangle a muddled history that has historically served to misrepresent and silence Latinos within Pentecostal discourse. The song she sings allows Latino Pentecostals to speak out of the depths of their bellies, out of the breadth of their experiences.

SW successfully demonstrates how there was a “cognitive distancing”[7] of Pentecostals from other, more controlled, less charismatic Euro American Evangelicals. Pentecostalism became marginalized as the adherents were imagined “as poor, misguided country cousins who let their emotions get the best of them”[8]. Posing a threat to patriarchy, the “role of women and loosening of tightly proscribed boundaries of idealized feminine spirituality,”[9] certainly was problematic as well. Pentecostals were thought of as superfluous in their practices.

The project of Pentecostalism, while accepting of Latinos even from the early days, still tended to treat Non Euro Americans as “a mission field, as converts…not equals”[10]. In this way, Latinos were nothing more than repositories for doctrines, souls that needed saving from their savage impulses and libidinal charges. They were not simply humans with whom missionaries wanted to share and learn. Even when converted, Latinos were “supervised” by Euro Americans to be certain that they taught the correct doctrine: “That Euro Americans thought enough of their own spiritual grounding to be able to supervise Latinos says much about the dynamics of the missionary/convert relationship”[11].

Performance Theory – A Brief Overview

It is useful for my discussion to look at Pentecostalism as a particular construction of gender and utilization of spiritual gifts. This is desired in order to foreclose the somewhat slippery manner in which Evangelical, Charismatic and Pentecostal are used throughout the text. “Self” and “identity” also seem to be utilized interchangeably[12] throughout the work, though they are not coterminous generally. Because of this elusiveness, I want to limit the meanings of the terms.

Thus, In order to analyze SW’s text, I take a performance theory approach. I will briefly sketch some contours of performance theory which informs my reading of her work. J.L. Austin’s linguistic theory has been seminal discussing “speech acts” that have within them the capacity to perform. Summarily, Austin says of performative speech acts that they, “are not ‘true or false’,” and that “the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of the action”[13]. His work has found employment in other areas outside linguistics including feminist theory, sociology and performance studies.

Within performance studies, performances for Diana Taylor “function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated or…‘twice-behaved behavior’”[14]. As one such example of transmission of knowledge, SW asserts that Latina Pentecostal women tend to function as “transmitters of the faith”[15]. For Taylor, performances are concurrently “real” and “constructed.”

Additionally, instead of focusing on performances as either true or false, performance studies asks how “efficacious” a particular performance is: “In their respective historical and cultural contexts, various kinds of performances are efficacious in all sorts of ways”[16]. Simply, when performance is the analytical framework of analysis, one asks if the performance successfully completes its intended goal. For SW’s work, I want to look particularly at the performance of gender constructs and of spiritual gifts in order to make a claim that Latino Pentecostalism privileges an embodied expression of a theological construct. Simply, since one “has” the Holy Spirit, one performs gender correctly and exercises gifts of the Spirit freely. Church doctrine and even the pedagogical practices of schooling and transitional homes utilized this model of proper gender performance and implementation of gifts.

“Things I used to do, I don’t do no more” – Performance of Gendered Identity

The above aphorism is often used in black Pentecostal preaching and singing moments. What it implies is that there is a way to live in the world that is not consistent with what God desires and requires for believers. Further, in order to please God, one must abstain from certain behaviors. As such, I want to turn to the performance of female gender in the Latino Pentecostal context.

As SW notes, “to become Pentecostal…means to experience a transformative spiritual event that instills a larger worldview but also allows one to retain the male-dominated Latino culture.”[17] Thus, the production of the self as working in concert with patriarchal expectations of gender is consistent towards the inculcation of a Latino Pentecostal identity. It is important to note that some of the women interviewed and surveyed by SW did not grow up in “traditional” households but come to accept, reflect and espouse these traditions.

For women, there is a focus on those exterior markers on the body that would indicate that she was, indeed, a woman. These exterior markers are what Halberstam calls “cultural genitals”[18]. With cultural genitals, there is an assumption of one's gender based on what appears on the body; the face, makeup, indentation of breasts and hands. We rarely see the actual genitals of the subject. As such, we normally read individuals as productive of the "correct" gender as they correctly perform culture. “Victory Outreach women have been refashioned into godly women ready to fulfill their traditional roles by acting like ladies, which means walking in high heels and dressing modestly [emphasis, mine]”[19].

“The places I used to go, I don’t go no more…” – Performance of Pentecostal Identity

Again, an aphorism from my context, it intimates that along with behaviors, there are certain places that a person should not go as a child of God. This necessarily means that there are places that one should go as well. Through SW’s many interviews, we see a growing reliance on what she terms “the ritual life of Pentecostalism”[20] for defining Latino Pentecostal identity. Speaking of the Latin American Bible Institute, she says that students there “are ritualized into a life that centers on routine, spiritual discipline, and work…The ritual life consists of prayer, worship, testimony, song, and witness”[21]. I postulate that these ritual practices are the “places” that they should go.

What is produced, staged, and put on display through these rituals? What does the performance of the ritual life of Pentecostalism create for the Latino Pentecostal adherents? SW contends that a new identity is performed, ambiguous at times, but uniquely Pentecostal. “Charismatic experience solidifies, in an existential way, that they are changed people – they live differently, pray differently, read the Bible differently”[22]. Their identity places them squarely within the narrative of the Luke-Acts account, and apart of the prophecy of Joel.

Along with an identity, a memory is created as well, both individual and collective. Individuals constantly refer to their lives of crime, of drug abuse, of sexual violence, of sexual deviance but also proclaim that they are no longer “there.” Each individual has transcended some past, sinful self in order to realize life anew in Christ.

Another result of the performance of the holy identity through the ritual life of Pentecostalism is the ability to participate in a wider Christian culture, one that is not theoretically bound to racial, age, or gender classifications. The groups like Victory Outreach and Vineyard display the tension between trying to remain relevant to contemporary times. Identity can be “composed of shifting and inherently unstable substance”[23].

Conclusions

Performance creates. Within the context of Latino Pentecostalism, the performance or production of the correct gender, by heels, makeup and modest dressing as well as the production of a Pentecostal identity through spiritual gifts creates a pious, holy, separated, saved identity. This is possible because the performance of proper gender and of spiritual gifts is not an end of itself but has the ability to inculcate the quality of holiness within the subject. The identity is re-created as holy and separated, causing Latino Pentecostals to “have an ambivalent relationship with their ethnic identity” [24]. Through this production of gender and culture, Latino Pentecostals are not foreclosing mores of ethnicity, nationality, Western culture or religion, but are opening up occasions for flourishing within and giving shape to those cultural norms.

The donning of cultural genitals has the ability to produce, not only a correct gender, but a correct sexuality. Interviews with Miriam note that in order “to reorient her from homosexuality,” that she needed to become more “ladylike” [25]. The pedagogy employed by Pentecostals includes practical and spiritual strategies to reorient gender. “Miriam credits Sister Julie for teaching her about clothing, makeup, and prayer, and believes that these aspects resulted in her changing her sexual orientation”[26].

It is important to note that these rituals invoked above are all bodily practices. Whether in LABI or in the transitional homes, the physical body becomes manageable through the power of the Holy Spirit working within the subject. Jobs engage the full body; prayer and worship, through a charismatic, Pentecostal lens, is a full-bodied practice; testimony, song, witness and speaking in tongues all utilize the mouth. The body is accentuated in Pentecostal ritual. The body becomes the medium for ritual and integral to sanctification. “One might say…ritual performances are understood to be disciplinary practices through which pious dispositions are formed, rather than symbolic acts that have no relationship to pragmatic or utilitarian activity”[27].

To close, one may ask, where the agency in performing these various gendered and ritual acts is. We should again note that performance studies analyses are not primarily concerned with the felicity or fecundity of performances, but with their efficaciousness. “Enforcing moral codes builds a Pentecostal identity because these codes provide a correlate between right belief, right conduct, and right living…Pentecostal catechism”[28]. The question becomes: are the individuals performing the moral codes correctly, are they utilizing their agency to adhere closely to doctrine and practice? The Holy Spirit is the one that produces the desire to behave, perform, properly. In this way, agency is produced in the subject by virtue of submission to the hg. The people can claim that they live right because “it’s the Lord's doing and it's marvelous in our eyes”[29]

____________
[1] Acts 2:17, (my translation).
[2] Sanchez-Walsh, Arlene M., Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 17.
[3] Ibid, 177.
[4] Ibid, 1.
[5] Ibid, 13.
[6] Ibid, 1.
[7] Chidester, David, Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003).
[8] Sanchez-Walsh, 5.
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid, 30.
[11] Ibid, 3.
[12] Ibid, 77.
[13] Austin, J.L. How To Do Things With Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 5.
[14] Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 2-3.
[15] Sanchez-Walsh, 9.
[16] Sax, William S., Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.
[17] Sanchez-Walsh, 117.
[18] Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
[19] Sanchez-Walsh, 119.
[20] Ibid, 20.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid, 180.
[23] Sax, 11.
[24] Sanchez-Walsh, 1.
[25] Ibid, 121.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Peity: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 128.
[28] Sanchez-Walsh, 48.
[29] Psalm 118:23 (NRSV).