Disidentifying with “Representation”
Disidentification is a term introduced by José Esteban Muñoz in “Introduction to Disidentifications”. Muñoz states, “To disidentify is to read oneself and one’s own life narrative in a moment, object, or subject that is not culturally coded to ‘connect’ with the disidentifying subject” (12). Another way to put it is when we see something that depicts a group of people that we belong to in a harmful way or a way that we do not necessarily agree with, we still somehow feel connected to it. That is disidentification that we are experiencing.
I experience disidentification when watching shows and movies, especially growing up watching teen films with primarily white characters. When there are black characters, they are usually the “token black friend”, someone who supports the white characters and acts to represent an entire race, black people, by being in the film. We see this in movies such as Clueless (1995) and She’s All That (1999), and also in shows including Disney’s Good Luck Charlie (2010) and Nickelodeon’s Victorious (2010). The only purpose they seem to serve is to break up the whiteness in the film and add some flavor, but not much more than that. They are usually the sidekick and serve as a shoulder to cry on or the subject of a joke. So even when I as a black girl see “black representation” in these films, I still feel unrepresented and unseen, because the character’s storylines never really match mine.
The text also states that, “Disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (Muñoz 4). There is a stereotype of “incapability” that looms over minority individuals. Those that dismantle that stereotype are faced with prejudices and discrimination because they do not conform to the “norm” that has been instilled upon them and the group of people that they represent. By not identifying with this social norm and depiction of their community and instead making their own way, they disidentify.
Moreover, disidentification is something that many of us experience when we see depictions of communities that we identify with that are not representative of ourselves. Since the spectrum of identity is so broad and we are all unique, it is hard to find a true representation of oneself, and that is understandable. However, it is discouraging to see more thought being put in to non-POC characters than is the minority characters and just sprinkling them in here and there, when our stories are much deeper and impactful than that and should be seen and heard just as much as much as non-POC people.
Works Cited
José Esteban Muñoz, Introduction to Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1- 34.
