Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art Of Failure

Equality in every shape and size
When the feminist movement began to arise in society in the 1970’s it, almost simultaneously, created a different ramification of feminism as well. This ramification of feminism, called Essentialism, manifested itself in, for example, the belief that women were not only supposed to be equal to their male counterparts, but that women were the better sex and superior to men. Therefore, essential feminists believed that women should live up to that potential and that they must fully embrace their womanhood. The French feminist writer Hélène Cixous wrote that women “must write through their bodies”; indicating that women, if they felt that they took part of the feminist movement, had to meet certain requirements. …show more content…
She argues that, perhaps unknowingly, “the marketing for kids movies is based upon the fact that it is used to engage the attentions of immature desiring subjects and which does so by appealing to a wide range of perverse embodiments and relations” (119). Hence, stating that apparently if we look at, for example, the children’s cartoon Spongebob, one can see that there is no obvious hetero/homosexual character. This can be explained by looking at the marketing that revolves around these children movies, since they are aiming to please children. Apparently it is required, in order to have a successful movie/cartoon, to have no apparent social norms concerning hetero/homosexuality, otherwise it would not appeal to children. One could say that this is the case, because children are not yet configured and used to the social norm which would have been taught to them. Additionally Halberstam points out that “In many of these “queer fairy tales” romance gives way to friendship, individuation gives way to collectivity, and “successful” heterosexual coupling is upended, displaced, and challenged by queer contact... characters regularly choose collectivity over domesticity”(119). Affirming that it are actually the non-labelling and the …show more content…
She portrays how this perspective of her changed when she left her “black” community and was sent to a “white” school. It was only then when she got labeled as being black or colored that she started to think about herself as being colored. Even though it did not bother her; Zora continues by saying that “The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult. No brown specter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat. No dark ghost thrusts his leg against mine in bed.” (942). Hereby stating that she feels sorry for the “white man” and the guilt in which they have to wallow for the deeds of their ancestors. This can be linked to the concept of “animatedness”, by Sianni Nga, meaning, to having one’s body and voice controlled by an invisible other, because in this case the “white man” is being controlled by the deeds of the ancestor; just like Zora is controlled by the past of her ancestors as well. But it also becomes apparent that even while writing this, Zora feels, arguably consciously, conflicted, because she is very careful with representing herself to her primarily white reader; “I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances” (940) and “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my