Queer Street Youth Talk Back: Some Thoughts on Resistance and Ethnography

• In Event: Youth Resistance Across Neoliberal Contexts

Abstract

There are several objectives for this presentation. One objective is about extending Maria Lugones’ (2003) work on resistance theory in social science research, particularly in how Lugones’ notion of ‘faithful witnessing’ engages critical education research. A second objective is to reframe the stories of LGBTQ youth into stories not of victimhood but into resistance that is a refusal of the logic of domination, where that refusal is sometimes even at the corporeal level.

Using the work of feminist philosopher Maria Lugones (2003), this presentation articulates a framework for resistance researchers—scholars who enact a ‘faithful witnessing’ in solidarity with the communities they are describing--a movement away from the radical othering that often happens in social science research. It is in this positioning as a faithful witness where researchers can attend to the deconstruction and/or implications of the discursive climates of deficit tropes that may obscure youth gestures and maneuvers of resistance.

This is a two-year ethnography in a large urban metropolis in the US where queer street youth between the ages of 12-21 were observed and interviewed at two community school based sites. An interpretative ethnographic analytic model was used to theme, code, and do close readings of the narratives of the youth in the study.

In this ethnography of LGBTQ street youth, I argue that despite the regulation and containment of their bodies by police, medical personnel, social workers, and teachers, queer street youth consistently create spaces of resistance that move them away from the tropes of infection, contamination, and deservedness that are inscripted onto their bodies (Author2 2001). The trope of contamination and irresponsibility intersect many of the experiences of LGBTQ street youth in ways that implicate not only LGBTQ street youth, but also other marginalized bodies.

Author

• Cindy Cruz, University of California - Santa Cruz