Queens! on Twitter: Dragtivism and the (Im)Possibilities of Queer Subversion

• In Event: Digital Queerness: Leveraging Mobile Technologies and Social Media for Practices of Resistance and Reimagination

Abstract

Objectives: This paper examines how digital social networks facilitate a public pedagogy (Reid 2010; Savage 2010), or the learning that occurs in public spaces, popular culture, and political movements. Specifically, we extend previous work (Authors, 2019) that explores how digital queer gestures, based upon Rodriguez’s (2014) notion of queer gestures, travel across digital and analog stages to stimulate collective resistance practices against the deep entrenchment and advancement of homonormative (Duggan, 2002) projects. In doing so, we make visible the collective imaginings percolating across the Twitter network of drag queens who have gained an activist presence–those who have gained popularity through the reality television show RuPaul’s Drag Race and other local queens. We further examine how queerness is taken up, hybridized, and remixed to expand a collective understanding (indeed, the learning) that occurs from a racialized, sexualized, and classed perspective.

Theoretical Framing: This paper is informed by sociocultural perspectives which examine learning as it unfolds in activity within and across sites of practice (Cole, 1998; Engeström, 2001). We are further informed by actor-network theory (Latour, 1996) and theories of digital connectivity and cultural memory (DeKosnik, 2016) which help us understand the nature of human interaction in an increasingly digitized and interconnected world. Queer theory also animates this workby providing an analytical lens for surfacing the queer gestures (Rodriguez, 2014) and queer ephemera (Muñoz, 1996) that manifest across both face-to-face and digital terrains.

Methods and Data Sources: This study used web-scraping tools, textual analyses of tweets, and ethnographic analyses of interviews with four queer and trans artists and activists of color, their youthful followers, and expanded communities. The data sources were triangulated using two main processes: (1) a social network analysis of tweets related to activism and politics of queer people of color, and (2) the generation of open-ended and focused thematic codings (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of observational field notes, writing, and interviews.

Data sources include semi-structured interviews with four drag performers, educators, and activists. In addition, this study makes use of public data and digital content that is scraped from digital social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Results: Our analysis of interviews with drag performers, educators, and activists reveals that communities engage in transmedia practices (Jenkins, 2016) for the purposes of authoring new possible futures for queer people of color. Our study also revealed clear tensions between the radical and intersectional political enactments (gestures) of queer, trans, and undocumented individuals, and those that form part of the prevailing “gay agenda.” Despite these tensions, digital queer gestures show promise as cultural artifacts that mediate new understandings of the pluralistic nature of today’s society and visions of the not-yet-here (Muñoz, 1999).

Scholarly Significance: This work has implications for how digital social media and mainstream entertainment media can be leveraged for learning. We believe digital tools can be leveraged to interrogate power in order to dismantle systems of oppression, and can be especially generative for the teachers, cultural workers, and mediators who desire, hunger, and yearn for equity.

Authors

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Arturo Cortez, University of Colorado - Boulder