On Identity: Shame, Normativity, and Performative Ethics

• In Event: Performing at the Margins: Latinas/os, Sexuality, and Shame

Abstract

The process of constructing and mediating a social identity through race, gender, and sexuality is a complicated and disruptive one. This paper utilizes a semiotic phenomenological approach to examine the ways cultural, sexual, and gender expectations are interconnected to the process of shaming and used as a method to subjugate marginality and difference. I argue that new conceptualizations of performative identity ethics are needed to minimize culturally-inclusive forms of oppression that have largely been ignored.

Author

• Carlos Tarin, University of Colorado, Boulder