'If I can't dance

Identifier:  imarina:5128493

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina5128493

Authors:  Dominique Grisard; Barbara Biglia

Abstract:
This article is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural encounter and debate between two feminists on the question of what constitutes revolution. In the first two sections we will draw on examples from our respective research on women's political activisms in order to reflect on dominant ideas of revolution, ideas that some feminists have criticised as masculinist, in the ways in which they homogenise and universalise the notion of politics and the violence it espouses. With our vastly different historical and geopolitical vantage points, Dominique Grisard's queer-femmeinist historical approach on the one hand, and Barbara Biglia's feminist activist psychosocial critical lens on the other, we will not pretend to homogenise our different embodied experiences. Instead our goal is to fruitfully put them into conversation. Drawing on cis-gendered women's political interventions, our goal is to present past and present activist voices. In fact, we will quote the (written or spoken) opinion of feminist activists and critically analyse the effect of their actions. In the first section we will introduce and problematise the distinction between so called political and socio-cultural revolution. This allows us to reflect on what we deem relevant for and indicative of socio-cultural change. We will move on to discuss the extent to which feminism could be understood as revolutionary before introducing our case study, which will allow us to think through the effects of two femmenist practices -- 'passing' and 'femme drag' -- and whether they could be considered revolutionary or rather involutionary. Our case study discusses the interventions of a radical feminist dance troupe called Pink Bloque in the early to mid 2000s. In the last section we will critically discuss if and under what circumstances 'passing' and 'drag' could be seen as socio-cultural revolutionary strategies due to the ways in which they destabilise contemporary understandings of femininity, politics and potentially revolution.