TAPS/English
In performance and on paper, my work is a sideways look at the social, literary, aesthetic, and political performances of straight white men in America and the circuits of violence and aggression in which they are often found. I endeavor to see them as a new queer subject.
The research is at the intersection of queer theory, affect theory, and performance studies. Focusing on various theories of performative subject formation, I am examining affective points of paralysis resistant to ethical responsibility and perceived senses of marginalization experienced by privileged bodies. Analyzing coming-of-age literature, adolescent game-play, and cultural formation—the work isolates commonplace social rehearsals where the banal or quotidian performances of everyday life conceal inherent violence, repression, and the queer erotics concomitantly produced.
Viewing the performances of straight white men as a queer performativity, I am crafting a different relation to ethical responsibility—an analysis that is as problematically reparative as it is a rigorously critical application of queer theory to performances of violence that are also often the performances of stigma and shame. michaelstableinjr.com