"Daddy Pence Come Dance": Queer(ing) Space in the Suburbs. Issue 2 (15th March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Clark, Jordin
• Is Part Of: Western journal of communication. Volume 85:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 168
• Page End: 187
• Publication Date: 2021-03-15
• Subjects: heteronormativity -- protest -- queer space -- queer worldmaking -- suburbs; Oral communication -- Periodicals; 428.3
• DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2020.1762915
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1057-0314

Abstract

Abstract : Before Mike Pence's inauguration as Vice-President, the LGBTQ activist group Werk for Peace threw a dance protest where over two hundred fiercely fashioned protesters queered Pence's suburban neighborhood. Taking queer as a verb, queering space is a spatial performance, which makes a range of nonnormative enactments, rhythms, movements, and embodiments intelligible by disrupting assumptions that discipline space as binaristic, static, and normative. Outlining three rhetorical performances that queer space, I argue that through dance the Queer Dance Protest queers space by disrupting the heteronormative order, tapping into the space's arena of possibility, and exposing space as open and heterogeneous.