Chapter 8: ​Putoh and the utter Impossibility of Truly Understanding the Metonymic "Other"

 

Chapter 8:  ​Putoh and the utter Impossibility of Truly Understanding the Metonymic "Other"

As a writer, artist and performance artist of color—I can’t help but think that the idea of the borderland, certainly of the borderland identity—the kind of identity that Guillermo Gomez-Peña invokes in his performances, is more likely to read as true to us people of “colors”—as I like to refer to us. We who grew up drinking out of “tasas” and sleeping in the “sala” in front of reruns of "Archie Bunker" as our mothers warned us that it is important to know our enemies, and all the while we could only think of how much that duet piano theme song sounded and felt just like home.

​We are, of course, in fact, not only made up of borders, we are the borderlands, we who grew up without a single, unitary identification, a simply defined identity—and because of this, we did not suffer the great shock and loss of this particular postmodern "de-centering" bugaboo. I am not just speaking of people of color here–rather everyone of this generation--us/we–are a mixture of cultures, identities and ideologies–the era of essentialized identity is over and it is now time for an infinitude of alliances.

​What I am saying is that those like me–we exist, write and theorize from a position that has already always been post-modern—post identity, post singularity. We know inherently, what it means to walk among several spaces at the same time; we know what it means to wear many contradictory masks, to speak many accents and languages. We do not recreate a white male desire to reconstitute identity–because it is not--and never was—part of our history.

​We do not call for society to attempt to recreate a space of modernity—to lie to ourselves so that we can move on. Instead, we claim a new, shifting, mobile space of many, even antagonistic identities—which we deploy when needed. Trust me when I say that the future will engender a new kind of multiculturalism, we will not be manipulated by those that cry “cultural appropriation” in an inauthentic, ignoble attempt to keep us in place–but we will celebrate diversity, interdisciplinarity and shared, overlapping identities and the differences that come from individual lives lived to the fullest–each of us engendering a multiplicity of identities—individual and shared, with the knowledge that no one is lessened by celebrating difference–creating a space in which no one is “othered”—because we have seen through the current ploys to divide us draped in the sheep’s clothing of a language that we have been speaking for too long, one which the enemy has learned to use against us. We are instead, reclaiming something that we have already always known, something that was never a shock to our multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-vocal selves—we are all very different–just as we are all the same and we must celebrate it all—individual lives of color—matter. That is to say that every moment, every dream, every hope and failure of every individual life in color–matters.

​I do suppose if you were told for millennia that your identity was fixed, that history was fixed, that you could drop your life into a construct made up out of generation upon generation of others who looked exactly like you, where civilization was coursing in a predictably positive way, whereupon each generation could applaud itself and ignore the bumps, fissures and massacres of others that did not fit into your cozy, neat narrative, which only included lives that you could pronounce, name and claim—that this loss would be pretty startling. But it is not, cannot be, if you never had those expectations in the first place.

We are instead, reclaiming something that we have already always known, something that was never a shock to our multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-vocal selves—we are all very different—just as we are all the same and we must celebrate both of these truths.

​The term subaltern is originally a military term, which identifies and describes the man, the woman, and the social group who is socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial mother country.

In describing “history told from below”, the term subaltern derived from the cultural hegemonic work of Antonio Gramsci, who identified the social groups who are rendered speechless and invisible as they are excluded from society’s established structures for political representation, the means by which people have a voice in society.

As I intimated earlier, in the last period of post-modernity, mostly western, white, male, conservative theorists sought to uproot all the work that had been done by theoretical movements such as feminism, queer theory, Chicano studies, as well as those of any antiestablishment movements, etc. Basically, these atavistic critics sought to overturn all identity theory with the exception of the inept, simplistic and acritical masculinist programs. Essentially, they sought to shift the argument just as these “othered” groups were finding and beginning to use their voices.

​Theory was now claiming that there was never any actual voice to be heard, no argument to be made nor tools to be used that could make any difference against those institutions that had achieved hegemonic status in the first place.

 

In fact, Post Modernity at this stage began to metastasize and turn on its hosts (treating all identity criticisms as viruses to be done away with) seeking the dematerialization of identity politics, positionality and especially any form of meaningful protest--attempting to force these groups to fight for supposedly limited resources, to view freedom as a zero-sum game and to engender as much in-fighting as possible. Something these groups sadly, took to like bees to honey, but that will change in time as well.  At this same time, it was also becoming clear that the supremacy of hegemony had been overrated, and the cracks and fissures were beginning to show that hegemony, too was fragile.

​It was from these and similar sentiments that Putoh was born.

 

​Fast forward to a cold and wintry month of November in 2017, when I put together a night of Performance Art, presented by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, 4 Culture and ArtistTrust at the recently reconsecrated INARTS NW building.  On this night, I returned to a hybrid artform that I created alongside the wonderfully Feminist performance artist and Butoh artist Katharine Adamenko. When we were both taking graduate courses at UC Davis, we quickly hit it off and invented the form together, celebrating individuality, identity and complex intersectionality. Named “Putoh,” it was a hybrid in every sense of the word.

​Invented in the year 2000 at the University of California Davis, it is a portmanteau of ideas, vision and philosophies, the term "Putoh" is a fusion of two languages and two words. Of course, there is the Japanese Butoh, meaning, literally "Dance." But also the Spanish-in this case-Mexican, gutter word Putoh. Which has many meanings, but which has a very similar etymological history to the word "Punk,” and it is in that spirit that the two words were married.

​The Salons in 2001, between February and June—were the most exciting of times and included performances of both the Soft Cyborg and Putoh. It was during this period that my performances took a turn for the theoretical as I went to Graduate School at UC Davis. It was a heady time that stands in direct contrast to the zeitgeist of today where we felt as though we could accomplish anything—where we didn’t feel as though the world was always on the brink.

​In her Salons, Adamenko created a safe space for experimentation and "post-Avant Garde" performance. Katherine Adamenko and I were both students at UC Davis and we met, if I remember correctly, either at a Butoh training in which we were among other things, asked to go through the life cycle of a flower or it was in a Performative Theory course in which we studied the work of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who I had met a few years earlier, as an undergraduate, either in one of Joanna Frueh's courses or Bob Morrison's annual school trip to San Francisco.

​The Putoh performance form itself was created by two very different, yet very similar people, one Chicano—the other Cubana, pre-Latino, pre-Latinx, one a feminist, the other a pro-feminist male, (a term I had learned in one of photographer Peter Goin's courses,) both performance artists, both graduate students at the university of California, Davis. Katherine Adamenko and I came from very different backgrounds, me, a California, Mexican-American, complete with a "Valley Girl" brogue and Katherine Adamenko a New York City, Jewish and Cuban/Spanish feminist, performance artist with a huge personality, were destined to create something that the world was not prepared for—something that refused to be categorized easily and which meshes many forms and many cultures, genders and philosophies and which will make more sense as we exit this current age of atavistic essentialism and collective intellectual ethnocentrism.

​With both Putoh and the Soft Cyborg, I wanted to show how my practice could be seen to reflect my own ideals and that included a point of view deeply influenced by Gender Studies, Queer Theory and Feminism. I was surprised to find that when I went to connect my theoretical and performative artistic praxes together that something incredible and unexpected happened. My world shifted, my ideas and my ideals became more focused, clearer and sharper than they had ever been before.

​As a poet friend of mine once said, quoting Bukowski’s Women, I believe—I stood stark-ravingly sane. Prior to this, during that last year at UC Davis I had been reminded just how meaningless coursework, theorization and talk can be without hands on, real, effective practice. The "Salon" series of performances that both Katharine Adamenko and I had undertaken that quarter made it clear to me that I was much more than a student, I am and was an artist, writer and performer—but most importantly, and perhaps patently feminist—I was a practitioner. I realized then as I do now that neither my work, nor my theory is abstracted or cold and calculated, rather, I create and perform my ideals for those around me to experience.

​In the performance “Nightmare: Re: construction,” (Later, retitled “The Utter Impossibility of Truly Understanding the Position of the Metonymic Other.”) I came to some answers and many more questions. During the time leading up to this performance I had taken several feminist courses, one of which was ironically entitled “Masculinities.” This was a time in which I had re-upped and re-recognized my inherent connections to feminism. I had stated in the past that I did not feel alien to the tendencies and practices of feminism, that I did not feel as though they are not about me, perhaps this was queer, it certainly seemed anti-masculinist, both of which I stood and stand by gladly. It seemed as though issues of race, identity, gender all began as feminist issues. If one is honest, s/he will note that none of the spaces that we recognize now, none of the voices that we hear now could be recognized without feminism.

​One of the most important achievements of feminism has been to open up spaces and allow those that had not been able to speak to hear their own voices and to share their dialogue with others. To speak about the history of silence, the silencing of voices and finally the reclaiming of those voices by taking words and feelings and making them into artwork, something tangible and beautiful stands as a model for me. The ability to speak and to be heard is something which all of us, me as a proto-queer little boy, me as a young Hispanic male, me as a comic book fan and victim of the eighties, me as a melancholy lover of sad poems and British television-owes to feminism; the ability to share with pride even the most unique aspects of myself. Feminism has opened up the queerest spaces and like the speculum that Haraway theorizes, it allows us to look inside and see the blossoming complexities within each of us. Every identity movement that came after owes its existence to feminism.

PUTOH AND THE PERFORMANCE OF GENDER

​For me, even back then in the nineties and early twentieth century, one of the most important group of theorists were those dealing with the expansion of gender and especially those that championed the idea that gender is performed/performative. This was a huge basis for much of my writing and performance work. These authors postulated that gender is both created and cultivated and most importantly they promoted how gender can be used as a space for resistance. Authors like, Haraway, Butler, Wilson and Silverman have further opened masculinity to a set of critiques that are to me of utmost importance. Butler’s words were nothing short of revolutionary. They made sense at the very core of my being, and they have given us a proper set of tools to deconstruct the very notions that have kept us all either quiet, marginalized or both. In my work I use those tools to create subversive spaces, subversive acts and subversive speech. It is, I feel, within these subversive margins that the most powerful forces of creativity and creation are to be found.

 

NIGHTMARE RE: CONSTRUCTION

​

Almost as soon as it was performed before a live audience “Nightmare Re: construction,” was clearly in need of a name change as it became clear that the performance had chosen its own meaning and needed a descriptive title. The performance was then redubbed, "The Utter Impossibility of Truly Understanding the Metonymic Other;" often truncated, misremembered or simply renamed. The performance exemplified the early process of "Putoh". A silent performance, except for the climax of the piece, which included lip-syncing to a prerecording of Marlene Dietrich.

​My process began with a theoretical, pro-feminist idea, influenced by Judith Butler and other feminist writers, then moved into a more personal space centering around everything my mother had given up as a Latina woman. Much of my work at the time sought to create a space for a larger, queer and non-essentialist idea of being Latino—almost as if it were responding directly to that teacher and those students in my Chicano Studies course—because it most likely was. The work began to be multi-vocal and pre-Latinx, refusing essentialist identity, as Marvin Carlson described our work years later in "Performance: A Critical Introduction," "There is a growing body of...artists who specifically identify themselves as Latinx, headed by...Xavier Lopez...Latinx represents an important orientation in modern performance ... concern(ed) with developing more inclusive and flexible attitudes toward designations of gender, race, and ethnicity, clearly anticipated by artists like Fusco and Gómez-Peña... concern(ed) with developing more inclusive and flexible attitudes toward designations of gender, race, and ethnicity,...Latinx will doubtless be joined in the future by other...terms addressing this major reorientation of the field."

​At the time, I sought to engender, enlarge and expand the conversation of what Latina/x/o art is and what it can be. We live at a time in which definitions of race, masculinity, gender and art are changing, and through my performance I have always sought to be a voice in this change and to translate this mission into a body of work that is consistent with these goals.

​For the performance I began by investigating my relationship with/to my mother, one that is inflected by both history and biography, and which filled me with an overwhelming desire to cry, later that week I kept having nightmares.  In these dreams I was filled with am unnameable feeling of loss, frustration and the knowledge that my mother had given up so much to make her life here in the United States. I realized, too, that she had given up a great deal to my father and to the three children that came out of her. In one dream, I was in her place, I was made to feel what it might feel to helplessly watch time pass as each of my dreams moved on without me.

​Waking, I realized, however, that this was not just my mother’s story, but also a story that has been implicit and explicit throughout history. This has been the story of many women, through many ages, who have watched their dreams through their lover’s eyes. I do not want to sound like I felt as though, I alone could change that, for I did not believe that this is the case. We are all complicit in this history and none of us can call themselves untainted by it. But through performance, through my body and through my actions—I might be able to feel and make others feel a kind of triumph and perhaps show others how we are not so different, despite genitalia that is not the same.

​I knew that I was supposed to have some kind of performance; I had the date, location, everything—thanks to Katharine—who gave up her space so willingly. Now I had an idea. I called my mother and had a long talk about dreams and her childhood, I asked her what she might have wanted to be, what she had wanted to be growing up. At first, she was unable to say, she had locked up that part of herself for a long time, she said, but she did remember wanting to be a singer and that she had always had a wonderful singing voice. There, I had it, that’s what I would do. I would sing for my mom, well not exactly sing—but I could at the very least, lip sync for my momma! I wasn’t aware at the time, just how much of a failure this was destined to become.

​The day of the performance, I was ready to transform myself, to shave my legs, my beard, put on a wig, stockings and dress and sing. To sing a torch song, by Marlene Dietrich. At the end, after cutting my legs to shreds with a dull blade, failing to hide the shadow of my beard and at times coming across as mere mimicry. I realized I had failed in what I sought to accomplish. I did not make others feel the pain of past sexisms—I had shown to myself just how little I, too, understood them, how despite my desire to be a part of her suffering, I could not because it was not my own. I considered this a failure, for a long while, at least until I heard the words of the others who had seen the performance.

​I want to make it especially clear that I do not believe that the reason that the performance did not do exactly what I intended is because I believe that there is any inherent difference in the way that women and men think, believe or perceive the world, at least none that are not created by extensive cultural forces. What I do believe is that my emotions, the irrational, and desire all got in the way of any clean reading of what I did.

​When I spoke to the others, however, I was dumbfounded; definitions of the performance were so varied that few could agree with why I did what I did. What happened instead was that others began to tell me their stories, relating experiences with their mothers, sisters, their own desires to get in contact with the feminine or masculine, some felt that what I did was too much about personal narrative, others felt it was about culture. What I was moved by, however, was the desire by so many people to tell me their stories. I wanted to hear them all, and they definitely wanted to share. It was a completely different reaction than the one I had intended, far more sharing, generative and personal—and it was great!

​Even in 2001, blocks away from the UC Davis campus, shaving my legs in front of an audience until they streamed blood in the pro-feminist, anti-gender-essentialist performance; it was clear that the seeds were already growing for a genre-breaking, anti-essentialist movement.

​Today, at least one thing has been seen to be true—the form of a contemporary Latinx criticism is shaping up and it will be a far cry from what has come before. It will not be inflected by the crap of “magic realism,” or a masculinist parentage—but it will “come out” instead, from the borders, for it is ultimately a criticism from outside the margins (in all of its myriad meanings: paper, maps, personalities, etc.) it will be a raucous, hearty, alien form of criticism patently outside of any of the historically “coded” binary positions, it will be neither black nor white, but at times it will be both, it will be both male and female—and at times it will be neither, it is queer and straight—though it is more queer and de-centered than many dare to realize. It does definitely owe a great deal to Fusco and Gomez-Peña’s borderlands, but it is ultimately less essentialist and less interiorizing—it is a forward moving, active and ironic stance that replicates itself endlessly—and it is, ultimately, the future—all of our futures. It is Putoh and it is and was Latinx, before Latinx was cool.