Jose Munoz Disidentification

The book by Jose Muñoz starts off by explaining the concept of Disidentification – illustrated by the play of Marga Gomez, who is a female playwright and a queer of color person. (Muñoz, 1999, p. 3). The author also talks of identity as something that does not exist easily – at least not for the sexual minority, but, on the contrary, is easily accessible for heterosexual individuals since even identity is largely rooted in stereotype. In fact, a large aspect of the discussion revolves around identity and its formation of the personality or the sense of Self. Muñoz mentions that most of pillars of queer theory come from experiences or studies directed towards white lesbians and gay men, but very rarely towards queer people of color. (p. 10).
The concept of disidentification
In such a case, disidentification would mean the cessation of one’s identification towards such institutions or rules. It seems from the narrative that Muñoz appears to strongly blame identity and the Self for strongly attaching itself to that identity as the root cause of problems for queer people of color, given that all such identities in the present day lean away from the sexual minority. Pecheux and Butler present models of disidentification that lead to an understanding of a “disidentificatory subject” who purposefully and concurrently works for, and against cultural forms. In essence, the views of the both tend to take the middle path between “the Good Subject” (the conformist) and “the Bad Subject” (the non-conformist). While these models do present a moderated view, one must understand that the inherent difficulty in the act of disidentification remains since it still involves a middle path with elements of both the aspects, without being part of any one of those