Common ground: performing gay shame, solidarity and social change

Abstract

This dissertation examines Gay Shame activism of the late 1990s and early 2000s through case studies of three distinct performance sites: Gay Shame San Francisco, Kvisa Shchora, a Tel Aviv based collective, and Euroshame (London). Analyzing the performance work and self-articulations of these three groups, I demonstrate how their performative and rhetorical use of shame attempts to both critique the "pride" of mainstream LGBT groups and to forge solidarity between queer communities and others marginalized by neoliberal economies and nationalist rhetoric through what I refer to as "hyperidentification". These performances can, at their best, be aesthetically challenging and creative interventions that reimagine and place queer identities in ideological and, at times, actionable alliance with marginalized others; while at their worst they imagine themselves in solidarity with other communities, but ignore or fail to account for the perspectives, agendas and values of those communities. My exploration of these sites examines the limits of solidarity and empathy and investigates the contributions of queer activist performance to debates regarding the ethics and efficacy of political performance within the disciplines of Theatre and Performance Studies.