Abstract: Challenging what is possible through academic essays, this piece uses conversations between the author and reader as a space for a conjuring of the (socially) dead and refutes that death is the end. This creative personal essay explores the mundane transformations of the body/identity that a Fat Queer Disabled Asian American Specter takes in everyday interactions. Invoking the image of a socially dead individual in the push and pull of the abyss, the neoliberal body becomes challenged. This project explores the body at various axes through the combination of multiple theories from various domains, (re)theorizing illegibility as liberatory. Exploring the horrific as intertwined with illegibility, this piece attempts to reveal why youth’s way of being is so scary for the world. Illegibility in this piece broadly conveys experiences where the body becomes unknowable, overdetermined, and/or undertheorized.
Asserting that it is youths’ obligation to illegibility that shows another way of living and gives rise to new ways of thinking, even when it is not recognized as traditional or standard. In positioning the authors’ experiences as youth coming of age in a rapidly developing feminist world, this piece, like many others before it, forces open the door for more to enter spaces that are not yet imagined. Through taking up threads of inquiry from Fat studies, Critical Disability studies, Queer studies, Black studies, and Asian American studies this piece, much like the author, attempts to float between multiple domains to create a holistic way of understanding.
Taking shape through non scripted audio clips of the author’s voice and poems, this work explores paradoxical space through being White in one place, Yellow in the next, Disabled to some, but not to all, Queer in clothes, Cis gendered in the workplace, and of course thus everything everywhere all at once. The audio clips serve as the center of the piece and works to foreground the content in place of traditional essay. The poems serve as spaces between the clips focusing on the author’s recognition of identity and the liberatory nature of their illegibility. Essential to the piece is the transition between audio to written poem, inviting space to sit down and take breaks between segments, while also leaving room for commentary between the reader/listener through shared understanding of each of the authors’ social identities.
Beginnings and Ends
Notes for Beginnings and Ends
- Queer Methods and New Imaginings (Glasby, 2019; Kafer, 2013; Shackelford, 2021)
- Asian Americanness & Student Identity (Khúc, 2021)
- Challenges in Creation
- Quote from Dr. Khúc (2021):
“The Student is the twenty-ninth card in the major arcana, sometimes known as the lost card. The Student cried the day of graduation. They play one role for the Mother, another for schools, another as the Daughter, another for workforces, another as the Model Minority, another for the state, always in the pull of the annihilating void. The Student is, at essence, a note-taker: be grateful / always be ok / chase the promise of / this, for hours / never complain never be sick keep going / nothing is ever enough the work goes impossibly on / is college life normal stress? / what would it mean to leave / we are finishing our parents’ immigration stories / leaving behind the fact of living / we are not grades / a condition of what can’t / don’t feet guilty. Drawing the Student card in a reading reminds you that Student debt extends forward and backward across our collective lifetimes. But ask yourself, what is it you actually owe? Your entire personhood, and then more. We gave you your past, now give us your future. The Student urges us to refuse. If schools are a feeder system for churning out good citizens, embrace being a bad citizen. Embrace being a bad subject, a bad student, a bad child, a bad person: a revolutionary. Remember that the Asian American Movement was birthed in the fires of student protest. * students everywhere”
Transcript for Beginnings and Ends
Beginnings and Ends. It is in this piece that there were challenges in its creation and understandings. I’ve come to terms with this ambivalence, this understandings of myself that I am a fat queer disabled Asian American specter. Socially dead, unimagined, illegible to people. And so, how do I convey this? How do I understand myself and understand that pursuing education further both can be liberating and controlling? How can I understand this? So this piece serves as a conversation between you, the listener, and me, the writer/speaker. This piece draws upon Queer Methods by Glasby (2019) and imagines that autoethnography is queer, that the act of creation itself needs to take shape through the negotiation, and it understands that traditional academic essays are limiting and limit, foreclose us to possibilities. Thus, this is non-scripted and only has notes, which you can find at the beginning of the piece. And so, I just have topics, the name of the authors, and it is in this ambivalence and illegibility that this piece takes shape. Grounding us and grounding the piece is Kafer (2013), and specifically understanding that a disabled body, and this disabled body along its multiple axes of identity has a future of no futures. A desired body with no desirability. It is unimaginable to have a future. Drawing upon Shackelford (2021), I understand that fatness, especially fat black beings, are themselves socially dead. and further asserted by myself that fat beings are socially dead. They are unimaginable. They are undesirable. They have to be conjured, as Shackelford refers to in the piece, because they are dead. They are imagined as having worse health outcomes, worse possibilities, and of course, thus, a future of no futures. There is no future and fatness. Lastly, grounding this piece is my Asian Americanness and student identity. I’ve been in school since six years old. I’m 20, so that is 14 years. I’m continuing to my graduate degrees. And so I draw upon Dr. Khuc’s Asian American Tarot to express my Asianness and my studentness. And so:
The Student is the twenty-ninth card in the major arcana, sometimes known as the lost card. The Student cried the day of graduation. They play one role for the Mother, another for schools, another as the Daughter, another for workforces, another as the Model Minority, another for the state, always in the pull of the annihilating void. The Student is, at essence, a note-taker: be grateful / always be ok / chase the promise of / this, for hours / never complain never be sick keep going / nothing is ever enough the work goes impossibly on / is college life normal stress? /
what would it mean to leave/ we are finishing our parents’ immigration stories / leaving behind the fact of living / we are not grades / a condition of what can’t /don’t feet guilty.Drawing the Student card in a reading reminds you that Student debt extends forward and backward across our collective lifetimes.
But ask yourself, what is it you actually owe?
Your entire personhood, and then more. We gave you your past, now give us your future. The Student urges us to refuse. If schools are a feeder system for churning out good citizens, embrace being a bad citizen. Embrace being a bad subject, a bad student, a bad child, a bad person: a revolutionary. Remember that the Asian American Movement was birthed in the fires of student protest. * students everywhere
Thus, this piece serves in combination as a conjuring of the fat queer disabled Asian-American specter, socially dead. It is through taking shape and taking space, we will explore the themes of illegibility, the themes that take place and take shape across the daily life. So enjoy.
Fat [suggested to be read aloud by the reader/listener]
Fat as defined by google:
a natural oily or greasy substance occurring in animal bodies,
especially when deposited as a layer under the skin or around certain organs.
(of a person or animal) having a large amount of excess flesh.
Fat as defined/paraphrased by me:
Fat, fat, fat, or maybe would you say obese
Obese like constructed by the BMI, constructed as the measure used to show the inferiority of others
This fat is deposited around my body, tangled around my organs strangling them for air
But maybe I am happy this way,
Why are you judging
Does this natural substance disgust you
Does this natural state unhinged from the order disrupt your understanding of me
Fat, fat, fat, or maybe you could just say human
Mundane Transfigurations
Notes for Mundane Transfigurations
- Theoretical grounding (Butler, 1998; Johnson, 2016; Mahtani, 2001; Rose, 1993; White, 2021)
- Explain/Explore multiple identities across space/place the mundane transformation
Transcript for Mundane Transfigurations
Mundane transfigurations, some theoretical backgrounding for the section is Butler (1998) and gender performances understanding that my queerness is put on through my performance of my identity. Drawing upon Johnson (2016) and White (2021) I understand that my mixed racial background and my fatness makes my performances illegible, not fitting into one space, not being masculine enough or feminine enough, never being able to look disabled because I am read upon racialized and through my body size and drawing upon my Mahtani (2001) and Rose (1993) I understand that I inhabit this paradoxical space being both the center and the margins through my whiteness, I am the center, through my middle classness, I am the center. But through my disability, queerness, and Asian Americanness, I am the margins. I am relegated to second classness because how could this illegible body be conforming to the neoliberal body? It is through these multiple identities that across space and place. I take on multiple identities and it is hard sometimes. It is also invigorating in social settings, such as the classroom. I use any/all pronouns in it is quite of joy to see people guess my gender/assign birth gender, in which I have people using he, her and theirs pronounced all within the same conversation, never being able to quite place where it is, However, conversely, my Asian Americanness combined with, illegible gender and fatness and disability becomes hard to read and I am asked so many different questions as well as hearing microaggressions that people are comfortable saying because I think I am white. But why would even a white person be comfortable with you saying such harsh things about Asians? These mundane transfigurations and transformations are a toll and a blessing. It is through these that I and the illegible subject holds much power for theorizing. It is in theses’ understandings that I become at once everything everywhere, all at once.
Gender (Queer) [Suggested to be read aloud by the reader/listener]
Oh, the thing people love to personally theorize about
Judith Butler in all their knowledge once suggested we all theorize from a young age
Thus, gender is something that everyone can theorize about
In which I agree
Gender in all of its understandings be it in a narrow view of sexs/genentics
Or as complex as in university readings
Gender is something we love to theorize about
But what about for us who live gender
For living gender means to me
Is at once a site of theorizing and being
Not quite a praxis
But my body is a project
Using any all pronouns
This body is mine
Illegibility and terrifying the neoliberal body
Notes for Illegibility and terrifying the neoliberal body
- Literature grounding (Friedman, 2019; Guthman, 2009; Owen, 2014)
- Illegibility and Horror of body and mind
- Danger to neoliberal body
Transcript for Illegibility and terrifying the neoliberal body
Illegibility and terrifying the neoliberal body, literature grounding this section is Friedman (2019) where they write about their experiences as a biracial person who is fat and gendered, of course, and how they’re incoherence has created interesting experience for their life, but it is also empowering and suggests other ways of living. Guthman (2009) to talk about the neoliberal body and Owen (2014) to discuss the horror of the body and how the fat body is so scary for people because of its fatness, its dangerness. It’s this thing that is inconceivable, illegible, because it does not fit within a space given to it. It is this illegibility and horror of body in thus mind that fatness takes up, creates and destroys. It is disability that intertwined with it that becomes so horrifying, a body that at once is not desirable and may not be able to do everything everyone else can do, but what does that reveal to and become dangerous to the neoliberal body? Why is it that a fat disabled queer Asian American specter scares people. It is maybe because it is a danger to the neoliberal body, it is a danger to this idea of the white, thin heterosexual, able bodied person who is able to succeed, be able to do what they want, unrestricted. It is dangerous to the neoliberal body because it suggests another way of living, because it suggests that maybe these things aren’t so bad to be. Maybe it is fine to live in a state of constant fluctuation, in a state that can go between spaces and places without being defined and it is in its illegibility that gives way for new ways of thinking and becomes dangerous to what is already known. So thus, it transforms and becomes what it needs. It is this thing, this horror, this creature, that will eventually destroy what is considered a traditional (neoliberal) body.
Disabled Asian American [Suggested to be read aloud by the reader/listener]
Who Am I
I who have been in and out of the doctors without answers
I who is mixed with White and Asian
Why is it so hard to believe I am a (disabled) Asian American
Ever since I was in elementary school
I have been thrown into special education even when I was undiagnosed
I have been questioned about my race and language
I feel as if I have lived multiple lives
Frequent struggles
Asked “if is everything ok” when I stop functioning due to xyz or even when I’m fine
Asked if I know how to speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc. or if I eat dogs
I wish the questioning would stop
Times of living
Solidarity and friendships I would have never imagined
I am proud to say I have graduated
But is it enough
Understanding
It was never your fault that things turned out this way
Why is it so hard to believe I am a disabled Asian American
Ending off here but the future is around the corner
Notes for Ending off here but the future is around the corner
- (Re)Theorization of illegibility as liberatory (Jun, & Blacksher, 2023; Machado, 2021; Samuels, 2002; Stone, 1999).
- Why Youth
- A hope for future
Transcript for Ending off here but the future is around the corner
Ending off here, but the future is around the corner. (Re)theorizing of illegibility as liberatory Jun and Blacksher (2023) use critical autoethnography to explore illegible this theater program, as well as current events going on at the time and how this became political activism, quoting Illegible program notes 2015 from their as written in their piece:
To be illegible is to have qualities that make it difficult to be read, comprehended, and understood by others. Black bodies are illegible when they are not complicit in their role of the public imagination. To be illegible is to fully embrace the complexity of Blackness in a country that does more forgetting than remembering what we have done to Black bodies. (Illegible Program Notes 2015 as written in Jun & Blacksher 2023)
It is in this idea of illegibility I draw upon and how the body while I am not black, this body of mine is not complicit in being a neoliberal body. It embraces its Asianness, it embraces its fatness, its disability, its queerness, it dis… it embraces being other. Drawing upon Machado (2021) in their theories of fatness, we can think of illegibility as dangerous because of the fact the body cannot be read. The body cannot be understood drawing upon Samuel’s (2002) and Stone (1999) we can think of illegibility as a different way of being illegibility as this otherness, this creation, this borderlands, this liminality, this thing that is a subject untamed. It is through this illegibility, it is liberatory, these bodies become their own, they refute what has been thrown upon them. They think of themselves as people and as humans because the world does not think of them as so. So, I ask of the reader, the listener, the person who is there, in your illegibility, how are you challenging what is possible? How are you going to change what is around you through your performances? I also assert that is through my youthness that I’ve found my illegibility so empowering. It is youths’ obligation to understand themselves. It is youths’ obligation to present new ideas because they have not yet been ingrained in culture. They are fierce. They are young and they are ready. Even if you are tired, embrace your illegibility. It may be a way to change what is around you. And so, I hope for a future where we can embrace ourselves and become something illegible, and maybe in our illegibility, we can be legible, but it is still not yet considered legible, so please be yourself be something illegible.
References
Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: an Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.
Friedman, M. (2019). Dismantling the empire: in defense of incoherence and intersectionality, in M. Friedman, C. Rice and J. Rinaldi (eds) Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice (pp. 243-253). New York: Routledge.
Glasby, H. (2019). MAKING IT QUEER, NOT CLEAR: Embracing Ambivalence and Failure as Queer Methodologies. In W. P. BANKS, M. B. COX, & C. DADAS (Eds.), Re/Orienting Writing Studies: Queer Methods, Queer Projects (pp. 24–41). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Guthman, J. (2009). 21. Neoliberalism and the Constitution of Contemporary Bodies. In E. Rothblum & S. Solovay (Ed.), The Fat Studies Reader (pp. 187-196). New York: New York University Press.
Johnson, L. A. (2016). Negotiating More, (Mis)labeling the Body A Tale of Intersectionality. In Boylorn, R. M., & Orbe, M. P.(Eds.), Critical autoethnography: Intersecting cultural identities in everyday life (pp. 81-95). New York: Routledge.
Jun, G. S. & Blacksher, A. (2023). Illegible Representations, Collaborative Protests. IASPM Journal, 13(2), 25–41.
Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Khúc, M. (2021). “The Student.” The Asian American Tarot. https://www.mimikhuc.com/projects/asian-american-tarot
Machado, M. C. (2021). “The Trash Heap Has Spoken.” In B.O. Grimm, M.M. Morales, & T.J. Ferentini (Eds.), Fat and Queer (pp. 309–322). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Mahtani, M. (2001). Racial ReMappings: The potential of paradoxical space. Gender, Place & Culture, 8(3), 299–305.
Owen, L. J. (2014). Monstrous Freedom: Charting Fat Ambivalence. Fat Studies, 4(1), 1–13.
Rose, G. (1993). Feminism in Geography: the limits of geographical knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
White, F. R. (2021). “Fat and trans: Towards a new theorization of gender in Fat Studies.” In C. Pausé & S.R. Taylor (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies (pp. 78-87). New York : Routledge.
Shackelford, H. A. (2021). “When You Are Already Dead.” In C. Pausé & S.R. Taylor (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies (pp. 253-257). New York: Routledge.
Samuels, E. (2002). Critical Divides: Judith Butler’s Body Theory and the Question of Disability. NWSA Journal, 14(3), 58–76.
Stone, A. R. (1999). WILL THE REAL BODY PLEASE STAND UP?: BOUNDARY STORIES ABOUT VIRTUAL CULTURES. In J. Wolmark (Ed.), Cybersexualities: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace (pp. 69–98). Edinburgh University Press.
Author Biography
Elijah Lin (any all pronouns) is currently pursuing an MS in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis with a concentration in Higher Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They hold a BS in Education Studies & Psychology and they hope to pursue a PhD in Education or Gender & Women Studies in the future. Elijah’s research interests concern the construction and negotiation of bodies and identity around (dis)ability, gender, sexuality, size, and race. Currently, they focus on how marginalized students of color in higher education understand and (re)negotiate their identities as they go through the university. Elijah’s work is interdisciplinary, spanning from Creative Feminisms to STEM Education, always with a focus on uplifting marginalized voices and highlighting the importance of critical research. They currently work with Our Hmoob American College Paj Ntaub, a Participatory Action Research team which examines the college experiences of HMoob American students in Wisconsin, the Education Policy & Equity Research Collective a research team dedicated to understanding the needs of marginalized students with current focus on Black Women in Computing Fields, and is documenting the impacts of the NSF Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) grant with faculty at UW Whitewater & Alverno College.