Contaminating Self-Ownership
The term "queer," which once represented radical difference and resistance, has increasingly been reappropriated by the neoliberal free market, producing new forms of exclusion through post-colonial spectatorship and the maintenance of identity legitimacy and visibility, thereby obscuring individual differences. The marginalized are often compelled to self-produce and adapt their identities to external norms in order to be legible within societal structures.
How can we perceive identity beyond the lens of self-owned commodities and toward the concept of the commons? Perhaps we need to shift from using a light microscope to an electron microscope to better see how humanity is interconnected. While Forkonomy() uses the fluidity of the South China Sea to question claims of sovereignty, Positive Coin, utilizes HIV, the AIDS virus, as a device to mock, contaminate, and commoning the neoliberal identities. As the virus spreads and infects among bodies, it penetrates the separation of skin-deep identity narratives. When disease is spread or “gifted” like a commons, it challenges the commodification and ownership of bodies and identities.
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Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green) from cultured lymphocyte. Photo Credit: C. GoldsmithContent Providers: CDC/ C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E. L.
The Price of Stigma