Attempting to articulate the divergent methodological orientations of performance studies and of cinema and media studies in an exchange with Iván Ramos, the best I could come up with was to suggest that whereas performance studies at times thinks with media, cinema and media studies thinks about media themselves. I was not consciously invoking José Esteban Muñoz’s work with this formulation, but in retrospect it should have been obvious. Muñoz invokes with in his theories of how disidentifications, queerness, and brownness are affectively performed as he draws on television, video art, film, installation, art, theater, and performance—media that he approaches more as expressive than as representational.
I begin from this question of disciplinarity guided by the invitation to this dossier, which asked contributors to consider Muñoz’s engagement with media and art. As someone based in cinema and media studies but who at times looks out from there, I often come...
University of California Press