volume 4, issue 4
Playfulness & Activism
Queer & Multimodal Borderlands Practices
This research brief explores multimodal
play as a powerful strategy for reimagin-
ing and sustaining activist youth coali-
tional spaces. The phrase multimodal
play first brings up multimodality or the
ability to understand all human commu-
nication as making use of multiple modes
of expression, what the New London
Group defines as linguistic, aural, spatial,
gestural, and visual ways of communicat-
ing. In this way, multimodal play, as a key
term, calls our attention to the diverse
methods of expressionthrough sound,
images, movements, spaces, as well as
the words we say and writethat human
beings can use whenever and wherever
Youth performing at the Queer Monologues
attempted to break the spell of racial, sex-
ual, and gendered social norms in the spaces
of their everyday lived experiences through
multimodal community performance.
The multimodal practices described here may
also be seen as relational literacies.
This understanding of relational literacies
resonates with Masseys view of space and
also emerges from Liconas work with rela-
tional knowledges.
The relational literacies of the Queer Mono-
logues are critical and playful practices and
performances through which youth reimag-
ine reductive binaries and explore difference
through an unfixed and embodied experience
of differential community relations.
they find themselves in acts of play with
others. This brief explores multimodal
play in Queer Monologues, a community
performance of individuals from a local
drop-in space for queer and allied youth in
Tucson, Arizona. This queer youth organi-
zation is using multimodal play to disrupt
heteronormativities and adultist rheto-
rics that maintain borders of youth/adult,
queer/straight, and play/work. We call this
a borderlands practice. Multimodal play
can serve queer-identified youth by cre-
ating these borderlands spaces in which
youth critically, playfully engage in poten-
tially transformative resistance.
Alexander & Rhodes (2012, p. 200) suggest
multimodality as a way to break the spell of
static, flat (and flattening) tropes of identity.
Martin (2013, p. 137): Relational literacies
are practices through which we learn to ex-
ist differently and simultaneously; practices
through which we make our differences recog-
nizable and valuable to each other.
Massey (2006): [S]pace is the dimension . . .
that presents us with the existence of others.
When we view space as difference, we can
begin to see how we are both encouraged and
discouraged to act and make ourselves recog-
nizable to others.
Licona (2009) argues that relational knowledg-
es are thirdspaces within and through which
communities produce, circulate, value, and
recognize community knowledges.
 RISK / RESILIENCE
& other Borderlands of Queer Youth Experience
Borderlands rhetorics can
be playful rhetorics that
allow for the exploration of
un/authorized terrain. By
un/authorized and
contested terrain I mean
the spaces between and
beyond (identity) binaries
and those created at
intersections and
overlaps
Adela C. Licona (Zines in Third Space, p. 6)
highlights the playful possibilities of border-
lands rhetorics rhetorics that illuminate
multiple identities and ways of being. She
points out that the spaces of coming together,
or overlapping, are necessarily in play in the
sense that they make room for the exploration
and expression of stories, identities, places,
histories, and experiences [] to produce new
perspectives and even new knowledges (p. 7).
But play as a form of critical engagement with
the world is not equally available to all youth.
Brian Sutton-Smith (The Ambiguity of Play)
notes that: Many authors use childrens play
as a metaphor for what is innocent, infantile,
or foolish (p. 2). Play, in other words, can
capture the lesser valuation of youth. Sutton-
Smith suggests an understanding of play that is
inclusive of both youth and adults and incorpo-
rates a variety of activities.
Against views of play as always bound by
rules, contest, and competition, Mara Lugones
(Pilgrimages / Peregrinajes) explores play as a
mode of being that is potentially transforma-
tive. Lugones says: The playfulness that gives
meaning to our activity includes uncertainty,
but in this case the uncertainty is an openness
to surprise [] Rules may fail to explain what
we are doing [] we are open to self-con-
struction (pp. 95-96). Lugones considers this
a loving playfulness. Considering Lugones
vision of loving playfulness and Sutton-Smiths
vision of play that is not adultist moves us
toward an understanding of play as a space of
potential.
Im not gonna yell, but I
wont stay silent
With these words, Tadeo confronts risk vs.
resilience narratives of youth behavior. Some-
times in academic research and popular media,
risky youth are represented through decon-
textualized statistics on suicide, STIs/ STDs,
and homelessness, among others. In other
words, much of what we see in the news and
read online through mainstream media chan-
nels encourages us to see youth as always at
risk if they identify as LGBTQ. Yet, sometimes
these same media channels uphold particu-
lar individuals as shining examplesthe risky
youth who managed to achieve great things,
despite the seemingly inherent dangers of their
identities.
In this sense, resilient youth are applauded
as those who embody our brightest imaginings
of the individual who prevails by her/his power
alone and supposedly defies societal risks and
power structures. Multimodal play can offer
queer youth communities meaningful, everyday
ways to resist these narrow representations.
Voguing at the Queer Monologues
Embracing Imperfection & Difference through Multimodal Expression
Were going to be doing
vogue fem. So vogue fem
is an art form-dance that is
used in the Ballroom scene
today. So the Ballroom
scene is a group of LGBTQ
people that get together
and do runway, the dance,
and other forms of art that
express yourself.
In Vogue Fem, the final event of the Queer
Monologues evening, youth activist and Eon
Lounge participant Ireane partnered with her
cousin, Anissa, to perform a vogue battle,
which she described as above.
Informed by Paris Is Burning, a 1991 docu-
mentary film of which Ireane is a fan, I under-
stand voguing as a form of modern dance that
emerged from queer of color spaces in New
York. Combining fashion runway modeling
with various incarnations of drag performance,
voguing is often featured in the context of
Balls or what Ireane refers to as the Ball-
room sceneevents where performers battle
it out on the dance floor as they attempt to
take home prizes based on fashion, realness,
movement, innovation, and other categories of
competition.
Voguing, for Ireane, is everyday play in its most
critical, joyful, and transformative sense. Ireane
identifies as indigenous and Two-Spiritidenti-
ties that havent always been validated in other
institutional spaces such as schools. In vogu-
ing, Ireane not only finds a fun way to explore
and test the limits of her body in motion, he*
also finds a mode of expression that connects
her to community, activism, and queer histories
learned outside of formal educational contexts.
What I want to suggest here is that multimodal
expressionparticular those expressions ex-
plored through multimedia technologiescan
help make these rich connections more visible.
And if we can more easily see the connections
among forms of play (such as voguing), our
forgotten or unknown histories, and our per-
sonal means of forming and exploring identi-
ties, then we can perhaps see in new or unex-
pected ways the potential for coalition not in
spite of our differences, but because of them.
To tease this out, we can take a closer look at
the interplay of dancing bodies and multimedia
technologies.
In Vogue Fem, the audience not only watched
Ireane and Anissas dance performance but
also had access to a laptop station at which
they could watch and listen to a series of brief
video and audio stories. In these stories, Eon
youth lounge participants speak about some
of the barriers they have experienced in their
lives. In one, Ireane speaks candidly about the
pressure she feels from his family. She tells
his viewers about how her cousin came out
young, and says, they blame me for her gay-
ness. Along with other multimodal elements
of the Queer Monologues, these stories offered
deeper context for the live performances, and
insisted on the importance of spaces that blur
the boundaries of stage and audience, among
other borders.
* Both Ireane and Anissa express a preference for
genderqueer pronouns. In a post-QueerMonologues
meet up at the Lounge, Ireane and Anissa asked me
to alternate between feminine and masculine pro-
nouns in this dissertation in order to honor the queer
and Two-Spirit identities they claim.
Envisioning Futures
The combination of different modes of
expressionwithout blurring or blending
togethercan help the audience see differ-
ence without trying to blur or blend it away.
The differences reside, and they become
part of our coalitional work. In other words,
instead of tying up the dance performance
neatly, and instead of portraying it as a
triumphant or spectacular performance,
the unique combination of dancing bod-
ies and multimedia stories encourages us
to let the imperfections and uncomfortable
moments of sharing exist both on their own
Sources and Further Reading
Alexander, J., and J. Rhodes. Queerness, Mul-
timodality, and the Possibilities of Re/Orientation.
Composing(media) = Composing(embodiment): Bodies,
Technologies, Writing, the Teaching of Writing. Logan:
Utah State UP, 2012. 188-212. Print.
Estrada, G.S. An Aztec Two-Spirit Cosmology: Re-
sounding Nahuatl Masculinities, Elders, Femininities, and
Youth. Frontiers 24.2/3 (2003): 10-14. Print.
Fields, A., L.T. Martin, A.C. Licona, & E. Tilley. Per-
forming Urgency: Slamming and Spitting as Critical and
Creative Response to State Crisis. Kairos (forthcoming
2015): n. pag. Web.
Finley, S. Critical Arts-Based Inquiry: The Pedagogy and
Performance of a Radical Ethical Aesthetic. The SAGE
Handbook of Qualitative Research. Ed. Norman K. Denzin
and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage,
2011. 435-50. Print.
Gray, M.L. Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer
Visibility in Rural America. New York: New York UP, 2009.
Electronic book.
Licona, A.C. Zines in Third Space: Radical Cooperation
and Borderlands Rhetorics. Albany: SUNY P, 2012. Print.
Lugones, M. Pilgramages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coali-
tion against Multiple Oppressions. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield P, 2003. Print.
Martin, L. The Spatiality of Queer Youth Activism: Sexual-
ity & the Performance of Relational Literacies through
Multimodal Play. Diss. U of Arizona, 2013. Print.
Massey, D. Is the World Really Shrinking? Open Univer-
sity Radio Lecture 2006. The Open University, 2013. Web.
31 January 2013.
Massey, D. For Space. London: Sage, 2005. Print.
Muoz, J.E. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the
Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
1999. Print.
New London Group, The. A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies:
Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review
66.1 (1996): 60-92. Print.
and togetherdifferent, but also in coalition,
working together.
Drag and vogue performances such as
those of the Queer Monologues offer
glimpses of possible queer youth futures.
Community performance spaces such as
Queer Monologues can provide youth the
opportunity to be valued as being youth
being peoplerather than as becoming
adults, a way in which youth are often made
to feel incomplete and out of place in soci-
ety.
Osei-Kofi, N. The Emancipatory Potential of Arts-Based
Research for Social Justice. Equity & Excellence in Edu-
cation 46.1 (2013): 135-49. Print.
Palmeri, J. Remixing Composition: A History of Multi-
modal Writing Pedagogy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP, 2012. Print.
Paris is Burning. Dir. J. Livingston. Perf. Pepper LaBeija,
Dorian Corey, Anji Xtravaganza, and Willi Ninja. Miramax,
1991. Film.
Sutton-Smith, B. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1997. Electronic book.
Talburt, S. Queer Research and Queer Youth. Journal
of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 3.2-3 (2006): 87-93.
Print.
Wysocki, A.F. Drawn Together: Possibilities for Bod-
ies in Words and Pictures. Composing(media) =
Composing(embodiment): Bodies, Technologies, Writing,
the Teaching of Writing. Logan: Utah State UP, 2012. 25-
42. Print.
Crossroads Connections 4.4
Martin, L. T., Stauber, L. S., and the Crossroads Col-
laborative* (2015). Playfulness and Activism: Queer and
Multimodal Boarderlands Parctices. Crossroads Connec-
tions, 4(4), 1-4. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona.
* Based on a presentation at the Rhetoric Society of
America Annual Meeting, 2014: Queer World-Making and
Youth Activism: Valuing the Playfulness of a Queer and
Multimodal Boarderlands Parctice. San Antonio, TX.
The Crossroads Collaborative also includes: Adela C.
Licona, Stephen Russell, Amanda Fields, Casely Coan, &
Jason Rivera.
The Crossroads Collaborative, funded by the Ford
Foundation, brings stories and numbers together through
action-oriented research with academics, youth-serving
organizations, and youth from the community to develop
knowledge, increase understanding, amplify youth voice,
and share what we learn with the broader community.
www.mcclellandinstitute.arizona.edu/crossroads