Queering Political Economy in Neoliberal Ironbound Newark: Subjectivity and Spacemaking Among Brazilian Queer Immigrant Men
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Diálogo Volume 18 Number 2 Article 10 2015 Queering Political Economy in Neoliberal Ironbound Newark: Subjectivity and Spacemaking among Brazilian Queer Immigrant Men Yamil Avivi Department of American Culture, University of Michigan Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo Part of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Avivi, Yamil (2015) "Queering Political Economy in Neoliberal Ironbound Newark: Subjectivity and Spacemaking among Brazilian Queer Immigrant Men," Diálogo: Vol. 18 : No. 2 , Article 10. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/vol18/iss2/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Latino Research at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Diálogo by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Queering Political Economy in Neoliberal Ironbound Newark: Subjectivity and Spacemaking among Brazilian Queer Immigrant Men Yamil Avivi Department of American Culture, University of Michigan I’m like the ringleader, I call the shots … All eyes on me, at the center of the ring Just like a circus When I crack that whip, everyone gonna trip Just like a circus Don’t stand there watching me, Follow me Show me what you can do Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor Just like a circus “Circus,” Britney Spears, 2008 Abstract: This paper complicates the dominant narrative of Newark’s Ironbound community as an exceptional and heteronormative neighborhood by analyzing the non-heteronormative subjectivities and spaces in them. During the period between 2004-2009, subjects were interviewed, in queer minoritarian spaces, to understand how Brazilian gays/ queers reified and contested neoliberal ideologies of nationalism, “good” ethnicity, individualism, and “appropriate” sexual mores. This ethnographic account employs textual and spatial-temporal analysis to generate an alternative narrative of gay/queer life and groupings in the Ironbound. Key Terms: Non-heteronormative; Neoliberalism; Political economy; Gay/Queer; Brazilian nationalism; Spatial-temporalities. arlos,1 an undocumented Brazilian immigrant Christopher Street3), and that “not everyone has to know” C in his mid-twenties, living in the Ironbound about one’s sexual and gender difference. He believed community of Newark, shared that he came to terms with that while walking around with other queers4 to visit being gay after his arrival from Brazil by socializing with the stores, cafés, eateries, and bars5 on Ferry Street, it other gay men—Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike—in was preferable for him to perform, within this domi- everyday life in the Ironbound. When I interviewed him nant space, according to heteronormative expectations. in 2008, I asked, “Would you like Ferry Street, the main While Carlos recognized that Christopher Street is a gay commercial artery of Newark’s immigrant Ironbound minoritarian6 space, he preferred his conformity within neighborhood, to become more like New York’s histori- ambiguity in the dominant space of Ferry Street. I won- cally gay/LGBTQ Christopher Street?” After a deep pause, dered, but didn’t ask, about his and others’ sense of queer he said, “I think [Ferry Street] is good the way it is. To relationality and collectivity across race, ethnicity, and live on a street with only gays is like being on Christopher class. What was evident was his and others’ preference Street. I would not like it like Christopher Street. You can for the nationalist and homogeneously heteronormative be gay but not everyone has to know.”2 space of Ferry Street, in the Ironbound. This led me to He was talking specifically about how gay subjec- further consider the ways that neoliberal ideology and tivity and space should take a subdued position (unlike neoliberal development projects impact his and others’ Diálogo Articles 105 Yamil Avivi Volume 18 Number 2 Fall 2015 queer performance, embodiment, and groupings in the hetero-patriarchal, and commodified spaces of neoliberal Ironbound community. development. Certain literatures examine how neolib- Prior to the arrival of the Brazilian immigrant com- eral economic projects negatively impact gay or queer munity in the Ironbound in the 1980s, the longstanding subjectivities by relegating these subjects to a permanent Portuguese immigrant community of the neighborhood underclass of racial, immigrant, and economic exclusion had achieved honorary distinction as good citizens of vis-à-vis urban gentrification, development, and seg- Newark, making them a model for Brazilians and other ra- regation, because they will not likely fit within a white cial and ethnic minorities to aspire to within Newark’s neo- middle class or “good ethnic” notion of heteronormativity liberal context. In Performing Folklore: Ranchos Folclóricos or homonormativity (Duggan, 2003; Ferguson, 2004; from Lisbon to Newark (2005), Kimberly Da Costa-Holton Luibhéid, 2008; Handhardt, 2008; Rivera-Servera, 2013; refers to how Newark’s mayor, Sharpe James, addresses in Rodríguez, 2003). Other literatures describe spacemaking a keynote speech that the Portuguese Ironbound neigh- and subjectivities that assume a local political economy in borhood and its people are “often singled out” for having their local nationalist/immigrant neighborhood context, the neoliberal qualities that brought about “rebirth” and usually by living discreetly or in a space that ultimately does “growth” for Newark. As she further explains, the mayor not interrupt the hetero-patriarchal context, but still allows justified cultural pluralism to highlight the Portuguese’s them to exist as queer subjects (Decena, 2011; Cantú, Jr., good efforts and impact on the city’s tourist and cultural 2009; Márquez, 2007; Rivera-Servera, 2013; Rodríguez, industry, “boasting low crime rates, carefully maintained 2003; Manalansan, 2003; Quiroga, 2000). Ultimately, I residential buildings, and a booming commercial district find that these aforementioned literatures resonate most replete with ethnic restaurants and shops [of] Ironbound’s with the Ironbound context in the lives of my interviewees. ‘Little Portugal.’” (2005, 178). In effect, Mayor James dis- And yet other literature shows how queer subjects dis- tinguished the Portuguese in Newark, whose character rupt the local dominant culture that must accommodate and culture were marketable and perpetuated neoliberal them through means of space and even transculturation ideology, good citizenship, and economic development. (Manalansan, 1997; Muñoz, 1999; Peña, 2003, 2005; La Mayor James’ celebration of cultural pluralism as a “rain- Fountain-Stokes, 2005, 2009; Gray, 2009; Benedicto, 2008). bow of people and culture” (Da Costa-Holton, 178), I Specifically, this paper pursues how neoliberal ide- argue, celebrates a nationalist immigrant narrative that ologies and discourses that reified (and commodified) places non-heteronormative and queer immigrants at nationalism, “Brazilianness,” the heterosexual family, and the margin of neoliberal agendas, and even renders them “appropriate” sexual mores, also influenced and subdued invisible. Brazilians have similarly been depicted as excep- queer and non-heteronormative visibility, collectivity and tional in Newark’s neoliberal economic development.7 In agency, in this case and in this particular neighborhood, of her book, Street Therapists: Race, Affect, and Neoliberal recently arrived gay Brazilian immigrants. An ethnograph- Personhood in Latino Newark (2012), Ana Ramos-Zayas ic account of the lives of these documented and undocu- offers an ethnographic account of the ways Brazilian and mented immigrants9 to the Ironbound between 2004-2009 other Latino immigrants in the Ironbound demonstrate reveals their everyday articulations of queer subjectivity in an affect that reflects good neoliberal citizenship (self-suf- dominant spaces such as cafés and a Lutheran church, as ficiency, industriousness, progression, individualism, good well as in the private space of the home. This paper offers ethnicity, and middle-class tastes) and positively impacts a queer narrative to counter the neighborhood’s dominant the development projects of the city. In Da Costa-Holton’s one. I also employ textual analysis, and spatial-temporal example, Mayor James is invoking a heterocentrist and analysis to disrupt and amplify the dominant narrative of “spinned”8 cultural pluralism rhetoric that also instructs the Brazilian Ironbound’s heteronormativity by revealing Brazilian and other Latino gays or queers living in the the queer Brazilian immigrants’ everyday strategic silences Ironbound to downplay their excessive and eccentric and invisibility that also at times assumes the city’s neolib- embodiments and performances inside a neoliberalized, eral ideologies.10 The aim of this paper is to put the lives heteronormative, and developed space. and subjectivities of queer Brazilian immigrants at the In light of this ideology, I ask how my partici- center of Ironbound life and society. Therefore, I com- pants fit or make space for themselves in nationalist, plicate Newark’s local government’s dominant Brazilian 106 Articles Diálogo Queering Political Economy in Neoliberal Ironbound Newark: Subjectivity and Spacemaking among Brazilian Queer Immigrant Men Ironbound narrative and offer instead my participants’ gay ties, I became aware of other men outside the church. I counternarratives within public and private contexts of the witnessed many of