This thesis layers theories of affect circulation, queer performance participation, counterpublics, and queer space and time with ethnographic work performed in queer performance spaces. In so doing, the thesis explores affective networks in queer performance spaces in order to begin a theoretical analysis of the connecting affects amongst queer performance participants. In my interviews, I found affective connections which I explored as keywords. These keywords express affects that, in part, create the affective networks of queer performance participants.

abstract: This dissertation explores the rhetorical significance of persecution claims produced by demonstrably powerful publics in contemporary American culture. This ideological criticism is driven by several related research questions. First, how do members of apparently powerful groups (men, whites, and Christians) come to see themselves as somehow unjustly marginalized, persecuted, or powerless? Second, how are these discourses related to the public sphere and counterpublicity? I argue that, despite startling similarities, these texts studied here are best understood not as counterpublicity but as a strategy of containment available to hegemonic publics. Because these rhetorics of persecution often seek to forestall movements toward pluralism and restorative justice, the analysis forwarded in this dissertation offers important contributions to ongoing theoretical discussions in the fields of public sphere theory and critical cultural theory and practical advice for progressive political activism and critical pedagogy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication Studies 2011

This thesis presents a rhetorical analysis of the Guerra del Gas movement in Bolivia from 2003 to 2005. It views the social movement and its major uprisings as emerging from a subaltern counterpublic that grounded its resistance in uniquely indigenous rhetoric. Chapter one provides a theoretical framework for understanding indigenous rhetoric as embodying a discourse of subaltern sensibilities and situating subaltern counterpublic theory within the historic-cultural situation of Bolivia to understand contemporary struggles over natural resources and against neoliberal politics within the country. The indigenous rhetoric of the Guerra del Gas movement provided a direct refutation of natural gas privatization and neoliberal hegemony. The second chapter is a case study that explores the indigenous rhetoric of the October 2003 and May-June 2005 uprisings that characterized the subaltern counterpublic sphere of the Guerra del Gas movement. In chapter three the theoretical frame of subaltern rhetoric is established to analyze Evo Morales’ inaugural address as an embodiment of a discourse of subaltern sensibilities. The conclusion chapter offers some directions for further research and considers how understanding indigenous rhetoric has implications for social struggle and organized resistance in a world of increasing globalization and neoliberal hegemonic policymaking. / text

abstract: At its core, this dissertation is a study of how one group of ordinary people attempted to make change in their local and national community by reframing a public debate. Since 1993, over five thousand undocumented migrants have died, mostly of dehydration, while attempting to cross the US/Mexico border. Volunteers for No More Deaths (NMD), a humanitarian group in Tucson, hike the remote desert trails of the southern Arizona desert and provide food, water, and first aid to undocumented migrants in medical distress. They believe that their actions reduce suffering and deaths in the desert. On December 4, 2008, Walt Staton, a NMD volunteer placed multiple one-gallon jugs of water on a known migrant trail, and a Fish and Wildlife officer on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge near Arivaca, Arizona cited him for littering. Staton refused to pay the fine, believing that he was providing life-saving humanitarian aid, and was taken to court as a result. His trial from June 1-3, 2009 is the main focus of this dissertation. The dissertation begins by tracing the history of the rhetorical marker "illegal" and its role in the deaths of thousands of "illegal" immigrants. Then, it outlines the history of NMD, from its roots in the Sanctuary Movement to its current operation as a counterpublic discursively subverting the state. Next, it examines Staton's trial as a postmodern rhetorical situation, where subjects negotiate their rhetorical agency with the state. Finally, it measures the rhetorical effect of NMD's actions by tracing humanitarian and human rights ideographs in online discussion boards before and after Staton's sentencing. The study finds that despite situational restrictions, as the postmodern critique suggests, subjects are still able to identify and engage with rhetorical opportunities, and in doing so can still subvert the state. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2011

This paper puts into question ideas of politics limited to the theories of social movements and contentious politics. In using the concept of black counterpublic, understood as a web of relations and spaces, I show how black politics of folklore expands the sites and forms of politics in Colombia of 1960. In doing so, I describe two aspects of the black counterpublic from the point of view of black political intellectuals into the racialized field of Colombian folklore: a. the way black political intellectuals understood race and racism in Colombia and, b. their forms of politics. That is, their form of organization and mobilization. For this, I propose a new understanding of folklore beyond ideas of entertainments, apolitical culturalism and essentialism which, in turn, make black politics look trivialized and less political under the integrationist racial project of the mestizo State. Also, I shed some light on the idea of race and racism from below, from the point of view of black political intellectuals; and I pluralize and decentralize black politics from social movement understanding of politics.

Since the 1990s, Palestinian theatrical activities in the West Bank have expanded exponentially. As well as local productions, Palestinian theatre-makers have presented their work to international audiences on a scale unprecedented in Palestinian history. By tracing the history of the five major theatre companies (Al-Kasaba Theatre, Ashtar Theatre, Al-Harah Theatre, The Freedom Theatre and Al-Rowwad) currently working in the West Bank, this groundbreaking project examines the role of theatre-makers in the formation of ‘abject counterpublics’. By placing theories of abjection and counterpublic formation in conversation with each other, this dissertation argues that theatre in the West Bank has been regulated by processes of social abjection and, yet, it is an important site for counterpublic formation. In this way Palestinian theatre has played an integral role in the formation of an abject counterpublic, a discursive and performative space in which theatre-makers contest Zionist discourse and Israeli state practices. What tactics, I ask, do theatre-makers use to disrupt, subvert and/or bypass the Zionist public sphere? What counter-discourse emerges from this site? How is such a counter-discourse articulated in performance spaces? And how does Palestinian theatre, in the logistical sense, work against a dominant discourse of erasure as well as continue to operate under conditions of settler-colonialism? This dissertation is the first major account of Palestinian theatre covering the last thirty years. Taking the end of the first intifada (1993) as its point of departure, and using original field research and interviews, this project fills a major gap in our knowledge of contemporary Palestinian theatre in the West Bank up to the present. The original contribution of my research to the fields of theatre studies and Palestine studies are twofold. Firstly, Reuven Snir’s Palestinian Theatre (2005) is currently the only book-length study up to the end of the first intifada. Whereas Snir’s book is limited to archival sources, my arguments rest upon original fieldwork (interviews, participant observation, performance analysis and case studies) carried out in the West Bank in 2014 and 2015. As such, it provides a richer, bottom-up analysis of theatre-making. Secondly, by introducing the term abject counterpublics and by placing the voices of theatre-makers at the centre of its enquiry, this study broadens discussions on abjection and counterpublic formation in Palestine.

En 1993, la Colombie réforme son système de santé en suivant les orientations données par la Constitution politique adoptée en 1991 et les recommandations du « consensus de Washington ». Le pays entre dans une nouvelle ère politique dans laquelle la question sociale est redéfinie autour du thème de la pauvreté, tandis que la question ethnique acquière une visibilité inédite. Dans ce contexte, des Entités Promotrices de Santé Indigènes (EPSI) sont créées à partir du modèle générique des EPS, ces organismes d’administration de l’affiliation et des budgets de la santé qui jouent un rôle d’intermédiaire entre l’État et le patient. Les EPSI sont étroitement liées au monde autochtone. Elles gèrent l’accès à la santé d’une population dont la plus grande majorité doit être autochtone. Le personnel qui assure leur fonctionnement est recruté dans l’espace social et politique autochtone. Enfin, ce sont les autorités dites « traditionnelles » qui les contrôlent. Pour être des représentantes des communautés, ces autorités donnent aux EPSI une nature juridique publique, ce qui leur confère un caractère spécifique dans un système de santé où la tendance est à la généralisation de la privatisation. Quelles sont alors les conséquences de l’intégration à la gestion des affaires publiques de ces structures de pouvoir autochtones et de leurs agents. Quels sont aussi les effets de domination et/ou les expressions d’autonomie que la pratique concrète de ce multiculturalisme génère ? Analysant les enjeux qui se dessinent au sein du champ de la santé interculturelle, la thèse s’organise autour de trois moments. Il s’agit d’abord de caractériser le paradigme dans lequel sont pensés, depuis l’État, le système de santé et l’interculturalité pour comprendre comment les politiques du multiculturalisme deviennent un outil de domination par l’intégration. Le mode opératoire de cette gouvernementalité néolibérale s’appuie en particulier sur la promotion de l’empowerment, la participation autochtone au système de santé en étant l’une des expressions. On s’intéresse ensuite à la dimension dialectique des politiques du multiculturalisme à partir d’une enquête ethnographique menée sur trois EPSI dans trois départements (Cauca, César, La Guajira). La pratique de ce multiculturalisme conduit à une réinterprétation du sens qui lui est donné, en particulier au travers de la réappropriation de pouvoirs (contrôle territorial, biopouvoir) par laquelle devient possible la construction d’une autonomie de ces espaces autochtones. Mais cette autonomie n’est rendue possible, et cela constitue le troisième moment de la démonstration, que par l’existence préalable d’une dynamique sociale, collective et historiquement fixée qui a permis la formation d’un groupe d’agents capables de produire un discours et une pratique propre. Il s’agit alors d’étudier au travers de récits biographiques la formation sociale de ces possibles contre-publics autochtones en s’intéressant à la construction des habitus des agents et aux économies morales locales et globales qui ont contribué à la consolidation de ces contre-publics. / In 1993, Colombia reformed its healthcare system by following the orientations brought out by the political Constitution adopted in 1991 and the prescriptions emanating from the « Washington consensus ». The country enters a new political era in which social issues are redefined around the theme of poverty, whereas ethnic issues acquire a new visibility. In this context, Entities Promoting Indigenous Health (EPIH) are created from the generic model of EPHs, which are public administrative bodies dealing with healthcare affiliations and budgets and play an intermediary role between the State and the patient. The EPIH is closely intertwined with the native world. In fact, these entities manage the access to health care services for a population that must be of great majority native. The personnel and agents that run these entities are recruited in the native social and political realm. Furthermore, what is known as the "traditional" authority fully supervises these entities. To officially represent these native communities, these authorities give to the EPSI a public legal status, which confers them a distinctive character in the health care system more generally undergoing privatization reforms. What are the consequences of bringing in indigenous authorities and agents of these health agencies in the administration of public affairs? What are the effect on power relations and/or expressions of autonomy generated by the concrete application of this multiculturalism? Analyzing the issues that are brought out in the realm of intercultural health, this thesis is structured around three main parts. The first part will define the paradigm in which are thought out, from a state perspective, the interculturality of the health care system to understand how politics of multiculturalism, through integration, become a method of domination. The modus operandi of neo-liberal governance is based on the notion of empowerment, i.e. indigenous participation to the health care system being one of its manifestations. The second part will study the dialectical dimension of multiculturalism politics based on an ethnographic study conducted in three EPIH in three states (Cauca, César, La Guajira). The concrete application of this politics of multiculturalism leads to a re-interpretation of its meaning and an re-appropriation of social power dynamnics (territorial control, biopolitics) through which become possible the construction of autonomous indigenous space. However, the third part will analyze how this autonomy is only made possible by preexisting social, collective, and historical dynamics, which enabled a group of agents to produce a discourse and their own application of public affairs. We will thus study with the help of biographical narratives how it is possible to form counterpublics by looking at the habitus of the agents and at the local and global moral economy that helped shape these counterpublics.

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Through a combination of personal interviews and participant-observation in three field sites ? the Tim Miller workshop and performance of October 2010 and the student organizations Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies ? I argue that manifestations of utopian desire and performance circulate within and among marginalized groups on the Texas A&M University campus, undermining the heteronormative and monolithic utopia the university attempts to present. I participated in each night of rehearsal during the Tim Miller workshop, as well as the creation and performance of my own solo autobiographical monologue as a part of the ensemble. My participant-observation in Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies was concurrent, consisting of attendance at both weekly organizational meetings and outside events sponsored by the organizations over two years. I argue that the Tim Miller workshop and performance is best understood by examining the intersection of queer intimacy, utopia, and performance. I argue that processes of connection, sharing, and mutual transformation allowed it to function as an example of queer utopian performance qua performance at Texas A&M. I explore the links between the ?nerd,? ?queer,? and ?family? identities of Cepheid Variable, arguing that the intersection of these identity-markers and the performance practices which reinforce them enable Cepheid Variable to create a utopian space on the Texas A&M campus for those students who do not fit traditional notions of Aggie identity. I explore two Cepheid performance practices: noise-making and storytelling, arguing that they construct, support, and interweave each element of Cepheid identity, allowing the organization to perpetuate and reaffirm its utopian and counterpublic statuses at Texas A&M. I explore what the GLBT Aggies claims to provide in theory, juxtaposed with what it actually accomplishes in practice. I examine a moment of crisis the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M faced in spring 2011. I argue that the utopia the GLBTA promises remains unfulfilled because the marginalization of the LGBTQ community at large leaves diversity within that community unaddressed. I conclude that utopian communities persist if able to adapt, and that the strength of the intimacy built into queer utopias in particular sustains them through time.