Rodriguez, Juana Maria. Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces. Sexual Cultures Ser. Ed. Jose Esteban Munoz and Ann Pellegrini. New York: NYU P, 2003.

“Queer Latinidad describes the way queer latina/o identity is discrsively negotiated in three distinct contexts: the work of Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida, the immigration court case In re Tenorio, no. A72 093 558, and the “virtual” world of online chat rooms and cybersex. Rodriguez argues that “Each of these spaces creates and forecloses distinct identity and narrative practices” (35). Furthermore, ,as a piece of academic scholarship, the book Queer Latinidad is itself a discrusive space that has the potential to create and foreclose identity possibilities. The book thus engages with a Deleuzian method of “rhizomatic reading and writing,” which Rodriguez uses to emphasize the multi-dimensionality of identity rather than any selfsame “is”-ness (22). While showing how identity itself can never be stably identified, Rodriguez does not simply argue for or against identity politics. Rather, by self-consciously distinguishing itself as one among many multi-dimensional discursive spaces, the book highlights its own limits even while shedding light on the simultaneously productive and restrictive borders of activism, law, and cyberspace. Rodriguez explains that her attention to three such disparate discursive spaces will require different methodological practices. These practices differ, as do the subjects they analyze, on the level of language itself–yet the diversity of discourses is framed by academic discourse, the “most influential discursive dimension” of the book (160). This academic lens is not a failure, accriding to Rodriguez, but a site of potential complete with its own pleasures. By embracing these pleasures of discourse, one can transform individuals as well as the social world.”

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