Sacrificial Entrepreneurship: The Political Economy of Queer and Trans of Color Community Arts under Neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

This ethnographic study considers the political economy of queer and trans of color community organizations in the context of urban neoliberal governance in Toronto, Canada. While state institutions promote entrepreneurship-based arts funding as a means of economic development, queer and trans of color grassroots initiatives engage with these institutions in ways that compel a reconsideration of the relationship between entrepreneurship and neoliberalism. I propose the concept sacrificial entrepreneurship to identify how the disruption of the neoliberal incitement to personal gain by sacrificing one’s economic well-being is patterned along lines of race, gender and sexuality. Focusing on Unapologetic Burlesque, a queer anti-racist community performance initiative, I show how queer and trans of color grassroots initiatives in Toronto take public resources intended to promote individual profit-making to create minoritized spaces of belonging. Through sacrificial entrepreneurship queer and trans of color subjects simultaneously collude and oppose the unfolding of neoliberal state initiatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• race
• gender
• sexuality
• community organizing
• entrepreneurship
• Canada

Notes

1. The phrase “queer and trans people of color” is one that the individuals I worked with in Toronto during my fieldwork used to describe themselves. As an explicitly political term, it was meant to highlight the similarities in the structures of oppression experienced by those subject to racism, homophobia and transphobia. “Queer and trans people of color” was an aspirational term of solidarity and community building that indexed a desire to bring together those who were positioned differently in relationship to the workings of race, gender, and sexuality. The individuals and organizations that I worked with certainly recognized that race, gender, and sexuality were not equivalent kinds of social difference and they were acutely aware of the differences within these categories as well. Indeed, shortly after working with these organizations, the term “queer and trans of color” was discarded in favor of the term “Black and Indigenous Queer and Trans People of Color” to highlight the specific experiences and challenges that those who were racialized as Black and Indigenous faced in Canada. I retain the use of the term “queer and trans people of color” to remain faithful to the way that individuals understood their social worlds in the period described in this article.

2. This paper is drawn from a larger ethnographic study that attempted to understand the relationship between grassroots queer and trans of color initiatives and urban government institutions. The project was informed by two years of ethnographic fieldwork among queer and trans of color grassroots initiatives in Toronto, Canada conducted between 2012 and 2014. During this period, I participated in and/or attended the events and programming of 13 initiatives and worked closely with 3 of these initiatives as a community organizer.I worked with Unapologetic between January to March 2013 as a volunteer and then from April 2013 to June 2014 as the initiative’s Accessibility Coordinator. During this time, I attended and helped to facilitate meetings, workshops, rehearsals and performances (Chin, 2018a). I took detailed fieldnotes within 24 hours of all events to document the observation/participation process. I also conducted semi structured interviews with individuals working at state funding initiatives that Unapologetic sought to access (n = 4) as well as Unapologetic Burlesque organizers, performers, and audience members (n = 36). Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed.Data analysis occurred while working with Unapologetic and conducting interviews. I used Microsoft Word and Excel to identify, code and track what I saw to be themes and patterns emerging from my fieldnotes and interview transcripts. Through further fieldwork, I would seek out information that would elaborate, contradict or expand my thinking of these themes and patterns. To facilitate this checking process, I held two community feedback sessions toward the end of my time in Toronto to communicate the preliminary results and receive feedback from study participants. Organizers, performers and audience members from Unapologetic (n = 14) came to both sessions. Detailed fieldnotes were taken from both sessions immediately after they were held and further incorporated into the research findings. This process of checking research themes and patterns continued even after I left Toronto as I continued to assess emergent explanations against further analysis of fieldnotes and transcripts. For more details about the methods of the study as a whole, please see Chin (2017).

3. In this article, I am concerned with political economy as a way of attending to the political dimensions of economic processes or how the production, circulation and consumption of resources are intimately related to workings of power (Di Leonardo, 1993; Irvine, 1989; Roseberry, 1998).

4. Such an approach does not account for how other kinds of labor may be fostered in support of neoliberal projects. For instance, Muehlebach demonstrates how the post-Fordist Italian state attempts to promote a culture of voluntarism by cultivating a kind of labor that is far from recognizable as entrepreneurial. In the context of the abandonment of welfarist modes of governance, Muehlebach shows how unemployed populations are called to engage in unwaged labor in the creation of a public based on compassion and care (Muehlebach, 2012). This approach also does not take into consideration how practices of entrepreneurship may be corralled into projects in support of alternative political arrangements. In his analysis of Cuba’s Salud y Turismo S.A., Brotherton advances the concept of a “socialist entrepreneur” to show how practices of entrepreneurship are mobilized to support a socialist economic infrastructure (Brotherton, 2008).

5. While immigrant status and racial minority status are not commensurate, there are closely related given that approximately three quarters of Canada’s immigrants come from countries that have typically been associated with racial minority status (Block & Galabuzi, 2011). Yet even while the majority of Canada’s immigrants are ascribed racial minorities, research has shown that non White immigrants have typically not done as well as White immigrants in the labor market. For instance, Banerjee (2009) has shown that White immigrants “catch up” to the earnings of their Canadian born counter parts at a much faster rate than nonwhite immigrants and receive higher economic returns for their education and work experience.

6. Many of the Toronto-based queer and trans of color community artists involved in this study similarly struggled financially. This is not to say that they do not derive any benefit from their labor as I show elsewhere that they may obtain positive regard and be accorded the status of community leader (Chin, 2018b).

7. For 2013 Shaunga and Kumari earned no more than $200 CDN for their work with Unapologetic.

8. kumari uses the pronoun “they” to describe themselves because they do not identify with either “he” or “she.” It is common for people to use pronouns like “they/them/their” as a way to demonstrate their disassociation with “male” “female” gender binaries.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan