Charting the Yeast Radio Virus: Exploring the Potential of Critical Virology

Abstract

This interpretive account lays the methodological foundation for a specific form of personal narrative inquiry: viral criticism. Specifically, the author considers how a popular gay-themed podcaster's use of persona moves through cyberspace and “infects” audiences. The essay also chronicles how personal narrative, as an interpretive act, affects/infects an object of study.

Keywords:

• Gay
• Persona
• Personal Narrative
• Podcasting
• Viral Criticism

The author would like to thank Richard Bluestein/Madge Weinstein and the entire first “wave” of queer podcasters for their inspiring, important work.

Notes

To help distinguish between reconstructed moments of the past presented in situ (“being there”) and instances of scholarly reflection (“being here”), I borrow Tami Spry's “being there”/“being here” sequencing from her essay “Performing Autoethnography.” Spry's organization is an adaptation of Geertz's celebrated distinction of “being there” and “being here.”

I use the term “gay” instead of “queer” to more ethically reflect the identities implicated in my interpretive account. When the term “queer” is used in a qualitative research project, cultural critics should make an “effort to display the various ways in which sexuality intersects and interacts with race, gender, and age” (Fox, “Gay Grows Up” 39). Because I focus almost exclusively on the performances of two gay, white men, I feel more sincere using the term “gay” (instead of “queer”). “Gay” is sometimes used as a catchall, male generic label meant to represent lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities. In this paper and other contexts, “gay” represents the specific subjectivities of gay men. My reliance on the term “gay” should not inhibit readers from recognizing and enjoying some of the queer implications of the Yeast Radio podcast. Queer performance aesthetics reject rigid adherence to heterosexist paradigms and celebrate brash, excessive productions that reveal gender as a social construct. While several aspects of Yeast Radio may be interpreted as “queer,” other elements of the show re-inscribe heteronormativity, sexism, and racism. A queer critique of the podcast would, in my mind, be ethically bound to focus on the intersectional dynamics of the aforementioned social constructs. Queer criticism is not the goal of this project.

I use the term online here to stipulate where most audience members consume and respond to Yeast Radio performances. “Online” and “real life” binaries misrepresent the fields in which Bluestein performs; the “online”/“real life” dyad also obfuscates my observation of his persona performances.

• Studying online “fields,” according to Markham, requires interpretive scholars to “shift from geographic to computerized spaces” and “from place to interaction” (801). This description, unfortunately, reifies a binary and hierarchical relationship between cyberspace and physical place. Viral criticism challenges the binaries (e.g., “from geographic to computerized space”) that Markham references. Geography and virtual space, as I argue throughout this essay, co-constitute one another. Material place and digital interaction are dialogic. Fenske speaks to multi-directional transactions between corporeality and virtuality, when she eloquently argues that:

• Corporeality and virtuality are unified. Theory is practice/practice is theory. Exteriors and interiors co-produce each other. Art and life are connected, one is not meant to transcend the other. Both content and experience, form and production, in other words, exist inside the unified act in constant interaction. It is only through the practice of isolating one from another that the impression of dissociation is produced. (“Aesthetic” 9)

• Viral criticism calls for a reconsideration of how interactions take place in and move through dialogic fields.

I would also describe this personal narrative as “contaminating.”

Bluestein has read this essay and agreed to let me share the details of his planned deception. After days of contemplation, he decided to simply ignore Juan's mother's request, rather than deliver her a bag filled with cigarette ash and seashells.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ragan Fox

Ragan Fox (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2006) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, Long Beach.