Performing Family: A Utopian Vision NU R A I SHA H SH A F IQ
Hope. It is a fragile thing. Most find it futile in the face of a world so vast in its inequality that even the act of imagining kinder realities is most often mocked as naïve. Systems of oppression are so deeply embedded within the functioning of our society that not only is it difficult to imagine different ways of structuring our world, but a great many individuals feel severely disempowered and without agency to actually pursue efforts in realizing such conceptions. In an era of global capitalism and rampant neoliberal ideology, the struggles one faces in improving the ills of society are no longer so well-defined. Who are we fighting? What are we fighting? As a well-known film theorist Robert Stam indicates, “the enemy now takes a more diffuse, abstract and quasi-ungraspable form” (3). Yes, sometimes the root of abject suffering manifests itself within a person – some politician, a CEO, a drug lord, or any other person who stands on a socio-economic model that pits capital above human life – but often, these people stand in for institutions of power, institutions that prescribe certain means of existing within our world that normalizes inequality as a way of maintaining the status quo. One such institution is the family. How family has typically been understood is bound by the model of the heteronormative nuclear family. Such a definition may not necessarily suffice for those who do not conform to normative ways of being (e.g. sexuality and gender), and thus isolates these individuals from others. Humans are socially conditioned to expect love and this model subjects them to the violence of prejudice and discrimination. Such a definition deprives people of the means to fulfill the basic need for dependency and intimacy – be it physical, emotional or social – that is inherent to human nature (Davies and Robinson 42). Without the support of family in all its forms, from emotional stability to financial security, one is left vulnerable in a society that privileges the very few at the expense of so many others. Thus, where does hope lie, if one is to challenge such a deeply ingrained and vastly
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