Visibility, desire, despair, and belonging are all essential aspects of queerness. Various literary texts and memoir experiences reflect these ideas firsthand. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is a poignant memoir of queer desire, partner violence, visibility, belonging, and kinship. Machado’s experiences as a queer woman of color are vivid and poignant, as is her writing. I will be examining In the Dream House in relation to three aspects of queer identity we have read about: desire and despair; visibility and invisibility; and kinship and home.
Machado spends much of the text talking about her relationship with “the woman in the dream house”: her partner who begins to abuse her. Exploring both the initial love, and violence, within her relationship, Machado presents a complex account of the desire and despair that is so central to queerness. In “Photographies of Mournings”, Jose Esteban Munoz reflects upon the mourning and melancholia that is central to the queer experience. For Munoz, melancholia for queer and BIPOC individuals is a central part of everyday life (Munoz, Photographies of Mourning, pg 74). In addition to the despair that queer individuals face on a regular basis, there is also an aspect of communal mourning, wherein the queer community mourns “as a “whole”, or, put another way, as a contingent and temporary collection of fragments that is experiencing a loss of its parts'' (Munoz, Photographies of Mourning, pg 72). The idea that despair, specifically a routine melancholia, is central to the queer experience is further corroborated by Machado. Machado reflects upon the despair she felt during her abusive relationship, describing the worst part as “the world was out to kill you both. Your bodies have always been abject…And so you aren’t just mad or heartbroken: you grieve from the betrayal” (Machado, Chapter III). Melancholic despair is central to queer everyday life; exacerbating this despair is the fact that Macahdo was hurt and abused by one of her one, another queer person, a person who had probably experienced that same queer despair, the societal oppression and who Machado had, for a while, found companionship in. When society is out to continually oppress queer individuals, it is community and solidarity that helps them deal with their despair. So when someone you found belonging with betrays you and hurts you irrevocably, the queer despair is compounded, as in Machado’s case. When further reflecting upon queer intimate partner violence and narratives of the same, Machado brings up interesting points regarding visibility as well.
Machado reflects upon how “narratives about abuse in queer relationships are tricky in the same way. Trying to find accounts, especially those that don’t culminate in extreme violence, is unbelievably difficult. Our culture does not have an investment in helping queer folks understand what their experiences mean” (Machado, Chapter III). There is such a lack of queer narratives and archival of queer lineage, especially when it comes to navigating queer intimate partner violence. Furthermore, Machado highlights how talking openly about queer intimate partner violence risks establishing a stereotype of the queer community as violent, providing an internal scapegoat for the oppression of queer people. When navigating these tricky waters, it is hard for an individual such as Machado to reconcile with their visibility as a queer person, and their invisibility as an abused person. As Foucault said, visibility can often be a trap. Machado quotes Pat Parker: “If you want to be my friend, you must do two things. First, forget I am lesbian. And second, never forget I am a lesbian” (Machaco, Chapter III). Machado struggles with the complexities of visibility as a queer person. In this chapter of her book, she highlights that to constantly be viewed as a queer person, every action you take, every act you experience, has the tendency to be construed as a queer act. Thus narratives of violence in a queer relationship have consequences for the societal view of the queer community. At the same time, the absence of healthy, accurate narratives makes it seem that violence can never exist in queer relationships, creating a double bind. Machado craves “the idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. It is simply a state of being-one subject to politics, to its own social forces, to larger narratives, to moral complexities of every kind” (Machado, Chapter I). This sentiment of Machado promotes bigger questions regarding queer visibility. How do we navigate being visible, yet deconstructing the dominant, essentialized, monochromatic view of the queer experience? Machado and Munoz both reflect upon the complexity of queer emotion and identity as well, characterizing the queer experience as involving various coexisting yet conflicting emotions such as desire and despair.
Machado further elaborates on how narratives of queerness and gender roles impact experiences of violence and queer identification. She states that “the queer community has long used the rhetoric of gender roles as a way of absolving queer women from responsibility for domestic abuse” (Machado, Chapter IV). The essentialized idea of women as submissive or “gentle”, prevents us from recognizing female perpetrated intimate partner violence, especially in queer relationships. For Machado, this essentialization and gender-role rhetoric prevents her from reckoning completely with her experience of abuse in a lesbian relationship. Additionally, as mentioned before, queer narratives and archives are often distorted. Machado emphasizes that “certain people’s narratives and their nuances are swallowed by history; we see only what pokes through because it is sufficiently salacious for the majority to pay attention” (Machado, Chapter III). Many queer archival narratives are those of despair and violence, but not necessarily intimate partner violence. The idea that the queer narratives that persist are those that appeal salaciously to the majority is disheartening to think about. Due to this, there is a lack of narratives that are helpful for queer people themselves, in defining their lineage and identity. Munoz talks about the idea of disidentification, a form of disassociation from dominant rhetoric and narratives that do not serve queer people. “The theory of disidentification that I am offering is meant to contribute to an understanding of the ways in which queers of color identify with ethnos or queerness despite the phobic charges in both fields (Munoz, Disidentifications, pg 11)”. This concept of Munoz’ regarding phobic charges is especially prominent for Machado, a queer, brown woman. Munoz’ idea is that disidentification can help minoritarian subjects survive and exist without the restraints of stereotypes or damaging rhetoric. For Machado, disidentification may help her reckon with her own experiences of abuse and exist outside the narrow rhetoric she is struggling with.
In alignment with the idea of survival and peaceful existence is the concept of kinship and home. Machado is wary and disdainful of the idea of safety, as she has suffered so much abuse and loss. “Safe as houses” is something closer to “the house always wins”. Instead of a shared structure providing shelter, it means that the person in charge is secure; everyone else should be afraid” (Machado, Chapter II). Machado reflects that there is often no definite safety to be found in this world, especially for queer people. Nevertheless, as Macahdo depicts though her vivid writings, queer folks can create their own joy and kinship within their community, through the weaving of fantasies and structures such as the “dream house”.The overall structure of the fictional dream house as a medium to convey Machado’s real-life experiences is emblematic of queer folks creating alternative kinship structures, spaces of fantasies within which to find solace and better reckon with their experiences. We see this in Paris is Burning, and ball culture in general, wherein the idea of the house becomes public for queer folks, something to be shared and find community within. While Machado has been hurt deeply by other queer people in her life, and continues to struggle with the systems of oppression surrounding her, she builds her own fantasy in her dream house.
In the Dream House is a poignant exploration of queer identity and queer intimate partner violence. Much of what Machado explores has been written about by queer theorists such as Munoz. For Machado, the queer experience is constituted by: ideas of desire and despair that plague queer life, specifically relationships; how visibility as a queer individual impacts experiences of queer pain and suffering, such as abuse; how queer narratives and rhetoric fall short in addressing crucial topics; and how queer people dealing with this whirlwind of emotions and struggles seek out alternative kinship structures and fantasies of home in which to find belonging. Looking at Machado through the lens of Munoz, and examining the complex emotions and aspects of queerness, allows us to understand how queer folks reckon with experiences of abuse and oppression.