Pass Fe WhiteandHomestretch: Joan Miller's Satirical “Reads,” Refusals, and Affirmations

Abstract

This article examines Joan Miller's use of choreographic citation in her solos, Pass Fe White (1970) and Homestretch (1973). The solos “read” the desire to embody idealized, feminine whiteness in a critique of institutions for accessing national belonging—celebrity, education, and marriage—satirically exposing the gendered and racialized exclusions of the figure of the abstract “human” as “proper” citizen. Miller's work performs queer, Black feminist, diasporic desires for a world beyond Black and white nationalist logics, refusing to be “properly” placed in national hierarchies of female objecthood, while affirming the capacity to desire differently by proposing alternative terms for belonging in the world.