“I Am What I Am”: disco, queer anthems, and Black femme labor

This article examines the willfully overlooked role of Black femme labor in the creation and sustenance of disco culture, arguing that this labor was fundamental to the development of the post-1970 queer subjectivity, “gay.” Proctor argues that Black femme labor is not peripheral to disco. Rather, it facilitates “coming out” for an emergent post-1970 queer subjectivity: “gay.” Yet, the labor of Black femmes in disco has been systematically erased and expropriated, serving to bolster the formation of this universal queer subjectivity. What is trafficked in via black femme labor expended to produce disco is the ontological queerness of black femininity (engendered by the figure of the black femme). Said ontological queerness makes legible gay subjects and their untethering from sexological theories of queerness toward queerness as a mode of self-actualization and identification. Turning to two of the most influential disco anthems, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” Proctor deracinates the “disco anthem” from “the epistemology of the closet,” “queer futurity/queer negativity,” in order to theorize black femme labor as essential to the production of post-1970 queer subjectivities.