Browsing by Subject "Black queer studies"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Geographies of desire : (re)mapping Black LGBTT life in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
(2020-05) Reason, Joshua Kamau; Leu, Lorraine
Tracing Black LGBTT Bahian memory and being throughout Salvador da Bahia, this thesis illuminates the multifaceted, and at times contradictory, relationship that non-normative bodies share with the urban landscape. Concerned with the past, present, and future of Black LGBTT Bahian identity, I analyze how desire, a repertoire of sexual, romantic, and platonic practices in consumption and pleasure-making, serves as a through line for the disciplining, delimiting, and (de)construction of the Black LGBTT body across space-time. Comprised of a performative engagement with Salvador’s historic center, a (re)mapping of the city’s waterfront areas, and an analysis of the experiments in Black futurity and possibility taking place in low-income peripheral neighborhoods, this thesis demonstrates that desire is always at play in determining whether or not non-normative bodies are deserving of space or, under the most extreme circumstances, life. A multimodal ethnography that brings together critical geography, performance studies, and Africana studies, I argue for geographies of desire as a conceptual framework to understand how Black LGBTT bodies are read into/out of space in the city. By centering the racial-gendered-sexual treatment of the Black Brazilian body in analyzing the physical and ideological construction of urban space, this work illustrates the global threat that exclusionary planning, global capitalism, and White supremacy pose to the lives and well-being of Black queer and trans folks. This threat to life can only be ameliorated by attending to the myriad spatial, temporal, cultural, and affective anxieties that Black queer and trans bodies are forced to bear for their survival.
Hip-hop urbanism, placemaking, and community-building among Black LGBT youth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
(2018-08) Oliver, Devin Antuan; Sletto, Bjørn; Faria, Caroline
The city of Rio de Janeiro has become a global gay tourist destination as well as political hub for the local and national LGBT movement. However, despite the city’s gay-friendly, racially diverse reputation and pro-LGBT political gains, violence has increasingly endangered LGBT Brazilians amidst the rise of extreme conservativism in both government and society. This violence is not only gendered but also racialized, disproportionately impacting Black women and LGBT youth. Rio has become particularly renowned for a dual, paradoxical legacy: that of Black spectacle, celebration, and sexual freedom as well as that of great inequality, violence, and Black premature death. According to Smith (2016), this paradox is intentional—an “afro-paradise”—which simultaneously fetishizes and threatens Black lives. Numerous structural forces have transformed Rio into a hostile racial-sexual terrain in which Black LGBT youth must survive and build community. This critical ethnographic study examines: 1) how Rio’s Black LGBT youth negotiate violence and exclusion in everyday life; and 2) how they use physical and virtual sites as well as their own creative expression to claim their stake in the production of urban space. I ask, how do young Black LGBT people build political power when virtually locked out of state institutions and formal politics? I contend that Black LGBT young people are consistent placemakers across many spatial realms and scales, creating sites of self-making and political intervention through new media, art, events, and popular education. I highlight three particular spatial tactics: 1) occupying physical urban spaces and claiming territory; 2) Diasporic self-making through digital activism; and 3) leveraging cultural labor as young entrepreneurs and kinfolk. The key to youth’s success has been the everyday strategic use of space, culture, and creative expression—a strategy of “infrapolitics”. Black LGBT youth enact a form of “hip hop urbanism”, in which they continuously make something out of nothing and quite literally put their creative expressions to work. Lastly, I argue that Black LGBT youth’s placemaking practices demonstrate alternative ways of building power and innovating communal support systems, all in ways that do not entirely depend on state institutions, party politics, or even spatial proximity.
Trans-Atlantic re-turnings : a trans/black/diasporic/feminist auto-account of a black trans Brazilian woman’s transitioning
(2015-05) Santana, Antonio Jose Silva; Tinsley, Omise'eke Natasha, 1971-; Richardson, Matt T
This report constitutes an auto-account that theorizes on/as my process of transitioning as a black trans Brazilian woman. In order to do so, I work with the concept of transitioning in conjunction the idea of re-turn by drawing mainly from studies within the realm of black feminism, black studies and Trans Studies. For this text, I elect the transitioning along temporalities, embodied sexualized gendered racialized experiences in different geographies I cross, with focus on my connections with Brazil.
Uncertain times : contingency & Black temporal imaginations
(2022-05-16) Moore, Nathan Alexander; Young, Hershini Bhana; Livermon, Xavier; Smith, Cherise; Walter, Patrick F.; Hill, DaMaris B.
This dissertation is concerned with rethinking spatial temporality through diasporic speculative practices. This dissertation will explore how Black diasporic artists use speculative arts practices to negotiate their relationship to the past. Instead of the past being behind us, these artists insist on reformulating how we think about time to address the lingering presence of past violence that is never gone. I look specifically at Blackness, queerness and non-normative gender formations in order complicate the notion of history and the past that appears in these speculative practices. These speculative practices include visual art, performances and novels from the late 20th to early 21st century to restructure how we think about diasporic place and time. This dissertation will focus on the various theorizations of time that appear in these speculative practices as I think these are essential to articulating how Black artists conceive of time against narratives of linear progression.