Wah Eye Nuh See Heart Nuh Leap: Queer Marronage In The Jamaican Dancehall

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Authors

Moore, Carla

Date

2014-01-30

Type

thesis

Language

eng

Keyword

Homophobia , African Retention , Performance , Jamaica , Performativity , Legal Geographies , Caribbean , Black Geographies , Blindspot , Queerness , Geo-psychic Blindspot , Performance as Personhood , Dancehall , Resistance Technologies , Queer Visibility , Blackness , Queerness as Praxes , Identity Politics , Modernity , Queerness of Blackness , Dancehall Geographies , Sexuality , Plantation Technologies , Colonial Debris , Queer Imperialism , Unvisibility , Colonialism

Research Projects

Organizational Units

Journal Issue

Alternative Title

Abstract

This thesis explores the interweaving of colonial and post-colonial British and Jamaican Laws and the interpretive legalities of sexuality, compulsory heterosexuality, and queerness. The research project begins by exploring the ways in which the gendered colonial law produces black sexualities as excessive and in need of discipline while also noticing how Caribbean peoples negotiate and subvert these legalities. The work then turns to dancehall and its enmeshment with landscape (which reflects theatre-in-the round and African spiritual ceremonies), psycho scape (which retains African uses of marronage and pageantry as personhood), and musicscape (which deploys homophobia to demand heterosexuality), in order to tease out the complexities of Caribbean sexualities and queer practices. I couple these legal narratives and geographies with interviews and ethnographic data and draw attention to the ways in which queer men inhabit the dancehall. I argue that queer men participate in a dancehall culture—one that is perceived as heterosexual and homophobic—undetected because of the over-arching (cultural and aesthetic) queerness of the space coupled with the de facto heterosexuality afforded all who ‘brave’ dancehall’s homophobia. Queer dancehall participants report that inhabiting this space involves the tactical deployment of (often non-sexual) heterosexual signifiers as well as queering the dancehall aesthetic by moving from margin to centre. In so doing, I argue, queer dancehall queers transition from unvisible (never seen but always invoked) to invisible (blending into the queered space) while also moving across and through, as well as calling into question, North American gay culture, queer liberalism, and identity politics.

Description

Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-30 13:32:15.082

Citation

Publisher

License

This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.

Journal

Volume

Issue

PubMed ID

External DOI

ISSN

EISSN