Black/Queer: An Ethnography of an Idea

Vortrag von Jafari S. Allen. Eine Kooperation von Gender Talk / Referat Genderforschung Universität Wien, Institut für Queer Theorie, Berlin und dem Institut für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften / Netzwerk für Frauenförderung / Post-Conceptual, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.

In this presentation, I will provide some broad outli- nes of my new work-in-progress, Black/Queer Here and There: An Ethnography of an Idea. This new work seeks to re-narrativize the meaning and significance of Black desire for political empowerment or autonomy; for fun and carefree play in the face of social suffering; and erotic desire for one another. Black/Queer Here & There traces power and differential agency in the lives and works of Black gender non-conformists and sexu- al minorities across borders of geography, nationality, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship - examining a variety of subjective motivations, scenes and scales.

Jafari S. Allen is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at Yale University, and works at the intersections of [queer] sexuality, gender and blackness. Allen is the author of the critical ethnography ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba, and editor of Black/Queer/Diaspora - a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. www.jafariallen.com