ENGL 579 A1: Queer Freedom in Caribbean/Canadian Narratives

M. Bucknor

Since the mid-twentieth century, Caribbean writers have engaged in forms of literary activism through their representations, and critiques of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia within the Caribbean and its diaspora. These writers, not only document and narrativize aspirations towards queer freedom in the Caribbean and beyond, but they also provide representations which inform the tactics and strategies of queer activists throughout the region. The Caribbean, especially through the lens of local popular culture, is often understood as a place in which queerness is external to domestic conceptualizations of national sovereignty and citizenship. Put differently, queer identity is often positioned through juridical and social constructions as in tension with Caribbean postcolonial civil society. In the wake of neoliberalism and increased globalization, Canada has often been seen as an asylum for queer subjects seeking refuge from the Caribbean. Canadian Caribbean literary and cultural production brings these two worlds together in a way that exposes both the limits of freedom for, as well as the accommodations of, queer subjects in both regions. Like Rinaldo Walcott’s Queer Returns, which examines the relationship between multiculturalism, diaspora, and queer subjectivities, this course asks how do narratives of belonging and sexual politics in the Caribbean diaspora articulate modes of freedom beyond the nation-state?; how does Caribbean Canadian writing help to complicate our understandings of queer subjects in both Canada and the Caribbean?; and what complexities surround the matrices of sexuality, race, ethnicity and national belonging for queer Canadian Caribbean subjects? Through concepts — many of which emerged within queer studies, Caribbean studies, and Diaspora studies — such as “homosociality” (Sedgwick), “queer marronage” (Cummings), “queer elsewhere” (Ellis), and “queer returns” (Walcott), the course will examine the question of liberty for queer subjects in texts by Dionne Brand (Trinidadian-Canadian), Austin Clarke (Barbadian-Canadian), Michelle Mohabeer (Guyanese-Canadian), Shani Mootoo (Trinidadian-Canadian), Makeda Silvera (Jamaican-Canadian) and H. Nigel Thomas (Vincentian-Canadian).