Queering Blackness : cultures populaires et représentations noires non-binaires à l'ère post-Obama (Paris 8)

Queering Blackness : cultures populaires et représentations noires non-binaires à l'ère post-Obama

Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis

Jeudi 17 novembre 2022

Journée d’études organisée par TransCrit (Transferts Critiques anglophones)

Conférence plénière : Alfred L. Martin (University of Iowa)

https://queerblackness.sciencesconf.org/ 


Scroll down for English 


Queer, fluid, gender-queer, nonconforming, gray, neutrois, agender, non-binary, pan… autant de termes, mots-valises, emprunts ou raccourcis qui rivalisent à nommer le rejet des normes sociétales états-uniennes, si influentes à l’international. Mais, dans cette société américaine, ce rejet revêt-il, lui aussi, des tendances normatives, disproportionnellement racisées, socialement marquées ? Ou bien émane-t-il fondamentalement des populations les plus opprimées, à la fois hautement vulnérables et combatives ? 

Ces questionnements évoluent en parallèle de la longue lutte pour les droits civiques aux États-Unis, toile de fond théorique et militante qui se poursuit aussi bien avec l’élection du premier président noir d’une nation qui, seulement cinquante ans plus tôt, séparait sa population en fonction de sa race, qu’à travers l’essor du mouvement #BlackLivesMatter sous la présidence Trump, la pandémie et ses inégalités. Aussi, que cela signifie-t-il qu’un corps non-blanc, faussement accusé d’être né hors-sol, dont le deuxième prénom est homonyme de l’ennemi public à l’international des années quatre-vingt-dix, accède à la plus blanche des maisons américaines ? Quelles implications sa position de Président ont-elles eu alors qu’il a dû, avec sa famille hétéronormée africaine américaine, passer la main à son premier critique, parangon d’une Amérique nostalgique du « bon vieux temps », époux d’une troisième femme d’origine slovène et patriarche de multiples lits ? Les cartes de l’hétéronormativé cisgenre WASP sont-elles dorénavant redistribuées aléatoirement au sein d’un château dont l’équilibre ne serait plus dépendant de critères normatifs obligatoires ? Ou, au contraire, gardent-elles leurs pouvoirs de domination, tels les atouts d’une partie éternellement rejouée ? Les cultures populaires reflètent ces interrogations qui parcourent la société états-unienne et offrent de nouveaux modèles sans pouvoir ou vouloir toujours contrecarrer des stéréotypes bien ancrés d’hyper-virilité et/ou hypersexualité noires américaines, parfois soulignés par leur déni même.

Lors d’une journée d’études organisée par le laboratoire TransCrit (Transferts Critiques anglophones) de l’Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis, nous accueillerons des communications autour de la représentation des identités noires qui remettent en cause toute binarité et ses déploiements intersectionnels au sein des cultures populaires africaines américaines – musique, images, univers ludique et graphique – de 2008 à nos jours. Sans prétendre que les cultures du XXIe siècle aient inventé le rejet de la binarité, ni que les personnes d’ascendance africaine en auraient été exclues par le passé, il s’agit d’en présenter les incursions récentes dans la culture populaire plutôt que communautaire, ainsi que l’attrait des masses pour des représentations longtemps invisibilisées. 

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Les propositions de communication en anglais ou en français (titre + 500 mots + corpus ou sources bibliographiques) et courtes notices biographiques sont à envoyer conjointement à anne.cremieux@univ-paris8.fr et yannick.blec@univ-paris8.fr jusqu’au 30 avril 2022. Réponse début juin 2022. 

Les doctorant·e·s sans possibilité de faire financer leur venue peuvent nous envoyer un CV et une lettre explicative de leurs besoins de financement d’un billet de train en France (ou somme équivalente depuis l’UE). 

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Queering Blackness: Non-Binary Black Representations in Post-Obama Popular Cultures 
 
Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Keynote speaker: Alfred L. Martin (University of Iowa)

https://queerblackness.sciencesconf.org/ 

 
Queer, fluid, gender-queer, nonconforming, gray, neutrois, agender, non-binary, pan… new words, reclaimed and coined, contend to name the rejection of the U.S. social norms that so widely influence the world. Yet, within U.S. society, does this very rejection also assume normative, disproportionally racialized, class-marked trends? Or does it fundamentally spring from its most oppressed populations, both highly vulnerable and decisively combative? 

Such questions are inseparable from the theoretical and activist backdrop of the long fight for Civil Rights in the United States. Divisive times have seen the election of the first black president of a nation that, only fifty years earlier, separated its population based on race, followed by the #BlackLivesMatter movement launched in 2013, only to roll into the Trump era and through a highly unequal pandemic. What does it mean that a non-White body, falsely accused of being born abroad, who shares his middle name with the 1990s foreign public enemy, rules from the whitest of houses? What influence has Obama’s position had when, along with his African American heteronormative family, he had to hand the keys over to his greatest critic? Flanked by his Slovenian-born third wife, Trump was a defender of America’s nostalgia for the “good old times,” and the proud patriarch of multiple families. Are the cards of WASP cisgender heteronormativity now randomly positioned in a house whose balance no more depends on mandatory normative criteria? Or, on the contrary, do they retain their power as trump cards of a game on constant replay? Popular cultures reflect these key questions and offer new models without necessarily having the power or the will to counter well-established stereotypes of African American hyper-virility and/or hyper-sexuality, sometimes underlined by their very disavowal. 

For this one-day symposium organized by TransCrit at the University of Paris 8, we welcome papers about the representations of Black identities that have challenged binaries and their intersectional expansions within African American popular cultures—music, images, graphics, and games—since 2008. Without suggesting that rejecting binaries is an invention of the 21st century, nor that people of African descent have not fairly contributed their share to the process, we wish to explore how such phenomena have been reflected in popular rather than marginalized cultures and how they have attracted mainstream interest for representations made invisible for so long. 

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Proposals, in English or French (title + 500 words + corpus or bibliographical sources), and a short bio must be sent before April 30, 2022 jointly to: anne.cremieux@univ-paris8.fr and yannick.blec@univ-paris8.fr. A response will follow by June 2022. 

 Ph.D. candidates without research funds to support their travel can send their resume and a cover letter to apply for funding of a train ticket within France (or similar fee). 
 
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Bibliographie/y 

Coles, Roberta L (2009). The Best Kept Secret: Single Black Fathers. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Constantine-Simms, Delroy (ed.) (2001). The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities. Los Angeles: Alyson Books. 

Cremieux, Anne (2019). “From Queer to Quare: The Representation of LGBT Blacks in Cinema.” In Mark A. Reid (ed.), African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, p. 255-274.

Drake, Simone C. & Henderson, Dwan K. (ed.) (2020). Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Dunning, Stefanie K. (2009). Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ferguson, Roderick A. (2004). Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: UM Press.

Ferguson, Roderick A. (2005), “Or our normative strivings: African American studies and the history of sexuality.” Social Text, 23, p. 85-100.

Harris, Angelique (2012). “‘I’m a Militant Queen’: Queering Blaxploitation Films.” In Mia Mask (ed.), Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 217-232.

hooks, bell (2013). Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge. 

Johnson, E. Patrick (2001). “Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 21.1, January, p. 1-25.

Johnson, E. Patrick & Henderson, M.G. (ed.) (2005). Black Queer Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Johnson, E. Patrick (ed.). No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 2017.

Julien, Isaac and Kobena Mercer (1998). “Introduction: De Margin and De Centre.” Screen 29 .4, Fall, p. 2-10.

Keeling, Kara (2019). Queer Times, Black Futures. New York, NY: NYU Press.

King, J.L. (2004). On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of “Straight” Black Men who Sleep with Men. New York, NY: Broadway. 

Li, XinLing (2019). Black Masculinity and Hip-Hop Music: Black Gay Men Who Rap. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lorde, Audre (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg: The Crossing Press.

Martin, Alfred L., Jr. (2020). “For scholars… When studying the queer of color image alone isn’t enough.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 17.1, p. 69-74.

Martin, Alfred L., Jr. (2015). “Scripting Black Gayness: Television Authorship in Black-Cast Sitcoms.” Television & New Media, Vol. 16.7, p. 648–663.

Martin, Alfred L., Jr. (2021). The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mask, Mia (2012). “Who’s Behind that Fat Suit? Momma, Madea, Rasputia and the Politics of Cross-Dressing.” In Mia Mask (ed.), Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 155-174.

Muñoz, José Esteban (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Muñoz, José Esteban (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Nataf, Z. Isiling (1995). “Black Lesbian Spectatorship and Pleasure in Popular Cinema.” In Colin Richardson & Paul Burston (eds.), A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

Parkerson, Michelle (1987). “Answering the Void.” The Independent 10.3, April, p. 12-13.

Smalls, James (2019). “The Past, Present and Future of Black Queer Cinema.” In Mark A. Reid (ed.), African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, p. 275-297.

Smalls, Shanté Paradigm, co-ed. (2014). Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 24.1: All Hail the Queenz.

Smalls, Shanté Paradigm (2011). “‘The Rain Comes Down:’ Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity,” American Behavioral Scientist 55.1, p.86-95.

Snorton, C. Riley (2014). “On the question of ‘Who’s Out in Hip Hop’.” Souls 16.3, p. 283-302.

Stryker, Susan (2006). The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.

Watkins, S. Craig (1998). Representing, Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Welbon, Yvonne (1998-2017). “African American Lesbian Produced Film, Video, and Multimedia.” http://www.sistersincinema.com/forum/lesbianfilms.html 

Welbon, Yvonne and Alexandra Juhasz (2018). Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.