Queering Black Greek-Lettered Fraternities, Masculinity and Manhood : a Queer of Color Critique of Institutionality in Higher Education
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2019 Queering black greek-lettered fraternities, masculinity and manhood : a queer of color critique of institutionality in higher education. Antron Demel Mahoney University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Africana Studies Commons, American Studies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Higher Education Commons, History of Gender Commons, and the Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Mahoney, Antron Demel, "Queering black greek-lettered fraternities, masculinity and manhood : a queer of color critique of institutionality in higher education." (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3286. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/3286 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. QUEERING BLACK GREEK-LETTERED FRATERNITIES, MASCULINITY AND MANHOOD: A QUEER OF COLOR CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION By Antron Demel Mahoney B.S., Bethune-Cookman College, 2005 M.Ed., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Pan-African Studies Department of Pan-African Studies University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2019 Copyright 2019 by Antron Demel Mahoney All rights reserved QUEERING BLACK GREEK-LETTERED FRATERNITIES, MASCULINITY AND MANHOOD: A QUEER OF COLOR CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION By Antron Demel Mahoney B.S., Bethune-Cookman College, 2005 M.Ed., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007 A Dissertation Approved on June 27, 2019 by the following Dissertation Committee: ____________________________________ Dr. Kaila Adia Story, Chair _____________________________________ Dr. Anne Caldwell _____________________________________ Dr. Ricky Jones _____________________________________ Dr. W. Carson Byrd ii Dedicated to the ones I loved and lost during this journey. Grateful for the ancestors and universe for their guidance. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I must thank my committee: Kaila Story, Ricky Jones, Carson Byrd, and Anne Caldwell. My committee not only challenged me over the past four years, but has been supportive, generous, and kind, making space for me to be the scholar I saw myself to be. Dr. Story, as chair and advisor, exemplified the best of this committee and I could not have asked for a better mentor and friend. I am forever grateful for the Department of Pan-African Studies—the faculty, staff and students—who have provided community and support, especially my incoming cohort family, Saleema and JC as well as Drs. Theresa Rajack-Talley and Joy Carew who were instrumental in shaping our transition and first-year in the program. My “push” into doctoral studies started long before I entered UofL. So many people inspired and encouraged me along the way. Thanks to all my Florida State University (FSU) friends and family who “aided and abetted” in the push to get me here, especially all the folks at the Center for Leadership and Social Change. My initial scholarship interest was shaped by the first doctoral studies courses I took at FSU with Drs. Tamara Bertrand Jones and Deana Rohlinger after much encouragement from Dr. Estee Hernandez. Furthermore, this study was partially inspired by some of my previous work with Dr. Shawna Patterson-Stephens at FSU. I have also been very fortunate to have met scholars I deeply admire, including Professors E. Patrick Johnson, Marlon iv Bailey, and Jeffrey McCune. Though the encounters were brief, they all offered great advice and encouragement. Also, special thanks to Zeta Alpha Delta Fraternity. Moreover, I could not have done this without all my friends and family, near and far, who supported me throughout this endeavor. Far too many for me to recognize them all. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the spoken/unspoken, named/unnamed prayers, texts/DMs, calls, and Ms. Cynthia from the airport. My parents—Lee, Gary, Anthony and Karen—for always believing in me. Tony and Xaivian for keeping me grounded and connected. Shout out to my Louisville roommates, Jarrod and Jakia, for making Louisville home, Sunergos Coffee for providing my go-to writing space and fuel, and UofL Multicultural Graduate Students Association, along with Dr. Craig and Ms. Yvette, for being a haven within the graduate struggle. Last but definitely not least, I am grateful for all the black queer folks I’ve been blessed to be in community with—it’s our labor and love that keeps me going. This is especially true of all the participants and subjects of this study. v ABSTRACT QUEERING BLACK GREEK-LETTERED FRATERNITIES, MASCULINITY AND MANHOOD: A QUEER OF COLOR CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Antron D. Mahoney June 27, 2019 Drawing heavily on Roderick Ferguson’s (2012) theory of institutionality, this dissertation constructs a counter-historical genealogy of racialized gender in higher education and U.S. society through the formation of black Greek-lettered fraternities. Ferguson argues that with the insurgence of minority resistance globally and domestically during the mid-twentieth century, hegemonic power took a new form. Instead of rejecting minority difference, power’s new network attempted to work through and with minority difference in an effort to absorb and restrict these radical formations within state, capital and academy frameworks—producing narrow or one-dimensional minority subjectivities. Established at the turn of the twentieth century, black Greek-lettered fraternities reflect the impetus and crossroads of power’s new archive as constituted through two competing yet complementing social movements—the racial uplift and the American fraternal movements—therefore, working within and against institutional normative logics of race, gender, sexuality, and class. As such, this study employs black fraternalism to reveal power’s post-WWII dynamics and its impact on black subjectivity vi within the academy and the broader U.S. political landscape, particularly in relation to black queer embodiment and politics. This study constitutes a queer of color critique. A queer of color critique centers the queer of color subject, and in doing so, exposes the often-obscured interconnected systems of race, gender, sexuality and class in cultural formations to map the contours of power propagated by state and capital forces. This study finds that as minority difference was institutionalized within the post-civil rights academy, black fraternalism was employed to facilitate and affirm institutional demands for equity and an idealized cis- heteropatriarchal black subjectivity, foreclosing on alternative gendered critical possibilities. As such, this study explores the development of black queer fraternal (BQF) formations, so-called deviant forms of black fraternalism that subvert its institutional masculine homosocial logics, to suggests a critical alternative black gender politics, freedom, memory, and normality. KEYWORDS: Fraternities; Higher education; Institutionality; Masculinity; Queer of color critique; Queer theory. vii TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1: QUEERING BLACK GREEK-LETTERED FRATERNITIES, MASCULINITY, MANHOOD, AND HIGHER EDUCATION ........................................1 Queering Black Fraternities and Institutionality: Situating the Study .................................3 Significance and Purpose of Study ....................................................................................10 Methodology ......................................................................................................................12 Chapter Overviews.............................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 2: BECOMING MEN: BLACK GREEK FRATERNAL TEXTUALITY AND ARCHIVE ................................................................................................................25 BGLO Research and the University Archive.....................................................................28 The Nation, the Academy and Fraternity ...........................................................................34 Becoming Men: The Making of an American Fraternal Archive ......................................38 Formulating Black Masculine “Excellence”: The Founding of Black Fraternities ...........50 The Black Fraternal Struggle: Gendered Sexuality and Socio-political Consciousness ...56 Black Greek Fraternal Textuality and Archive ..................................................................64