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A Transnational Feminist Reading of Two Spoken Word Poets

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A Transnational Feminist Reading of Two Spoken Word Poets Queering the Nation: a Transnational Feminist Reading of two Spoken Word Poets by piKe krpan A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by piKe krpan 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-45227-1 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-45227-1 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Queering the Nation: a Transnational Feminist Reading of two Spoken Word Poets piKe krpan Master of Arts Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto 2008 Abstract This thesis analyzes the performance poetry of diasporic Jamaicans Staceyann Chin and d'bi young to comment on narratives of sexualized citizenship in the United States, Canada and Jamaica. In contrast to the picture of Jamaica's homophobic violence as hyper(hetero)sexual offered by gay activists, media and travel narratives in the North, Chin and young's work suggests the complexity of Jamaican sexual cultures within a history of slavery and colonialism. I interpret their art as critical commentary on how queer communities in the North are not always oppositional to heteronormative state practices, but sometimes work to uphold and sustain practices of neoimperialism. Mobilizing concepts of erotic power and autonomy, I suggest that Chin and young articulate embodied countermemories of desire, self-love and self-in-community that combat the long-term silence imposed on speaking about black women's sexualities, both in Jamaica and in the North. Acknowledgments I never thought I could produce a piece of writing of this scope. I think it is because I didn't really do it by myself. I had no idea how much support I would get from the following people: my mom Helen Wright for supporting me no matter what I do; my sister Laurena Newman and my nephews for conversations about waterslides, Kraft Dinner and the weather when schoolwork was too intense; my partner Jay Kiff, who nursed me through late-night panic attacks and gave me the right kinds of drugs; friends AH Sauer, Sarah Kardash, Ariella Meinhard, Cory Legassic, Christian Durand, Nicole Hopp, Margo St. Amour, EJ Shu, Moheb Soliman, Kate Cairns, Karen Petkau, David Servos, Lisa Uyede, Suzanne Dietrich, Griffin Epstein, Thea Lim, Darryl Leroux, Deb Wise-Harris, Tim Groves, Rachel Matlow, Sarah Lamble, Loree Erickson, Jen McMullen, Chanelle Gallant, Victoria Kannen, Lindsay Shane, Ajamu Nangwaya, and the members of d'bi.young's women's writing group for constant encouragement, distraction, and loving and politicized community; my supervisor Alissa Trotz and my committee member M. Jacqui Alexander, for relentless critique and for taking on my project in times of transition; other professors Sheryl Nestel, J. Edward Chamberlin, Rinaldo Walcott, Kari Dehli and Heather Sykes who critiqued and praised my work in progress. Thank you all, and no, there's no PhD! in Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: How I came to this work 1 Chapter 2: Imagining Jamaican Women in the Queer Diaspora 10 2.1 Queering the Nation, Queering the Diaspora 12 2.2 Respectable Sexualities: Here, There and Everywhere 18 2.3 Performing the Word: Transnational Oral Performance Cultures 28 Chapter 3: The Most Homophobic Country on Earth? Jamaica and the Construction of Hyper(hetero)sexuality 34 3.1 The Racialization of Violence: Global Gay Media on Jamaica's Homophobia.. .38 3.2 Conflating Violence: Danger to Tourists, or Danger to Jamaicans? 43 3.3 Same-Sex Marriage and Sexual Respectability in Canada 49 3.4 The Conditions of Silence: Black Women's Sexuality 50 3.5 Sexual Exceptionalism: Gay Around the World 54 3.6 Homophobia and National Identity in Neocolonial Jamaica 58 3.7 Conclusion 63 Chapter 4: Breaking Silence on Sexuality: Mapping the Erotic in the Poetry of Staceyann Chin 65 4.1 Uses of Erotic Power and Autonomy 70 4.2 Chin's Vision of Transnational Erotic Community 76 4.3 "Chosen" Exile: Naming Homophobia, Naming Racism 79 4.4 The Other Side of Paradise 81 4.5 Accessing Respectable Sexuality: Coming to Gay Marriage 83 4.6 Speaking to Gay Power: Chin's Address at the Games 86 Chapter 5: Embodied Storytelling and Desire: d'bi.young's Countermemories of Loving 90 5.1 A Brief History of Dub: Word, Sound, Powah 94 5.2 From Folk to Dub: Questions of Language, Gender & Performance 99 5.3 blood.claat: Reclaiming an Erotic Vernacular 107 5.4 Approaching Erotic Autonomy via Self-Love 110 5.5 Countermemories: Remembering Alternative Futures via Biomythography 114 Chapter 6: Conclusion 123 Reference List 129 IV 1 Chapter 1: Introduction: How I came to this work As a middle-class white woman growing up in small-town Canada, the Jamaica most available to me was mysterious and full of peril. This Jamaica was a timeless storybook of colonial adventure: awash with cruel and strange "natives," replete with luscious "natural" beauty, and thick with licentious piracy and possibility. This Jamaica was a faraway place that had little to do with me, except as a source of pleasure and excitement. When I began writing this thesis, colleagues, friends and family would ask me, why Jamaica? It was a profoundly important question because I had to undergo a particular and difficult journey to unpack the Jamaica of my upbringing. At times, I felt this thesis project was an extension of the anthropologist's colonial fascination with places not my own, a fascination often propped up by my undergraduate studies in the field of international development. I felt out of place, inappropriate, and intrusive in asking questions about communities I didn't feel wholly a member of. At other times, the project felt like an important way to unpack the silences around colonialism and racialization that came with coming to know my gender, race, sexuality and politics as a middle-class white queer woman. During this journey, unraveling this powerful representation of Jamaica meant seeing how its exoticism and supposed distance from me does have something to do with me. This realization, that this project meant both self-confrontation and self-determination, produced a whole new set of feelings; I felt nervous, unsure, guilty, and shameful about my privilege to ask questions as a graduate student without any guaranteed benefit (and perhaps some real risks) to those artists I discuss in this project. These feelings were very different from the feelings of pleasure and self- worth that Jamaica had once promised me as a tourist and as a development worker. This discomfort felt like the right direction if I was serious about making a commitment to anti-racist pedagogy and queer liberation starting from within. Over time, my best answer to the question of 2 why Jamaica? became one that emphasizes the presence of that Jamaica, and many other Jamaicas, in the North: in the fantasy of adventure and tourism promised to Canadian tourists; in the threat leveraged by reports of homophobic violence in Jamaica, or in the reports of Jamaican gangs here in Toronto; in the lives of migrant women workers exploited to make the Canadian economy function; in the performance work of Jamaicans who make Canada's culture, who are Canadians, too. In this sense, Jamaica isn't so far from me at all. In fact, I began to see how my self-perception - my achievements, my self-worth, my loves, my dreams - were intensely connected to what kind of Jamaica was allowed to take up space in the Canadian imagination. In this introduction, I use my own story of coming to this awareness as an analytical map to the issues I examine in this thesis. My Canadian undergraduate education in international development studies and women's studies left me feeling profoundly unsettled by the ways that these particular disciplines had "disciplined" my learning, particularly in reference to race and racism. In development studies, my critical learning about the path to economic, social and cultural "progress" was often overshadowed by the desire of students in the program to gain the kind of education that would make them employable by state agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency.
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