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Things which aren't to be given names: Caribbean Feminist understandings of same gender desire and sexual
relations
Shana L. Calixte
Department of Women’s Studies
York University, Toronto, Ontario
Within popular imperialist constructions of
the inhospitable, homophobic and violent ‘third world’, the diaspora
is hailed by both Caribbean people and others as the space of utopia,
where freedom to practice same gender sexualities is available for those
who can find their way there. Yet within the literature, competing
discourses seek to explain the experiences of those in the Caribbean and
the diaspora.
As a Caribbean feminist working in the
diaspora, I argue that the ‘global gay’, a seemingly universal
western-influenced definition of sexual identity, is ineffectual for
understanding the experiences of Caribbean and Caribbean diasporic
experiences of same gender desire and identity, as indigenous scripts have
and continue to be created that do not index this phenomenon.
I also suggest that diasporically located
women find themselves caught, between western ‘global’ ideas of gay
identity and indigenous theories of the same. As a result, they create a
hybrid diasporic ‘queer’ identity, that combines experiences of both
the local and the global relying heavily on diasporic experiences of myth,
memory and nostalgia to create and inform their sexual identities.
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