Global queer literary resistance: contemporary Caribbean communality

Lockwood-Moran, T.O., 2023. Global queer literary resistance: contemporary Caribbean communality. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the critical importance of contemporary queer Caribbean writing as a disruption of boundaries: this disruption is important because a group belonging based on identity and community recreates a familiar binary, of insiders and outsiders, that can form an impasse for the global reach of queer resistance. By critically engaging with writing by Dionne Brand, Shani Mootoo, Marlon James, Nalo Hopkinson, Shivanee Romlachan, Staceyann-Chin, Karen Lord, Kei Miller, and Andre Bagoo, this thesis highlights the transnational impact of queer Caribbean literary resistance through queer communality.

The chapters in this thesis interpret the movements, relationalities, modes, ethos, and fights of contemporary queer Caribbean writing that resist straightness as a force inseparable from racism, both British colonial impositions in the anglophone Caribbean. My first chapter interprets the twisting movement of queer resistance informing my second chapter’s position in favour of relating against straight-forwardness. My third chapter reads queer Caribbean life writing as a mode for mapping survivorship which connects with a communal ethos of non-conformity examined in my fourth chapter. My final chapter proposes queer Caribbean writing as a globally focussed Carnival fight, amongst the embedded queerness of Carnival as a defiance against a straight status quo. The intersections of oppression which remain exceptional to the anglophone Caribbean inform my argument that contemporary queer Caribbean writing is an apex of anti-colonial resistance.

The queer Caribbean writing explored in this thesis is read to expose queer freedom as a phenomenon created by each queer person against their specific local context, in lieu of waiting for the end of anti-queerness as a global condition. This thesis interprets the importance of queer Caribbean writing for understanding connections made through difference; specific literary texts are explored to inform and reflect forms of queerness and Caribbeanness without a homogeneity, but instead a queer resistance within the global resonances of queer communality.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Lockwood-Moran, T.O.
Contributors:	Name Role NTU ID ORCID Rushton, A. Thesis supervisor ECM3RUSHTA orcid.org/0000-0001-8326-9395 Ball, A. Thesis supervisor AAH3BALLA orcid.org/0000-0003-2185-629X
Date:	November 2023
Rights:	The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	07 Nov 2024 11:12
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2024 11:12
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52525

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