Tracing "Gay Liberation" through Postindependence Jamaica

Bibliographic Data

ID2986459
AuthorsM Chin (0000-0002-2282-5076, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume31
Issue2
Pages323-341
Publication date2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePublic Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0899-2363 • E-ISSN: 1527-8018
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/08992363-7286849
OpenAlexW2943736142
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited34

In this article, the author complicates the current positioning of Jamaica within international discourses as exceptionally homophobic by focusing on the island in the 1970s as a site through which to understand how the struggle for sexual agency among subjects of same sex desire becomes possible. In 1977, Jamaica witnessed the birth of one of the Caribbean’s first gay activist organizations, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM), during the democratic socialist administration of the newly independent island’s then prime minister Michael Manley. By situating GFM in relation to Jamaica’s national self-determination efforts and a vibrant transnational politics of what was then termed “gay liberation,” this article contributes to a queering of Caribbean history and to a decentering of the West in global histories of sexuality

Human sexuality · Liberation movement · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society

Tools

Open DOI