Queer of colour hauntings in London's arts scene
Performing disidentification and decolonising the gaze. A case study of the Cocoa Butter Club
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4367400 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laurie Mompelat (0000-0001-7132-5273, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 445-463 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1464700119871850 |
| OpenAlex | W2969861597 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 10 |
This article analyses the representational stakes of queer of colour performance, by taking the case study of the Cocoa Butter Club: queer of colour cabaret night in London. Within a British landscape that has silenced queer subjectivities of colour at the intersection of race, gender and sexuality, I explore the potential of QPOC performance to redress historical erasure. To enact their presence, I argue that the Cocoa Butter Club's performers showcase their collective disidentification from the scripts pre-assigned to their bodies within the European imagination. By doing so, they disrupt hegemonic representations of queerness and racialised otherness, making room for a multitude of queer of colour becomings kept otherwise invisible from public view. Such disidentifications unleash 'ghosts' into the public space, spectres of elided subjectivities and unresolved coloniality within a city that likes to think of itself as a post-racial LGBT haven. Drawing on ethnographic material and interviews with performers, I analyse what happens when such queer of colour hauntings reach the audience's gaze. I consider their unsettling effects in relation to the white gaze, as well as their empowering function in relation to desiring QPOC subjects, seeking reflections of themselves in spectatorship
Aesthetics · Art · Club · Gaze · Human sexuality · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Gender Studies · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |