The Dying Swan: Cultural Nationalism and Queer Formations in Trinidad and Tobago

Queering Traditions, Decolonizing Queerness: A Literature Review of Queer Worldmaking Tradition Bearers

“…When discussing the worldmaking theory of transforming heteronormative ritual elements into gender-and sexuality-diverse affirming ritual elements, I employ the term "queer" to signal my alignment with the queer theorists whom I ground my research study in. I also follow queer of colour scholar Antron D. Mahoney (2019) in "situat [ing] culture as a site of material struggle by which...queer people of colour, through a particular cultural labour, are able to survive and produce alternative world-making" (p. 237).…”

“…The literature review also revealed that many cultures, tradition, and rituals originated from impurity-that is, syncretism and hybridity. Festas Juninas in Brazil (Nicholus, 2020), Vodou in Haiti (Chapman, 2020;Hammond, 2012;Nwokocha, E., 2020), Santería in Cuba (Escalante, 2019;Strongman, 2002;Vidal-Ortiz, 2011;Wilcox, 2018), Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago (Mahoney, 2019), hijra culture in South Asia (Émon and Garlough, 2015;Hossain, 2012;Loh, 2011), and Santacruzan from the Philippines (Manalansan, 2003) are all traditions with a hybrid, 'impure' birth. It is also relevant to note that because of the syncretic origins, many of these "worlds" are by nature more accommodating to the creation of new worlds within them.…”

“…While there are strong arguments advocating for rejecting colonial history in an absolute, radical, counteridentifying way, Muñoz cautions us that counteridentification often reinstates the same discourse as the dominant structure (1999, p. 97). Mahoney (2019) illustrates this point as he reminds us of a Caribbean history that included elite postcolonial leaders who used heteronormativity as a politics of respectability, "demonstrat[ing] to imperial powers they were capable of managing the new nation-state regimes" (p. 240). This politics of respectability is not unlike gaining citizenship through assimilating to colonizer and settler nation ways of being in order to prove your worth and belonging as a minority subject in diaspora.…”