Intro by Queering Belonging curator Bimbola Akinbola (performance studies, Northwestern University)
While the contentiousness of community has been taken up by several scholars in African and African Diaspora Studies, there remains a tension between the knowledge that family and community is messy and complicated, and the romanticization of the type of belonging that is speculated to have been experienced by Africans prior to colonization and even still today for those “who never left.” The theme of this mini-series, Queering Belonging, speaks to work that disrupts overly simplified and romantic conceptualizations of belonging and community in African contexts. In this series, Bimbola Akinbola, Xavier Livermon, Keguro Macharia, and Tiffany Mugo consider how community, family, and kin are being redefined and reimagined on the African continent and in the diaspora. By reflecting on queer approaches to belonging and other articulations of non-normative relationality in African and diasporic contexts, they consider how taking a deep look at where and how people find belonging leads to a more expansive and liberatory understanding of the nature of community and kin.
Bimbola Akimbola
Bimbola Akinbola is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Working at the intersection of performance, visual culture, and literature, Bimbola’s scholarly and creative work is concerned with conceptions of belonging and queer worldmaking in African diasporic cultural production. She is currently working on her first book manuscript which examines the creative work of contemporary Nigerian diasporic women artists whose work, she argues, strategically utilizes disbelonging as a critical tool and strategy for queer worldmaking. View her work at bimbolaakinbola.com