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.
Xavier Livermon is an Associate Professor in the Feminist Studies Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Livermon’s research exists at the intersection of popular culture, gender, and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa and the African Diaspora. His first book Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space & Subjectivity in Post-apartheid South Africa was published in 2020 with Duke University Press. He is also the co-editor along with Adrienne Davis and the BSE Collective of Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital. He has published widely in the fields of African Popular Culture and African Queer Studies in journals including GLQ, Feminist Studies, and Black Music Research Journal. His research interests include African Cultural Studies, Black Popular Music, Black Performance, Black Queer Studies, HIV/AIDS, and African Diaspora Studies. Follow him on Twitter at @XmanPhD.