Queer Indiscipline, Decolonial Revolt: The Production of Undisciplined Knowledges in the Neoliberal Age

As an intervention into a domesticated academic knowledge production and an increasingly normative queer theorizing, Queer Indiscipline, Decolonial Revolt asks for the proliferation of other modalities of thinking and writing. The context of such interrogation is the neoliberal restructuring of the university which comfortably accommodates criticality. Where criticality has lost its sting, this paper calls for a daring indiscipline opposing political, public, and scientific disciplining. This brings practices of doing knowledge and not the knowledges as such into attention. An intimacy between the queer and the undisciplined is established by referencing the resistance to assimilationist politics and practices as queer theory’s principal asset. Yet, undisciplined know¬ledges are not only geared towards challenging the bounds of the discipline(s), but also, and more broadly, towards decolonial futures. Queer Indiscipline, Decolonial Revolt explores various moments of concomitant unlearning and improvisation on and beyond the academic stage. The piece conducts three non-linear explorations. The first part analyzes the making of a hierarchical knowledge machine as part of capitalist modernity and revisits moments of queer and black queer theorizing that challenge the dividing lines between high/low, sensible/nonsensical, intellectual/corporeal, theory/practice, speech/chatter, etc. The second part discusses the masterful subject as the agent of knowledge. While the persistence and the pervasiveness of such master fantasy gets acknowledged, the verve of this paper is oriented towards the modality of queer dispos¬session. The final section gives way to the sabotage inherent in the unruly rhythm of life. Such sabotage is tested to counteract the frameworks, formats and concepts which articulate intellectuality on a more fun¬damental level. This advances the deconstruction of intellectuality to the terrifying and beautiful point where intellectuality is co-extensive with the social.

Black Church Rumor

In 1992, Jet published “James Cleveland Infected L.A. Youth with HIV, $9 Mil. Lawsuit Claims,” which detailed how the Chicago-born gospel musician had not only allegedly sexually abused his foster son, Christopher B. Harris, but had also “[given] him the AIDS virus.” This article takes this incident of rumor or accusation as a critical opportunity to think about the archival reality of Black queer sexuality, on one hand, and sexual violence in Black gospel music history on the other. Using the legal documents from Christopher B. Harris v. Irwin Goldring as Special Administrator of the Estate of James Cleveland and commentary from Cleveland's contemporaries, it exhumes Cleveland from dusty church closets for consideration in the history of HIV and AIDS in African American Protestant church and gospel communities and in Black queer studies, ethnomusicology, and gender and sexuality studies. Further, it theorizes “Black church rumor” as a lens for Black queer religious studies and argues that Cleveland's perceived queer sexuality distracted from Harris's allegations of sexual abuse. Thus, it situates Cleveland—the person, the preacher, and the gospel legend—in the literature on “down low” sexuality and explicates the implications of Cleveland's legacy and role in Black gospel music production.

Reimagining the Face of HIV/AIDS

Chapter 5 features a discussion of the queer biopic’s relationship to PWA photography and media representation, looking finally to contemporary media practices to reflect upon the current AIDS media landscape. The queer biopic does not function outside of other modes of photography and video; instead, questions of portraiture are foundational to any understanding of the biopic form. The chapter moves through the history of PWA photography, providing readings of photography by Therese Frare, Nicholas Nixon, David Wojnarowicz, and Nan Goldin. The chapter’s turn to contemporary HIV + multimedia artist Kia LaBeija examines the legacies of black queer performance that emerge in her video and photographic work.

Beyond Bieber Fever

The chapter inquires into Justin Bieber’s 2020 comeback, which followed a hiatus in his career in the late 2010s. After detailing some of the central themes and events in Bieber’s early career, it presents analyses of two music videos: Yummy (2020) and Holy (2020). Yummy is characterized by camp elements that fuel Bieber’s exhibition of a puerile playfulness, whereas Holy presents an earnest portrayal of a down-on-his-luck oil worker who finds solace in religious faith and romantic commitment. Addressing the flexibility with which Bieber adopts contrasting gender expressions in these videos, the author contemplates a number of questions related to the continual reinvention that characterizes the careers of many pop artists. The chapter also discusses how issues related to the sexualization of food, the gendering of work, and the social constraints associated with marriage are navigated within a pop context. If both Yummy and Holy seem to expand the boundaries of masculinity, they are simultaneously characterized by heteronormative elements that undermine such an effort. It is therefore concluded that Bieber’s strategic borrowing from the cultures and practices of black, queer, and working-class men increases his masculine capital without challenging existing relations of privilege and marginalization.

My Grandfather’s Face: A Black Contemplative Educator’s Discovery of Unknown Relatives through DNA

This narrative essay offers an exploration of the power and importance of family origin stories as a grounding aspect of collective and individual identity for Black people. The author, drawing on his experience as a Black queer contemplative scholar and college professor, gives attention to the question of whether the truth is necessary or beneficial in the creation of family narratives and what each successive generation is allowed to know. This question is explored through the story of the unintended positive and negative consequences the author experienced as a result of submitting DNA to Ancestry.com.

Ongoing Conversations: Collaboration across positionality, time, and space

This article explores positional artistic and curatorial motivations for ethical collaborative work in the context of contemporary arts and social justice. Case studies include exhibition installations in settler institutions that challenge dominant, monolithic representations of what “belonging” means in contested sites like Canada. In doing so, this ongoing work between white settler curator and Black queer artist reflects on some of the decolonizing possibilities and limitations of critical cross-cultural collaboration and exhibition-making over time and across space.

‘Nothing to practice’: Julius Eastman, queer composition, and Black sonic geographies

I trace the musical performances and life of Black, queer composer Julius Eastman, considering Eastman’s oeuvre as a heterotopia defined by both revolutionary freedom and tragic capture. Eastman lived on the margins of 1970s and 1980s avant-garde minimalist music scenes unable and unwilling to comport to white norms of esthetic innovation and cultural acceptability. Eastman’s infusion of camp performativity with minimalist music and his Blackness and queerness challenged (and ultimately nullified) the avant-garde esthetic claims made by white composers. Whereas the white avant-garde insisted upon a tabula rasa, a separation from history to create (supposedly) new sonic forms, Eastman’s melding of genres, provocative song titles, playful disposition to the world, and his very presence in concert halls and university auditoriums challenged the racialized norms embedded within minimalist music. Eastman ruptured assumed codes of composition and performance yet was punished for these transgressions, barred from work and ultimately dying alone and homeless at the age of 49. Pursuing a creative life encased by erasure exemplifies the ways in which Blackness is parantological, constantly escaping from the fixity of racial ontologies that erase Blackness in the name of white supremacy. Examining Eastman’s artistic work and conflict with minimalist music prefigures the contemporary moment in which efforts to prioritize materiality, affective reality, and being over culture, signification, and discourse often belie white racialized standpoints. Intertwined with these theoretical concerns, I sketch how Eastman disrupts overwrought notions of scale, direction, rigidity, and intent through what Camilla Hawthorne calls ‘everyday practices of Black space-making’.