We affirm ‘Black Queer Space’ as an analytic of becoming – this challenges Western notions of in/out by understanding praxis as inhabiting in uninhabitable spaces of subjectivity

Twentieth Century America" (2023). Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses. 52.

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Black Feminism and Queer Theory’s emphases on examining the identities and amplifying the voices of marginalized Black women and queer bodies and selves indicate that the dominant hegemony silences such marginalized people, leaving them stranded within the liminal, constricting white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist confines. However, these people resisted—specifically Black queer women. One can envision Black queer people as residing on the circumference of society, specifically Black queer [ascribed] women. Despite this exclusion, Black Queer Studies as praxis enables the onlooker, or Black queer woman themselves, to not only observe but to practice active inclusion and celebration of Black queer women in a way such that their complex identities and interiorities are at the forefront in the struggle for liberation. Made evident by the previous chapters of this thesis, Black queer women’s occupation of two differing, yet not mutually exclusive, types of spaces (location and uninhabitable space) dictated how their queerness manifested in such spaces. However, their occupation was not dictated in a way that their agency was revoked by the dominant society. In fact, the voluntary and involuntary inhabitance and movement within locations and uninhabitable spaces symbolize the blurring of the line that separates both kinds of intention. Their existence as “out” or “closeted” Black queer women moving through various geographic sites and abstract spheres was innately subversive in that they did not relegate themselves to the shadows—they were active members of society. Black queer women inhabiting uninhabitable spaces theoretically—such as the space in between—exposes Black Queer Space as positioned outside suppressive liminality. Black queer women “passed” through different identities and spheres, as Snorton states, to transgress controlling notions of how identity is static rather than fluid. Black queerness is a reminder that identity is not fixed and is inherently unstable. I endeavor to employ McKittrick’s concept of “respatializations,” in order to imagine a world in which Black queer women escape the matrix of power through such ways of “respatializing” and tracking Black women’s geographies. Black Queer women are situated so that their beings exist on the circumference within the bounds of the dominant hegemonic society rather than inside of this society. However, archival analyses of the pieces left behind by such women from the early to mid-twentieth century reveal the complexity of a Black queer woman’s identity. These written remnants speak to how a larger Black public sphere viewed Black queer womanhood. The Black Press’s biases toward queerness and womanhood intertwined to target Black queer women and portray them as predatory and sexually deviant. However, the Black Press also brings to light the ways in which Black queer womanhood at the time presented itself physically and where Black queer women took up space. Black queer women existed openly and were perceived by Black society in various ways that connect to Black society’s ideological leanings at the time, specifically the politics of respectability. These politics partially dictated how the abject within an othered society— meaning Black queer women in the Black community, respectively—were depicted publicly. The sensationalizing of Black women’s queerness, whether that be in positionality, sexuality, and/or gender, served the purpose of exposing a largely sexually repressed Black public to perceived scandalous sexuality through readership. Furthermore, when examining the Black Press, the paradox of simultaneously present hypervisibility and invisibility of the Black queer women presents itself as a complicator to the common belief that Black queer women existed in the dark underbelly of society. As chapter three claims, Black lesbianism/queerness in sexuality and/or gender regarding location stood in the public eye through heteronormative sites such as bars and dance halls. Even those public sites coded as queer, such as lesbian bars, adhered to heteronormativity and misogynoir through the racialized gender roles lingering in their atmosphere—marginalizing Black butches and femmes in spaces that were supposedly for them. Left to find their own sites of safety in the search of reprieve from consistent subjugation, Black queer women formed community in gathering collectively and cultivating their own unique networks. In private locations like house parties, Black queer women made space for themselves and bonded. Despite this, there was not always peace and concordance in the Black lesbian community. Private households were sometimes sites of interpersonal violence which, in a way, posits Black queer women as somewhat normative in the fact that intimate partner violence was not solely reserved for the heterosexual. Moreover, close proximity between Black queer women generates questions regarding how the nature of a queer relationship led to either positive communitybuilding or conflict. Chapter three also contends that interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships were their own form of uninhabitable space. Seeing relationships as a space can be done through thinking of the Self conjoined with another or one’s own in a manner such that the inter/intrawoven selves possess a gap in between them—due to the nature of an expanding singular, personal identity. These interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, made more concrete in comprehension through case studies such as personal testimonies, uncover the nuance in relationships themselves. The interpersonal relationship combines people’s selves to leave room in between them to exist as individuals. These types of Black lesbian relationships presented themselves differently (such as butch and femme/”man and wife”). On a more conceptual level, each person has a unique, singular relationship with themselves where they are able to perceive themselves internally and express themselves externally. Gender expression is but one example of intrapersonal relationships as a Black queer woman had to understand herself within her own mind in order to cultivate her own queer appearance—both stereotypically queer or more covertly queer. In both kinds of relationships, however, the Self lies in its own uninhabitable space—a symbol of Black Queer Space on the molecular, personal level. In imagining Black Queer Space as praxis, the “body/flesh” as well as the “erotic” concepts are integral in this imagination of Black queer women as experiencing liberation and freedom from subjugation. Black women travel through the body and the flesh in different contexts that disturbs the idea of a stark, strict binary. Therefore, Black women challenge Western notions of dichotomies by radically moving between different states of being—another manifestation of “passing.” To be in the erotic is to be oneself unapologetically and embracing that subjective aspect of sexuality that each woman possesses. To extend these two concepts to Black queerness, Black women being in the flesh as liberatory while feeling the erotic means that Black women are engaging in the process of (re)claiming their subjectivity despite abjection. This subjectivity is queer in its positionality, and it can extend to sexuality and/or gender as these forms of queerness are increasingly othered identities. The central aim of this thesis revolves around the analyzing and amplifying of Black queer women in the early to mid-twentieth century. Black queer women, existing in abjection, are often excluded from the narratives of both Black and queer histories. Through delving into the archive through tangible examples of Black queer [ascribed] women and their lives, there is the personal description of Black queer women collectively and the personalization of the Black queer woman as an individual. Space is the theoretical framework with which to understand the subjectivities of such women. Location and uninhabitable space function as a means to site Black queer women, but it is secondary to the identities and actions of Black queer women themselves. Their individuality and communal navigation of different types of space in an oppressive society prove that they were autonomous human beings who made their own decisions despite being the Other. Historically grounding such a project offers a new perspective on Black queerness itself. Carefully and extensively looking at the past charts a fresh path for the future towards Black [queer] women’s liberation that will, inevitably, lead to the liberation of all from the matrix of power.