Transnational Perspectives on Black Queer Activism: Reflections from Cuba and Brazil

• In Event: 584 - Thematic Session. Transnational Sexual Diversity Politics

Abstract

This presentation challenges the invisibility of Black LGBT activism in Afro-Diasporic spaces, via reflections on my research on Black queer activism in Cuba and Brazil. In the case of Cuba, there is a history of lesbian activism, specially Black lesbian activism continued during the Revolutionary period. The history of Black lesbian activism in Cuba challenges the way in which we think about politics, specifically Black queer politics and social change. That is, in much of the academic scholarship on the 1970-1990s period there is an assumed pause, or state imposed silence on lesbian activism in Cuba. In the state’s near total restriction of what is considered to be “activism,” such as public protests directed at state policy, the assumption has been that there was no political activism occurring in Cuba, much less lesbian activism. Not only did lesbian activism continue within Cuba, during the 1990s period Black lesbian activism emerged as a part of Cuban Underground Hip Hop feminism. Meanwhile in Brazil, contemporary Black lesbian activism emerged within Brazilian Hip Hop feminism, itself a result of a longer history of Black feminist activism in Brazil. Hip hop, often described as a Black public sphere, is assumed to be absent of feminist activism, and by extension Black lesbian activism. In reflecting on the recent histories of the presence of Black lesbian mobilization in Cuba and Brazil, this presentation analyzes what types of discursive, and by extension ideological, moves are at play that renders Black queer activism, specifically transnational Black lesbian activism, not only as invisible, but as an impossibility.

Author

• Tanya Saunders, The Ohio State University