Cobra Affects: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Afro/Asian Diasporic Cultures

• In Event: Sea Change: Flight, Migration, and Transformation in Black Diasporic Cultures

Abstract

Reading Texas based, Black, queer burlesque dancer Lola Lestrange’s interpretation of Nagini from JK Rowling’s book series Harry Potter alongside Hollywood’s legacy of racialized animality in films like The Indian Tomb, this paper traces the imagery of cobras as they travel between Afro/Asian diasporic cultures and signify race, sexuality, memory and divinity. Building upon Edouard Glissant’s “poetics of relation,” this essay weaves together performance studies, Black feminist epistemologies and Buddhist studies to identify a “poetics of diaspora” for apprehending the migratory pathways of gendered and racialized embodiment as they are mapped by the creative labors of queer, femme Afro/Asian subjects.

Presenter

• Natassja Gunasena, University of Texas Austin