Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Major Professor

Kim Golombisky, Ph.D.

Committee Member

David Rubin, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Tatsiana Shchurko, Ph.D.

Keywords

Black Feminist Autoethnography, Caribbean, queer of colour, rave

Abstract

When I talk about “dancin’ in the dark,” I mean three things: 1) the moments that are written off as ordinary, the ephemeral yet joy-filled moments that seem hardly worthy of further reflection; 2) the act of dancing and experiencing joy against the backdrop of state-sanctioned homophobia in a dominant heteropatriarchal regime; and 3) queer people existing locally in the Caribbean region, a region in the metaphorical dark, typically mystified or diminished by western framings of the Caribbean as simply a vacation destination or an underdeveloped graveyard of colonization. Yet, queer people not only exist in this region, but we experience joy and belonging, in and among our community. This paper is the result of a Black feminist autoethnography, one that connects my personal moving experiences at SOTU Nights to a larger cultural purpose for queer identities in Trinidad and Tobago. I analyse three different scenes describing moments where I experienced immense joy. To unpack these moments, I use queer joy and affect theory as theoretical frameworks. By looking at joy as praxis and as affective, I offer this autoethnography as an alternative way of studying queer identities in the Caribbean region where sexuality is not a primary base of identification. I assert that queer joy is alive even within, under, and among a repressive society.

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