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Contemporary Queer Literatures of the Caribbean : From Martyrs to Mercenaries
Willis, Kedon (2025): Contemporary Queer Literatures of the Caribbean : From Martyrs to Mercenaries, in: Susan Brähler und Kerstin-Anja Münderlein (Hrsg.), Diversity : Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives ; Student Conference Proceedings 2024, Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, S. 15–27, doi: 10.20378/irb-111811.
Author:
Title of the compilation:
Diversity : Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives ; Student Conference Proceedings 2024
Publisher Information:
Year of publication:
2025
Pages:
ISBN:
978-3-98989-055-8
Language:
English
DOI:
Abstract:
Queer writers from the Caribbean in recent years have reconceptualized queer theory as a potent form of anticolonial critique. This paper examines how Jamaican writer Marlon James, in his 2016 novel The Brief History of Seven Killings, deconstructs cultural artefacts such as sayings and folk songs to (1) unearth their forgotten or overlooked anticolonial registers and (2) reconstitute them as vehicles for postcolonial utopian thinking. James, I argue, moves away from tropes that emphasize queer stigmatization as a discrete social problem and more broadly attends to the contemporary transnational maneuvers on trade, the environment and foreign policy that continue to undermine the sovereign agency of postcolonial nations like Jamaica. James does, however, offer glimpses of hope through the enlightening potential of music, film, and language, as well as through fleeting moments of samesex intimacy scattered throughout the novel. These moments, I argue, collude to ask the reader to consider the transgressive alliances necessary for imagining the future destabilization of Euro-American colonial logics still operating within the framework of neoliberal capitalism.
GND Keywords: ;  ;  ;  ; 
James, Marlon, 1970 -
Karibik
Jamaika
Literatur
LGBT
Keywords: ;  ;  ;  ; 
Jamaica
Marlon James
queer theory
utopia
postcolonialism
DDC Classification:
RVK Classification:
Type:
Contribution to an Articlecollection
Activation date:
December 1, 2025
Permalink
https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/111811