There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life
by Jafari S. Allen
Duke University Press, 2021 eISBN: 978-1-4780-2189-6 | Paper: 978-1-4780-1459-1 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-1366-2 Library of Congress Classification HQ76.96.A454 2021
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK In There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls “Black gay habits of mind.” In conversational and lyrical language, Allen locates this sensibility as it emerged from radical Black lesbian activism and writing during the long 1980s. He traverses multiple temporalities and locations, drawing on research and fieldwork conducted across the globe, from Nairobi, London, and Paris to Toronto, Miami, and Trinidad and Tobago. In these locations and archives, Allen traces the genealogies of Black gay politics and cultures in the visual art, poetry, film, Black feminist theory, historiography, and activism of thinkers and artists such as Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Essex Hemphill, Colin Robinson, Marlon Riggs, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. Throughout, Allen renarrates Black queer history while cultivating a Black gay method of thinking and writing. In so doing, he speaks to the urgent contemporary struggles for social justice while calling on Black studies to pursue scholarship, art, and policy derived from the lived experience and fantasies of Black people throughout the world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Jafari S. Allen is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami and author of ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba, also published by Duke University Press.
REVIEWS
“A genre-transcending meditation on one of the most undertheorized periods in Black queer history, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a timely and necessary account of what the period leading up to, during, and after the long shadow of the 1980s means for the current moment in Black queer world-making. At once poetic and playful, it pushes the boundaries of traditional scholarship, providing a methodology for analyzing Black queer culture. To use the vernacular of the ballroom children, folks are going to gag at its deft reads, melodic writing, and creative rendering of Black queer history.”
-- E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women
“In this innovative and generously envisioned book, Jafari S. Allen presents an unprecedented consideration of Black queerness as he weaves together a loving tapestry of Black feminist and Black queer theorists that spans half a century of critical work. Suffused with the ‘Blackfullness’ of queer love, loss, and world-making, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a lyrical, incisive, history-making, and paradigm-shifting work.”
-- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders
"A book to re-read in order to reach new depths, to see the reflections from the disco ball from yet another angle. . . . I strongly recommend this book to scholars and student within academia, across disciplines, to artists, writers, and activists outside of academia – to anyone seeking to explore and become more intimate with Black gay (and queer) habits of mind."
-- Rebecka Rehnström Anthropology Book Forum
"There’s a Disco Ball Between Us anthologizes desire as a glittering communal practice of Black/gay habit: as a moment of recognition between kith if not kin, as acknowledgement even if in quarrel, shifting lives in and out of time, dancing freedom."
-- Sharanya Full Stop
"This text does not shy away from the intellectual tradition of Black feminist affect in which it exists. Instead, Allen invites the reader into an experience that can work, if they choose to work it. Allen’s register is sharp, to the bone, and it shines. At times, I wondered if I was grown enough to know these things, or well read enough to show up to this conversation and hang. . . . For Allen, Black gay life is a refraction of fantasy and action. His critical ethnography builds upon a Black feminist drive to create embodied narratives. . . . His prose and rigorous engagement with the long 1980s invite the reader into conversation with a litany of elder co-conspirators."
-- Charlene A. Carruthers Public Books
"Jafari Allen’s There’s a Disco Ball Between Us has been so helpful and clarifying for me. . . ."
-- Ashon Crawley Public Books
"At once an intellectual history, a manifesto, a self-reflexive ethnography, and a memoir, Allen’s book is a genre-defying text that revises our understanding of the Black experience."
-- Frank Andrew Guridy Public Books
“Allen has skillfully woven together the experiences of an ‘anthologized generation’ without falling into the trap of eliding them. Rather, like a disco ball, the many reflections and refractions come together to form a theory of Black gay life that is at once coherent and infinitely diverse.”
-- Baird Campbell American Anthropologist
TABLE OF CONTENTS
An Invitation ix Introduction. Pastness Is a Position 1 I. A Stitch in Space Time. The Long 1980s 25 1. The Anthological Generation 27 2. "What It Is I Think They Were Doing, Anyhow" 61 3. Other Countries 76 4. Disco 118 5. Black Nations Queer Nations? 139 II. Black/Queerpolis 165 6. Bonds and Disciplines 167 7. Archiving the Anthological at the Current Conjuncture 192 8. Come 221 9. "Black/Queer Mess" as Methodological Case Study 245 10. Unfinished Work 261 III. Conclusion. Lush Life (in Exile) 295 Acknowledgments 313 Notes 325 Bibliography 379 Index 403
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If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life
by Jafari S. Allen
Duke University Press, 2021 eISBN: 978-1-4780-2189-6 Paper: 978-1-4780-1459-1 Cloth: 978-1-4780-1366-2
In There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls “Black gay habits of mind.” In conversational and lyrical language, Allen locates this sensibility as it emerged from radical Black lesbian activism and writing during the long 1980s. He traverses multiple temporalities and locations, drawing on research and fieldwork conducted across the globe, from Nairobi, London, and Paris to Toronto, Miami, and Trinidad and Tobago. In these locations and archives, Allen traces the genealogies of Black gay politics and cultures in the visual art, poetry, film, Black feminist theory, historiography, and activism of thinkers and artists such as Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Essex Hemphill, Colin Robinson, Marlon Riggs, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. Throughout, Allen renarrates Black queer history while cultivating a Black gay method of thinking and writing. In so doing, he speaks to the urgent contemporary struggles for social justice while calling on Black studies to pursue scholarship, art, and policy derived from the lived experience and fantasies of Black people throughout the world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Jafari S. Allen is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami and author of ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba, also published by Duke University Press.
REVIEWS
“A genre-transcending meditation on one of the most undertheorized periods in Black queer history, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a timely and necessary account of what the period leading up to, during, and after the long shadow of the 1980s means for the current moment in Black queer world-making. At once poetic and playful, it pushes the boundaries of traditional scholarship, providing a methodology for analyzing Black queer culture. To use the vernacular of the ballroom children, folks are going to gag at its deft reads, melodic writing, and creative rendering of Black queer history.”
-- E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women
“In this innovative and generously envisioned book, Jafari S. Allen presents an unprecedented consideration of Black queerness as he weaves together a loving tapestry of Black feminist and Black queer theorists that spans half a century of critical work. Suffused with the ‘Blackfullness’ of queer love, loss, and world-making, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a lyrical, incisive, history-making, and paradigm-shifting work.”
-- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders
"A book to re-read in order to reach new depths, to see the reflections from the disco ball from yet another angle. . . . I strongly recommend this book to scholars and student within academia, across disciplines, to artists, writers, and activists outside of academia – to anyone seeking to explore and become more intimate with Black gay (and queer) habits of mind."
-- Rebecka Rehnström Anthropology Book Forum
"There’s a Disco Ball Between Us anthologizes desire as a glittering communal practice of Black/gay habit: as a moment of recognition between kith if not kin, as acknowledgement even if in quarrel, shifting lives in and out of time, dancing freedom."
-- Sharanya Full Stop
"This text does not shy away from the intellectual tradition of Black feminist affect in which it exists. Instead, Allen invites the reader into an experience that can work, if they choose to work it. Allen’s register is sharp, to the bone, and it shines. At times, I wondered if I was grown enough to know these things, or well read enough to show up to this conversation and hang. . . . For Allen, Black gay life is a refraction of fantasy and action. His critical ethnography builds upon a Black feminist drive to create embodied narratives. . . . His prose and rigorous engagement with the long 1980s invite the reader into conversation with a litany of elder co-conspirators."
-- Charlene A. Carruthers Public Books
"Jafari Allen’s There’s a Disco Ball Between Us has been so helpful and clarifying for me. . . ."
-- Ashon Crawley Public Books
"At once an intellectual history, a manifesto, a self-reflexive ethnography, and a memoir, Allen’s book is a genre-defying text that revises our understanding of the Black experience."
-- Frank Andrew Guridy Public Books
“Allen has skillfully woven together the experiences of an ‘anthologized generation’ without falling into the trap of eliding them. Rather, like a disco ball, the many reflections and refractions come together to form a theory of Black gay life that is at once coherent and infinitely diverse.”
-- Baird Campbell American Anthropologist
TABLE OF CONTENTS
An Invitation ix Introduction. Pastness Is a Position 1 I. A Stitch in Space Time. The Long 1980s 25 1. The Anthological Generation 27 2. "What It Is I Think They Were Doing, Anyhow" 61 3. Other Countries 76 4. Disco 118 5. Black Nations Queer Nations? 139 II. Black/Queerpolis 165 6. Bonds and Disciplines 167 7. Archiving the Anthological at the Current Conjuncture 192 8. Come 221 9. "Black/Queer Mess" as Methodological Case Study 245 10. Unfinished Work 261 III. Conclusion. Lush Life (in Exile) 295 Acknowledgments 313 Notes 325 Bibliography 379 Index 403
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE