The Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies invites submissions on the topic of Unbound Sexualities: The Erotics of Indenture & its Legacies. We center the politics of pleasure and power in consideration of the aftermath of the institution of indenture. Considering the signature of the indenture contract, that often falsely implies volition, the editors consider the definition of consent. This special issue marks an important turn in studies of indentureship as it aims to foreground an often silenced or under-researched area of investigation in the field. Affect and intimacy are key rubrics in any serious examination of colonialism. Caribbean diasporic novels such as The Pagoda by Patricia Powell and Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo have established a rich literary landscape to imagine the queer nineteenth-century planation and queer ecologies after the plantation. As Guyanese-American poet Rajiv Mohabir has said, the poetics of Coolitude is as much about indenture as the economic ordering of the colonial planation as it is “itself a queer cousin of Césaire's, Senghor's, and Damas's Négritude.” While much of the existing scholarship on indentureship is implicitly marked by a heteronormative lens that emphasizes preserving and revering the “nuclear family,” we welcome critical writing on both non-normative (including, but not limited to the categories Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*/gendered, Queer, Intersex) and (hetero-)normative sexualities, recognizing that these terms are not universal and may take on various contextual and temporal nuances within and across global systems of indentureship and its diasporas. Submissions that center horizontal intimacies and frameworks of kin and queer relationality are welcome. Working against the normative and often European colonial politics of respectability and propriety, we welcome investigations into the unbound, unregulated, undisciplined sexualities of plantation life from the Caribbean to the Pacific to Southeast Asia to other geographies impacted by indenture. Taking cues from Richard Fung, Andil Gosine, and Gayatri Gopinath, this special issue also emphasizes how visuality and art has been critical to outlining the “unruly visions” and heterogeneity of racial indenture. These scholars also open up avenues for queering the normative temporality of indenture, opening up alternative relations to the indentured past as a way of reorienting its contemporary legacies in the present and future. We are especially interested in submissions that are grounded in critical sexuality, trans*, queer studies, decolonial, feminist, critical anti-racist, critical disability and transnational/diasporic perspectives. In the spirit of interdisciplinary study, we welcome methodologies from legal theory, geography, art history, sound studies, and anthropology. Some of the questions that frame this ‘sexual’ turn in studies of indentureship, include:
- What new trajectories and questions of inquiry emerge at the intersections of sexuality studies, queer studies and studies of indenture?
- How do we define sexual (informed / statutory) consent in the colonial context?
- What sort of intimacies took place in the hold of the transatlantic and transpacific ship?
- How does the fluidity of indentureship studies allow room for exploration of non-heteronormative histories? How does the rigidity of indentureship studies (not) allow room for exploration of queer intimacy?
- What are the theoretical and methodological potentials and problems of re-thinking sexuality and indentureship through the above perspectives and how does this re-thinking help to (re-)frame the intellectual-political stakes of the field?
- How were/are (hetero-)normative and non-normative (LGBTQI+) sexualities (i.e. identities and relations) constructed within systems of indentureship and their diasporic after-lives in specific spatial and temporal contexts?
- How does indentureship as queer methodology critically respond to ‘the archive’? What constitutes the living archives of sexualities and indentureship?
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Non-normative sexualities (LGBTQI+)
- Heterosexualities
- Sexual and gender-based violence (e.g. domestic violence, transphobia, homophobia, etc.)
- Sexual regulation and surveillance
- Sexual histories/archiving sex(uality)
- Critiques of homonationalism and LGBT rights politics
- Queer and Trans* lives and politics
- Intersectional Sexualities (gender, race, class, disability, nationality, rural/urban, etc.)
- Sexual citizenship
- Sex
- Sex work
- Drag performance
- Kink, BDSM, Pornography
- asexualities
- Sexual cultures and representation
- Sexual diasporas
- Queer kinships
- Interracial sex
- Visualizing sexualities
- Sexual activisms
- Pride Celebrations / Parades in Post-Slavery Post-Indenture Societies
- Queer and Trans* Exile / Asylum
- Queer ecologies and temporalties
- Queer affect
- Queer Futurity
- Critical pedagogies
Submit Proposal: The format of submissions may include: standard academic articles, artwork, life-writing, poetry, and short stories. Your proposal should contain the following information: (a) Type of submission (article/artwork/life-writing/poetry/short stories), (b) Title of submission, (c) an abstract of 250-350 words, (d) a brief author/creator bionote (100 words), and (e) your institutional affiliation.
Deadline for receipt of abstract and bionote: November 30th, 2020
Contact: Questions and submissions should be emailed to the editors at: jilsubmissions20@gmail.com
Timeline: A decision on your proposal will be made by December 15th, 2020. If your proposal is accepted, the deadline for submitting the complete work is January 31st, 2021. We invite articles (5000-7000 words) and creative texts for consideration (1,000-2000 words).
Here is the link to the CFP https://ameenagafoorinstitute.org/journals
