#rinaldo walcott

[edwordsmyth]

Patrick Teed

[yourdailyqueer]

Rinaldo Walcott

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: Born 1965

Ethnicity: Afro Caribbean - Barbadian

Nationality: Canadian

Occupation: Writer, professor, academic

[nokiabae]

The advent of HIV/ AIDS is the moment that captures the real energies made possible by the outpouring of the carnal pleasures that Stonewall unleashed. Stonewall was queer sexual liberation, alongside heterosexual liberation, but HIV/ AIDS was citizen-making; the distinction is important. HIV/ AIDS worked to produce a very particular and specific queer subjecthood. It was a subject who was sick and diseased in a fashion different from how homosexuality as illness had been previously conceived (even though in some people’s view one illness led to the other) in the “eventful moment” of AIDS. Thus, it is in the realm of sickness and death that a very specific queer subjecthood comes into being. This queer subject also becomes a rights-seeking subject. It is my argument, then, that Stonewall was not the central route through which a modern queer citizenship took hold. Rather it was in the initial impetus/ moment of AIDS in which a “proto-queer citizen” was forced to react and respond to the “stealing” of his carnal pleasures that rights talk and citizen-making became a queer project of self-hood and thus state citizenship.

—Rinaldo Walcott, “Queer Returns”

[76crimes]

'Beyond Homophobia' in Jamaica: A critique

‘Beyond Homophobia’ in Jamaica: A critique

To move beyond its violent homophobia, Jamaica needs more practical analysis than what speakers provided at last month’s University of the West Indies symposium, activist Lloyd D’Aguilar writes.

(more…)

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[blackqueertings]

Rinaldo Walcott

Rinaldo Walcott (he/him) is a Bajan-Canadian academic, radical, and activist. Out and proud Walcott had written on a diversity of topics related to Blackness in the diaspora, African-Canadian identity, queer theory and media, and anti-capitalism. Walcott was originally born in Barbados but emigrated to Canada at a young age.

Walcott is a leading scholar in African-Canadian and diaspora studies, an ever-growing discipline. I first came across Walcott through the anthology Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. Published in the 1990s Rude, was named after Clement Virgo's identically named work, a seminal Canadian film directed by a Black man, that centered on Black Torontonians. Walcott edited the anthology and contributed a chapter. Reading Walcott's chapter was a moment of being seen for the first time, of having my feelings of unease and otherness validated and articulated. Despite my years of education, including three years at an 'elite' Canadian insition, I have yet to fully encounter something like this. Here is what he wrote:

“It is my contention that when Blackness works to elaborate Candianess it simultaneously unsettles Candianness. That is, Blackness interrupts “Canadian” scenes and simultaneously sets the stage for particular and different enactments of Canadianess. [..] Blackness is a counter narrative of the normalized image of Canadians as chromatically white.”

Walcott's publishing record is brief but powerful. Black Like Who? his first book is part theory, part- ethnographic account of the construction and signification of Blackness by African-Canadians. Later novels include Queer Returns, a queer diasporic essay collection as well as On Property and The Long Emancipation. Both are detailed, provocative accounts of the manifestations of the 'afterlife' of slavery and the continued subordination of Black folks. Walcott should be remembered for his extensive contrition to critical, intersectional theory and the Black radical tradition.

[militantbodies]

[thingsreadinthedark]

Checking out this book in relation to reading the 1619 Project and Rinaldo Walcott eviscerating the integrationist aspirations of George Elliott Clarke was not on my 2022 bingo card but I love academic beefs.

“Canadian blackness is a bubbling brew of desires for elsewhere, disappointments in the nation and the pleasures of exile — even for those who have resided here for many generations.”

I have so many thoughts as I watch some family members struggle through this experience at the moment. Those who feel so hurt by the experience of racism, they’re considering moving to Ghana.

It’s intriguing to me how alive and present this topic feels. It feels a little more alive to me than the 1619 Project.

Gonna continue to read this and the 1619 project in tandem.

[openlyandfreely]

We must work toward an abolitionist future for our world - Macleans.ca

Rinaldo Walcott: There has been something animated by the death of George Floyd that is deeply familiar and that calls out for something more—something beyond mere redress, arrest and conviction