Theorizing Kuirlombismos and Black Liberation Across the Diaspora: Black Brazilian Artivists Challenge the Coloniality of Affect

Abstract:This essay has three goals: First, to illustrate the epistemological interventions of Black Brazilian queer artivists in theories of Black liberation through naming and defining their sexual-dissident-subjectivities and the affective modes they engender, such as the feeling of solidão (solitude). Second, to contribute to efforts to decolonize the academy in the Americas more broadly, by pointing to the emergent Black queer archives and repertoires that Black queer artivists are intentionally producing outside the Brazilian academy. And third, to highlight how, why, and where Black queer theory is being produced in Brazil, to avoid crediting privileged (in this case, white mestizo) actors within the Brazilian academy for the intellectual production of Black queer theorists who generally do not have access to the transnational academic sphere.