Circuits of the Sacred: A Faggotology in the Black Latinx Caribbean

by Carlos Ulises Decena

Overview

In Circuits of the Sacred Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Latinx Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit. Decena models what he calls a faggotology-the erotic in the divine as found in the disreputable and the excessive-as foundational to queer black critical and expressive praxis of the future. Drawing on theoretical analysis, memoir, creative writing, and ethnography of Santería/Lucumí in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Decena moves between languages, locations, pronouns, and genres to map the itineraries of blackness as a "circuit," a multipronged and multisensorial field. A feminist pilgrimage and extended conversation with the dead, Decena's study is a provocative work that transforms the academic monograph into a gathering of stories, theoretical innovation, and expressive praxis to channel voices, ancestors, deities, theorists, artists, and spirits from the vantage point of radical feminism and queer-of-color thinking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478019442
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/03/2023
Series:	Writing Matters!
Pages:	206
Sales rank:	488,332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Carlos Ulises Decena is Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and author of Tacit Subjects: Belonging and Same-Sex Desire among Dominican Immigrant Men, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Gratitudes  ix
Part 0. Orígenes (Origins)
Pensar Maricón (Faggotology): An Introduction  1
1. Re-membered Life: A Composition for Egun  23
Part I. Caminos
2. Bridge Crónica: A Triptych, with Elegguá  33
3. Experiencing the Evidence   57
Part II. Dos Puentes, Tránsitos
4. Loving Stones: A Transnational Patakí  81
5. ¡Santo! Repurposed Flesh and the Suspension of the Mirror in Santería Initiation  102
Part III. Trances
6. Indecent Conocimientos: A Suite Rasanblaj in Funny Keys 125
Epístola al Futuro/An Epistle to the Future  155
Notes  159
Bibliography  175
Index

What People are Saying About This

Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou - Roberto Strongman Roberto Strongman

"A critical Bildungsroman, an autoethnography, a biography, and a biomythography, Circuits of the Sacred is seductive in its personal disclosures. Its vulnerability and nakedness lay bare highly personal material that will endear the book to people of color, immigrants, and queer people. Not since the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga’s This Bridge Called My Back have I read a queer narrative that has broken through established genre conventions with such boldness."

Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou - Roberto Strongman

"A critical Bildungsroman, an autoethnography, a biography, and a biomythography, Circuits of the Sacred is seductive in its personal disclosures. Its vulnerability and nakedness lay bare highly personal material that will endear the book to people of color, immigrants, and queer people. Not since the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga’s This Bridge Called My Back have I read a queer narrative that has broken through established genre conventions with such boldness."

Gina Athena Ulysse

“Carlos Ulises Decena’s determination to fè yon rasanblaj situates his prescient body portal in the entrails of methods, practices, and theories confronting blackness as he expertly resensitizes here/there, pain/pleasure, pride/shame, sacred/profane in the Latinx Caribbean. This tour-de-force queer study demands that academics engage with ancestral imperatives—-creative, discursive, intellectual, or spiritual. Circuits of the Sacred is both scream and libation, a liturgy for the future, necessary praxis on this long path to liberation.”