Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica

by Matthew Chin

Overview

In Fractal Repair, Matthew Chin investigates queerness in Jamaica from early colonial occupation to the present, critically responding to the island’s global reputation for extreme homophobia and anti-queer violence. Chin advances a theory and method of queer fractals to bring together genealogies of queer and Caribbean formation. Fractals—a kind of geometry in which patterns repeat but never exactly in the same way—make visible shifting accounts of Caribbean queerness in terms of race, gender, and sexual alterity. Drawing on this fractal orientation, Chin assembles and analyzes multigenre archives, ranging from mid-twentieth-century social science studies of the Caribbean to Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company to HIV/AIDS organizations, to write reparative histories of queerness. Chin’s proposal of a fractal politics of repair invests in the horizon of difference that repetition materializes, and it extends reparations discourses intent on overcoming the past and calculating economic compensation for survivors of violence.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478059233
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/16/2024
Series:	Perverse Modernities: A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Matthew Chin is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction. Queer Fractals: Making Histories of Repair  1
1. Queer Jamaica 1494–1998  21
Part I. Archival Continuities
2. Knowledge: A “Native” Social Science  39
3. The Body: Responding to HIV/AIDS  63
Part II. Narrative Ruptures
4. Performance: The National Dance Theatre Company  93
5. Politics: The Gay Freedom Movement  119
Epilogue. Fractal Futures  153
Notes  159
Bibliography  197
Index  223

Editorial Reviews

In Fractal Repair, Matthew Chin contributes significantly to our understanding of the history and the present of queer Jamaican life. Chin fills in the gaps on queer organizing in Jamaica, making use of the archive to piece together a different account of queer Jamaica than usually circulates. It is a lively read, deeply thoughtful, and does what it means to do: repair our understanding of queer Jamaican life and politics.”—Rinaldo Walcott, author of, The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom

“Matthew Chin’s Fractal Repair is an original and deeply compelling account of five hundred years of Jamaican intimacies. The fractal is a powerful organizing principle for the argument being made here, in which Chin shows how the colony has been central to the imperial rationalization of who counts as fully human and which intimacies are deemed to be socially valid. Archivally innovative, methodologically heterogeneous, and beautifully written, this book will make an important intervention.”—Faith Smith, author of, Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean’s Non-sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century

"Fractal Repair provides a timely interventionist history of Jamaica through a Queer framework and expands scholarship on how we can understand the nation as a sociopolitical space informed by those who are deemed worthy of belonging."—Jamella N. Gow, Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Chin... employs a provocative, theoretical framework grounded in mathematics, in particular fractal geometry, a field concerned with identifying repeating patterns that occur at irregular intervals. This unique historical approach allows Chin to untangle historical constructs of queerness, as well as expose colonial legacies that have shaped normative concepts of sexuality and gender in Jamaica. . . . Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals."—F. H. Smith, Choice

"Through its interdisciplinary analysis, Fractal Repair makes vital contributions to Caribbean studies and queer studies."—Wigbertson Julian Isenia, Journal of the History of Sexuality

"This work is particularly significant for queer studies, Black studies, Caribbean history, performance studies, and postcolonial studies. . . . Fractal Repair offers an innovative approach to understanding Jamaica’s queer history, providing scholars with a new lens to explore the recursive, often unseen dynamics of power that continue to shape the lives of queer individuals in postcolonial contexts."—Webster McDonald, Caribbean Studies

From the Publisher

"Through its interdisciplinary analysis, Fractal Repair makes vital contributions to Caribbean studies and queer studies."

Journal of the History of Sexuality - Wigbertson Julian Isenia

"Chin... employs a provocative, theoretical framework grounded in mathematics, in particular fractal geometry, a field concerned with identifying repeating patterns that occur at irregular intervals. This unique historical approach allows Chin to untangle historical constructs of queerness, as well as expose colonial legacies that have shaped normative concepts of sexuality and gender in Jamaica. . . . Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals."

Choice - F. H. Smith

In Fractal Repair, Matthew Chin contributes significantly to our understanding of the history and the present of queer Jamaican life. Chin fills in the gaps on queer organizing in Jamaica, making use of the archive to piece together a different account of queer Jamaica than usually circulates. It is a lively read, deeply thoughtful, and does what it means to do: repair our understanding of queer Jamaican life and politics.

The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom - Rinaldo Walcott

"Fractal Repair provides a timely interventionist history of Jamaica through a Queer framework and expands scholarship on how we can understand the nation as a sociopolitical space informed by those who are deemed worthy of belonging."

Ethnic and Racial Studies - Jamella N. Gow

Matthew Chin’s Fractal Repair is an original and deeply compelling account of five hundred years of Jamaican intimacies. The fractal is a powerful organizing principle for the argument being made here, in which Chin shows how the colony has been central to the imperial rationalization of who counts as fully human and which intimacies are deemed to be socially valid. Archivally innovative, methodologically heterogeneous, and beautifully written, this book will make an important intervention.

Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean’s Non-sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century - Faith Smith

"This work is particularly significant for queer studies, Black studies, Caribbean history, performance studies, and postcolonial studies. . . . Fractal Repair offers an innovative approach to understanding Jamaica’s queer history, providing scholars with a new lens to explore the recursive, often unseen dynamics of power that continue to shape the lives of queer individuals in postcolonial contexts."

Caribbean Studies - Webster McDonald