There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life

by Jafari Sinclaire Allen

Overview

In There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls “Black gay habits of mind.” In conversational and lyrical language, Allen locates this sensibility as it emerged from radical Black lesbian activism and writing during the long 1980s. He traverses multiple temporalities and locations, drawing on research and fieldwork conducted across the globe, from Nairobi, London, and Paris to Toronto, Miami, and Trinidad and Tobago. In these locations and archives, Allen traces the genealogies of Black gay politics and cultures in the visual art, poetry, film, Black feminist theory, historiography, and activism of thinkers and artists such as Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Essex Hemphill, Colin Robinson, Marlon Riggs, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. Throughout, Allen renarrates Black queer history while cultivating a Black gay method of thinking and writing. In so doing, he speaks to the urgent contemporary struggles for social justice while calling on Black studies to pursue scholarship, art, and policy derived from the lived experience and fantasies of Black people throughout the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478021896
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	440
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jafari S. Allen is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami and author of ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

An Invitation  ix
Introduction. Pastness Is a Position  1
I. A Stitch in Space Time. The Long 1980s  25
1. The Anthological Generation  27
2. "What It Is I Think They Were Doing, Anyhow"  61
3. Other Countries  76
4. Disco  118
5. Black Nations Queer Nations?  139
II. Black/Queerpolis  165
6. Bonds and Disciplines  167
7. Archiving the Anthological at the Current Conjuncture  192
8. Come  221
9. "Black/Queer Mess" as Methodological Case Study  245
10. Unfinished Work  261
III. Conclusion. Lush Life (in Exile)  295
Acknowledgments  313
Notes  325
Bibliography  379
Index  403

Editorial Reviews

“A genre-transcending meditation on one of the most undertheorized periods in Black queer history, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a timely and necessary account of what the period leading up to, during, and after the long shadow of the 1980s means for the current moment in Black queer world-making. At once poetic and playful, it pushes the boundaries of traditional scholarship, providing a methodology for analyzing Black queer culture. To use the vernacular of the ballroom children, folks are going to gag at its deft reads, melodic writing, and creative rendering of Black queer history.”

-- E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women

“In this innovative and generously envisioned book, Jafari S. Allen presents an unprecedented consideration of Black queerness as he weaves together a loving tapestry of Black feminist and Black queer theorists that spans half a century of critical work. Suffused with the ‘Blackfullness’ of queer love, loss, and world-making, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a lyrical, incisive, history-making, and paradigm-shifting work.”

-- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders

"A book to re-read in order to reach new depths, to see the reflections from the disco ball from yet another angle. . . . I strongly recommend this book to scholars and student within academia, across disciplines, to artists, writers, and activists outside of academia – to anyone seeking to explore and become more intimate with Black gay (and queer) habits of mind."

-- Rebecka Rehnström Anthropology Book Forum

"There’s a Disco Ball Between Us anthologizes desire as a glittering communal practice of Black/gay habit: as a moment of recognition between kith if not kin, as acknowledgement even if in quarrel, shifting lives in and out of time, dancing freedom."

-- Sharanya Full Stop

"This text does not shy away from the intellectual tradition of Black feminist affect in which it exists. Instead, Allen invites the reader into an experience that can work, if they choose to work it. Allen’s register is sharp, to the bone, and it shines. At times, I wondered if I was grown enough to know these things, or well read enough to show up to this conversation and hang. . . . For Allen, Black gay life is a refraction of fantasy and action. His critical ethnography builds upon a Black feminist drive to create embodied narratives. . . . His prose and rigorous engagement with the long 1980s invite the reader into conversation with a litany of elder co-conspirators."
 

-- Charlene A. Carruthers Public Books

"Jafari Allen’s There’s a Disco Ball Between Us has been so helpful and clarifying for me. . . ."

-- Ashon Crawley Public Books

"At once an intellectual history, a manifesto, a self-reflexive ethnography, and a memoir, Allen’s book is a genre-defying text that revises our understanding of the Black experience."

-- Frank Andrew Guridy Public Books

“Allen has skillfully woven together the experiences of an ‘anthologized generation’ without falling into the trap of eliding them. Rather, like a disco ball, the many reflections and refractions come together to form a theory of Black gay life that is at once coherent and infinitely diverse.”

-- Baird Campbell American Anthropologist

"Truly expansive. . . a call to read, think, and act differently."

-- Emily R. Bock Black Perspectives

"A stunning and ambitious model. . . . There’s a Disco Ball Between Us advances a vision for Black Queer historical inquiries, inquiries that utilize interdisciplinary methods, trouble conventional historical periodization, (re)constitute expansive archives and centers the Diaspora. This book stands as a comprehensive intellectual, social, and political history of Black queer life globally during the last five decades."

-- Jennifer Dominique Jones Black Perspectives

"Rather than seeking to define Black gay life as any one experience, Allen deftly makes room for the multiplicity of experiences and perspectives that have nonetheless been anthologized as a bounded, coherent group. ... [He] has skillfully woven together the experiences of an “anthologized generation” without falling into the trap of eliding them."

-- Baird Campbell American Ethnologist

"This breathtakingly innovative book pulls together a remarkable collection of Black feminist and queer theorists into a generous, important, and personal meditation on the past and futures of Black queerness. And don’t let the fact that the book’s academic drag discourage or put you off: the running House and Disco soundtrack alone will keep you vogueing thought the pages."

-- Reginald Harris Lambda Book Review

From the Publisher