Call me by your name : the Orisha as mirrors for the BlackTransQueer divine
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Aries Powell (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Sarah Cervenak
Abstract: Black transgender subjecthood places many at the crux of multiple marginalizations and often thinking the self apart, unable to find space in a world that isn’t built for those who are most marginalized. Between the persistent issues of colonialism and cisheterosexism Black transgender subjects are constantly being unraveled and subordinated, both ideologically and through violent repression. A journey towards cohesiveness, this thesis turns to Afro-Indigenous knowledge to forge paths towards wholeness for Black, Transgender, and Queer people living in the colonial state. Interviews with and theorizing alongside a non-binary, agender practitioner of Lucumí form the foundation for research. This Afro-Atlantic religion centers the Orisha, a pantheon of nature-based gods brought to the Americas by enslaved members of the Yoruba tribe of West Africa. Gender is unmade, unpacked, and reimagined in this project through collaboration with a practitioner in the Lucumí tradition, theorizing their own gender using the Afro-Indigenous knowledge housed within the tradition. Forging paths towards gender abolition, revolution, and gender craft place this thesis in conversation with de-colonial theory, anti-racism, Black feminism, transfeminism, and other bodies of anti-oppressive work. It makes meaningful interventions in the field of Afro-Atlantic Religious studies for Black Transgender and Queer practitioners and theorists, and important revelations for personal acts of gender craft through academic theorizing and divine community.
Call me by your name : the Orisha as mirrors for the BlackTransQueer divine
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Created on 12/1/2021
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2021
- Keywords
- Decolonialism, Gender, Lucumí, Orisha, Slavery, Transgender
- Subjects
- Gender nonconformity $x Religious aspects $x Santeria
- African American transgender people
- Queer theory
- Orishas