Erotohistoriography, Identity, and Queer Times and Spaces in Michelle Cliff’s Novels
Begoña Vilouta-Vázquez | The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 2
Abstract | This article presents a discussion on Michelle Cliff’s project to unveil the counterhistories of Jamaica, buried, left out, and underrepresented by the colonial project. In the case of Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987), an intersection of postcolonial and queer theories facilitates a unique reading of these novels as vehicles in this project to focus on the experiences of the marginalized and disenfranchised. Erotohistoriography is introduced as a concept that helps debunk the linear discourse of Western modernity: pleasurable moments experienced by both normative and non-normative bodies become instrumental in these reconnections between the present and the past, thus enabling the creation of non-official mappings of space and time.
Key words | Erotohistoriography, Embodied Experience, Non-Normative Bodies, Identity, Resistance, Memory, Logic of Purity, Coloniality of Power, Queer Time, Queer Space, Postcolonial Theory, Abeng, No Telephone to Heaven, Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam
Begoña Vilouta-Vázquez (bvilouta@citadel.edu) is an adjunct professor in the English, Fine Arts, and Communications Department at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, USA. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She afterwards received a master’s degree in literatures in English from the University of Kansas and a PhD in the same field from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in postcolonial studies, trauma studies, and the repercussions of whiteness ideology in 20th and 21st-century literature from the anglophone Caribbean.
MLA Citation for this Article:
Vilouta-Vázquez, Begoña. “Erotohistoriography, Identity, and Queer Times and Spaces in Michelle Cliff’s Novels.” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 12 Dec. 2024, pp. 1.17–1.35, https://ellids.com/archives/2024/12/6.2-Vilouta-Vazquez.pdf.