Winner, 2020 Alan Bray Memorial Prize, given by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association
A new understanding of freedom in the black diaspora grounded in the erotic
In Frottage, Keguro Macharia weaves together histories and theories of blackness and sexuality to generate a fundamentally new understanding of both the black diaspora and queer studies. Macharia maintains that to reach this understanding, we must start from the black diaspora, which requires re-thinking not only the historical and theoretical utility of identity categories such as gay, lesbian, and bisexual, but also more foundational categories such as normative and non-normative, human and non-human. Simultaneously, Frottage questions the heteronormative tropes through which the black diaspora has been imagined. Between Frantz Fanon, Ren-aran, Jomo Kenyatta, and Claude McKay, Macharia moves through genres-psychoanalysis, fiction, anthropology, poetry-as well as r
