In Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty, author Dr. Ana Maurine Lara provides us with a powerful ethnography that proved to be extremely thought provoking in reflecting on her fieldwork in the Dominican Republic. Here, she explains her engagement in different religious ceremonies, observations surrounding more traditional celebrations, as well as including interviews engaging different activists— all contributing to her discussion of what we view as contemporary ideas of what it means to be black and queer. She also brings into this discussion the idea of decolonization and expresses a desire for decolonization. This being said, what I found particularly interesting is the interwoven nature of her theory of coloniality as it pertained to religion, specifically that of christian coloniality. A line I resonated with described christian coloniality and its “attendant capitalism” as requiring “the valuation of some lives over others, some knowledges over others, some ways of being over others” (pg 7). This line in particular stood out to me in the sense that it provided clarity as to Lara’s idea of how christian coloniality has created a narrow sense of societal norms, and how subsequently, has contributed to racial and sexual discrimination by narrowly defining what is and is not acceptable. She further describes this as the “violent and continual management of the most intimate levels of being” (pg 6). I find her use of the word violent in tandem with management here intriguing, I wouldn’t have personally characterized the results of christian colonialism as such, but nonetheless enjoyed that Lara prompted me to personally reflect on this matter after reading this line.
Overall I enjoyed this reading and actually found it to inspire more personal reflection about my own thoughts on modern day queerness and blackness, and how it has developed as a result of many intertwined and moving parts of society and human history. Questions to ask after the reading— we talk of decolonization, but what does this specifically entail/look like in an ideal world, does it consist of policy change?