The Dying Swan: Cultural Nationalism and Queer Formations in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

This essay examines the configuration of cultural nationalism in the Commonwealth Caribbean, specifically Trinidad and Tobago, and the impact of queer formations on national identity. Cultural nationalism in the Caribbean has been characterized by its heteropatriarchal disposition – rendering sexual minorities as abject citizens. However, the hybridized culture of the Caribbean, as demonstrated through the cultural arts of Trinidad and Tobago, provides an unfixed, paradoxical social location in which queer cultural performances transgress the colonial-influenced cultural nationalism. As such, this essay deploys queer theory of colour in a discursive and performative analysis of a contemporary Trinidad Carnival mas or masquerade, The Dying Swan: Ras Nijinsky in Drag as Pavlova (2016). With this performance, a more inclusive national identity is envisioned through a queer world-making that challenges prevailing cultural norms and subvert traditional sexual identity politics.

• Cultural nationalism
• gender
• identity
• queer theory
• sexuality
• Trinidad Carnival

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Theresa Rajack-Talley and Omari Ashby for their guidance and support in the Trinidad and Tobago field study that resulted in this essay. I am grateful for the thoughtful feedback provided by the journal reviewers. Furthermore, I would like to thank Andre Blackburn for his careful review of the essay and providing critical feedback.

Notes

1 Within the Caribbean context, sexual praxis, a focus on behaviours, activities, and relations, is preferred over sexual identity for analyses of sexuality in the region. For extended discussion on sexual praxis, see Kempadoo (2009).

2 In a legal challenge by Jason Jones, a gay dual citizen of T&T and the United Kingdom, on 12 April 2018, the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago ruled sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offenses Act (sodomy statutes) unconstitutional. However, with opposition from some cultural leaders, the state plans to appeal in part based on a constitutional provision which protects old colonial laws. Aside from this appeal, several other laws discriminate against homosexuality and unconventional genders.

3 King (2014) suggests employing the word “trans” instead of “transgender” to connote a Caribbean variation of an umbrella term for unconventional genders that is distinctive but similar to metropolitan forms.

4 Traditional characters are also reoccurring characters found in Caribbean festivals year after year.