Pulling the coat: postcolonial performativity in Black British women's drama

Abstract

This paper analyzes black British women's drama produced during the 1980s and 1990s to understand the transformations in black lesbian politics through these decades. It explores the intersections between queer cultures and postcolonialism as a political theory and ideology that thinks of colonialism as an encounter with specific material, linguistic and cultural effects on the colonizing and colonized populations. Using Audre Lorde's idea of the ‘progress’ and ‘future’ of black women's politics, I outline a critical model described in this paper as ‘postcolonial performativity’. This model, I argue, allows us to look at representations of black sexualities in literature, culture and society in relation to concerns of class, vocabularies of sexualities, place of origin and belonging. A close reading of works by black British women playwrights, Jackie Kay, Jacqueline Rudet and Valerie-Mason John, indicates that the plays serve as instances of public pedagogy, thereby transforming the cultural project into an activist one of ensuring racial and sexual justice. The paper concludes by suggesting black British women's drama draws upon the intersection of sexuality, race, and class based justice and it can serve as a model not only for the assertion of black sexualities in Britain as a postcolonial metropolis but also non-metropolitan postcolonial locations in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the metaphorical ‘homes’ of black diasporic populations.

Keywords:

• black
• British
• women's drama
• performance
• postcolonial

Acknowledgements

Versions of this paper was first presented at the First Black European Studies conference, ‘Challenging Europe: Black European Studies in the 21^st Century’, Johanne Gutenberg University, Mainz, November 2005 and at a special session organized by the Black European Studies Network (BEST) at the Modern Language Association convention, Philadelphia, December 2006. I acknowledge with gratitude Marsha Pearce's careful and encouraging reading. Indu Batra remains, as always, the most careful and supportive reader of all my work.

Notes

1. See the anthology titled Alternatives within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres edited by Dimple Godiwala, especially essays by Alda Terracciano, Diedre Osborne, Victor Ukaegbu, and Dimple Godiwala.

2. Schilt's essay is published in Postcolonial Queer (2001), edited by John Hawley and Walcott's in Black Queer Studies (2005), edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson. Both these anthologies of critical essays address the intersections between black, queer, diapsoric and postcolonial that I discuss in the last section of this article.

3. Indeed the title of Walcott's essay and his focus on ‘pedagogy’ in the argument intertextually evokes Gayatri Spivak's seminal contribution to postcolonial studies titled Outside in the Teaching Machine

4. Mason-John accords special importance to the national black lesbian conference called ‘Zami I’, held in 1985. The conference ‘brought together women of African and Asian descent” and “was a significant landmark in creating a strong and visible identity’ (1998a, p.18).

5. Mason-John comments on the gay male community's adoption of a terminology to describe mixed-race relationships, and forwards, somewhat facetiously, her own terms for lesbian women in mixed race relationships: ‘I cite that women who go out only with black women are Dumpling dykes or roti dykes and black women who date only white women are Brussels sprouts dykes’ (1998a, p. 25). Undoubtedly arising from her alienation from the black lesbian community, this inventive terminology ultimately detracts from the force of Mason-John's call for inclusivity regarding radical sexual choices.