Editorial: Gender and sexual geographies of blackness: anti-black heterotopias (part 1)

Abstract

This editorial theorizes the spatialization of black gender and sexual minorities. We examine the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality work to complicate the geographies of black gender and sexual marginality. Drawing on insights from Foucault's theory of heterotopia, we develop the concept of anti-black heterotopias to understand the spatial ordering of black gender and sexuality within the larger geographies of black people. We contend that if anti-black racism forces black people to live within contained landscapes that exist on the margins of whiteness, then black gender and sexual minorities, who are subject to violence and public ridicule, live in a placeless space, a location with no coordinates. In other words, the heterosexism/homophobia toward black gender and sexual minorities that is expressed in socio/spatial terms is complicit with the spatialization of anti-black racism. We also use anti-black heterotopias as a way to situate the eight articles in parts 1 and 2 of this themed section, as well as to highlight the theoretical linkages between them.

Geografías de género y sexuales de la negrura: heterotopías anti negro (parte 1)

Esta editorial teoriza la espacialización de las minorías negras sexuales y de género. Examinamos las formas en las que la raza, el género y la sexualidad trabajan para complicar las geografías de la marginalidad negra sexual y de género. Apoyándonos en nociones de la teoría de heterotopías de Foucault, desarrollamos el concepto de heterotopías anti negro para comprender el ordenamiento espacial del género y la sexualidad negros dentro de las geografías más amplias de las personas negras. Sostenemos que si el racismo anti-negro fuerza a las personas negras a vivir dentro de los paisajes contenidos que existen en los márgenes de la blanquedad, entonces las minorías de género y sexuales negras, quienes están sujetas a la violencia y al ridículo público, viven en un espacio sin lugar, una ubicación sin coordenadas. En otras palabras, el heterosexismo/homofobia hacia las minorías sexuales y de género negras que se expresa en términos socio/espaciales es cómplice de la espacialización del racismo anti-negro. También utilizamos las heterotopías anti-negras como una forma de situar los ocho artículos en la parte 1 y 2 de esta sección temática, además de como forma de resaltar los lazos teóricos entre ellos.

黑人性的性别与性地理学：反黑人的异质乌托邦（一）

此一论文集对黑人性别及性慾少数族裔的空间化进行理论化。我们检视种族、性别与性慾如何复杂化黑人性别及性慾边缘性的方式。我们运用傅柯的异质空间理论洞见，发展反黑人异质空间的概念，以在更广大的黑人地理学中，理解黑人性别与性慾的空间秩序。我们主张，若反对黑人的种族歧视导致黑人生活在白人性边缘的隔离地景中，那麽遭受暴力与公共嘲讽的黑人性别与性慾少数族裔，则生活在没有地方性的空间中，亦即缺乏一致性的地点。换言之，社会／空间概念中展现的对黑人性别与性慾少数族裔的异性恋霸权／恐同症，和反黑人种族主义的空间化具有共谋关係。我们亦将运用反黑人异质乌托邦的概念，做为将下列八篇文章安排在第一及第二部分的主题论文集之方式，并藉此突显其中的理论连结。

Keywords::

• heterotopias
• anti-black heterotopias
• heteronormativity
• gender nonconforming

Acknowledgements

The authors are deeply indebted to the late Glen S. Elder for conceiving this project. The authors greatly appreciate the unwavering commitment, support, and hard work that editor Beverley Mullings devoted to this project from start to finish. The authors are also grateful to all of the anonymous reviewers, the editorial staff at GPC, and Erika Stephens. But most of all, the authors are grateful to all of the scholars for the groundbreaking, brilliant, and cutting-edge scholarship that each contributed to this themed section.

Notes

^1. Black heterotopias are nothing new to black space. At the turn of the twentieth century, black urban spaces were the sites of the practice known as ‘slumming,’ where white elite and middle-class people patronized black spaces to drink, dance, listen to jazz, and engage in cross-racial and same-sex relations. Harlem and the south side of Chicago, as well as other major cities, were the epicenter of the ‘Negro vogue,’ the dark world where the libidinal economy flourished by way of the commodification of black culture and illicit sex. Underground clubs commonly known as ‘black and tan’ were the sites in which slumming occurred. The black and tans, however, did more than provide whites with alcohol, music, and sexual excursions across the color line rather, they became hubs of cross-racial and sexual activity, where the lines between black and white men and women were blurred. Black and tans not only played an important role in the creation of racial categories in northern cities through the spatialization of vice within black neighborhoods but also and most importantly, black and tans linked the vice, sexual deviance, and blackness to particular urban sites. As a result, the location of vice and sexual deviance in black spaces forever marked these areas and, moreover, made state regulation in the form of policing a permanent consequence.