Queering Black Internationalism: The Black Gay and Lesbian Movement in Britain, 1980-1999

我的博士学位旨在挖掘1980-2000年英国黑人LGBTQ+运动的历史，通过使用口述历史的方法来解决档案中的缺失和碎片。种族历史学家和社会学家认为，20世纪80年代是英国黑人运动因身份政治的兴起和通过“种族关系产业”实现种族正义的市场化而破裂的时期（Hall, 1989; Gilroy, 2002; Wild, 2015）。从Stuart Hall（2000，第270页）的观察开始，黑人激进政治的男性主题已经“受到黑人女性和黑人同性恋男性的质疑”，本项目通过关注这一时期黑人LGBTQ+活动家的国际主义和联盟政治来挑战这种分裂的叙述。种族研究（McGhee, 2005; Hall et al, 2013）将1981年描述为起义的一年，以布里克斯顿骚乱为代表，但英国也见证了伦敦第一个同性恋黑人团体的形成。英国是酷儿黑人国际主义的枢纽，1985年举行了第一次扎米会议，1990年，黑人男女同性恋中心（BLGC）组织了第一次国际有色人种男女同性恋会议（IGLPCC）在美国以外举行。这个项目的问题是，黑人LGBTQ+活动家是如何挑战黑人、散居者和英国人的异性恋规范建构的？他们是如何重新构想黑人女权主义、黑人国际主义和同性恋解放的？这项研究解决了现代英国研究中的一个真正的空白，并将通过解构和重新配置战后激进运动的叙述，将黑人、酷儿和现代英国的历史编纂带入彼此之间的对话。我提出了酷儿黑人激进主体的概念，重新构想了吉尔罗伊（1993）的“黑色大西洋”，以扩大20世纪黑人国际组织和革命者性别历史的范围。通过聚焦英国黑人LGBTQ+运动的流散意识和国际主义框架，这段历史挑战了美国在黑人国际主义主流叙事中的主导地位。本研究通过分析英国移民过程中性别和性的等级，部署并扩展了黑人全球性的概念（Patterson和Kelley， 2000）。我不会再现美国黑人研究的时间和地理短视，也不会盲目崇拜斯蒂芬·塔克（Stephen Tuck）和罗宾·凯利（Robin Kelley）（2015）所描述的英美黑人自由运动之间的另一种特殊关系，我将研究20世纪后期英国黑人酷儿政治文化的散乱融合。这段历史的目的和影响超出了学术界。目前，我正在为彩票遗产资助的哈林基先锋进行口述历史采访，这是一个位于伦敦北部哈林基的黑人LGBTQ+历史档案，将在布鲁斯城堡博物馆举行。我在研究中收集的口述历史将以哈林基先锋的工作为基础，扩大英国黑人酷儿的口述档案。我的目标是构建一个“平常”的过去，影响现在的行动主义和公众纪念，并重新构建未来解放的可能性。

My PhD seeks to excavate a history of the black LGBTQ+ movement in Britain, 1980-2000, through utilising oral history methodology to address the absences and fragments in the archive. Historians of race and sociologists have conceived of the 1980s as a period where the black movement in Britain was ruptured by the rise of identity politics and marketisation of racial justice through the 'race relations industry' (Hall, 1989; Gilroy, 2002; Wild, 2015). Starting with Stuart Hall's (2000, p.270) observation that the masculine subject of black radical politics had been 'put into question by black women and black gay men', this project challenges this narrative of fragmentation by focusing on the internationalist and coalitional politics of black LGBTQ+ activists during the period. Studies of race (McGhee, 2005; Hall et al, 2013) have characterised 1981 as a year of uprisings, epitomised by the Brixton riots, but Britain also saw the formation of the first Lesbian and Gay Black Group in London. Britain was a nexus of queer black internationalism, with the first Zami conference held in 1985 and the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre (BLGC) organising the first International Gay and Lesbian People of Colour Conference (IGLPCC) held outside of the US in 1990. This project asks, how did black LGBTQ+ activists challenge heteronormative constructs of blackness, diaspora(s) and Britishness? How did they reimagine black feminism, black internationalism, and gay liberation?This research addresses a real lacuna in modern British studies and will bring the historiographies of black, queer and modern Britain in dialogue with one other, by deconstructing and reconfiguring narratives of post-war radical movements. I propose the concept of the queer black radical subject, reimagining Gilroy's (1993) 'Black Atlantic' to expand the remit of gender histories of black internationals and revolutionaries during the twentieth century. Through centring the diasporic consciousness and internationalist framework of the black LGBTQ+ movement in Britain, this history challenges the predominance of the US in prevailing narratives of black internationalism. This research deploys and expands the concept of black globality (Patterson and Kelley, 2000), by analysing hierarchies of gender and sexuality in the making of diaspora(s) in Britain. Instead of reproducing the temporal and geographical myopia of Black Studies in the US, or fetishizing what Stephen Tuck and Robin Kelley (2015) describe as The Other Special Relationship between black freedom movements in the US and Britain, I will examine the diasporic syncretism of black queer political cultures in late twentieth century Britain. The purpose and impact of this history extends beyond the academy. Currently, I am conducting oral history interviews for the Lottery Heritage funded Haringey Vanguard, an archive of black LGBTQ+ histories in Haringey, North London, which will be held at Bruce Castle Museum. The oral histories I will collect in my research will build upon the work of the Haringey Vanguard, expanding the black queer oral archive in Britain. I aim to construct a 'usual' past that influences activism and public memorialisation in the present and reframes the possibilities of liberation in the future.