Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

You can access this title through a library that has purchased it. More information about purchasing is available at our website.

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the Family Tree

Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the Family Tree

Jarrod Hayes 2016
Restricted You do not have access to this book. How to get access.
Employing rootedness as a way of understanding identity has increasingly been subjected to acerbic political and theoretical critiques. Politically, roots narratives have been criticized for attempting to police identity through a politics of purity—excluding anyone who doesn't share the same narrative. Theoretically, a critique of essentialism has led to a suspicion against essence and origins regardless of their political implications.

The central argument of Queer Roots for the Diaspora is that, in spite of these debates, ultimately the desire for roots contains the "roots" of its own deconstruction. The book considers alternative root narratives that acknowledge the impossibility of returning to origins with any certainty; welcome sexual diversity; acknowledge their own fictionality; reveal that even a single collective identity can be rooted in multiple ways; and create family trees haunted by the queer others patrilineal genealogy seems to marginalize.

The roots narratives explored in this book simultaneously assert and question rooted identities within a number of diasporas—African, Jewish, and Armenian. By looking at these together, one can discern between the local specificities of any single diaspora and the commonalities inherent in diaspora as a global phenomenon. This comparatist, interdisciplinary study will interest scholars in a diversity of fields, including diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, LGBTQ studies, French and Francophone studies, American studies, comparative literature, and literary theory.

 

Read Book Buy Book
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-12206-6 (ebook)
  • 978-0-472-05316-2 (paper)
  • 978-0-472-07316-0 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Sexuality Studies
  • African American Studies
  • Diaspora Studies
  • Literary Studies
  • Caribbean Studies
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Jewish Studies
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note on Translations
  • Introduction
  • 1. Looking for Roots among the Mangroves
  • 2. Queer Roots in Africa
  • 3. Scandals and Lies: The Truth about Roots
  • 4. From Roots That Uproot to Queer Diasporas
  • 5. The Seduction of Roots and the Roots of Seduction
  • 6. Booger Hollar and Other Queer Sites: Ghosts in the Family Tree
  • Notes
  • Works Cited
  • Index
35 views since November 20, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In

© University of Michigan Press 2021

x This site requires cookies to function correctly.