The Decolonial Eye/I: Decolonial Enunciations of Queer Diasporic Practices

Drawing upon decolonial enunciation and cultural practices, this essay gestures towards the development of a decolonial sensing of queer diasporic artmaking. The key focus of the essay is the crossing of queer and decolonial thinking. A sustained critical reflection on these two theoretical sites is crucial, in my view, to offer a fuller comprehension of acts, practices and, broadly, cultures. Decolonial thinkers such as Walter Mignolo deploy frames of tension around identity enunciations and other practices, central to their critical vocabulary, and offer an incisive critique of the concept of identity itself. Additionally, within queer theory, the concept of queer diasporas instructively signals the crisis in identificatory practices for queers of colour. This essay therefore seeks to understand what transformative meanings emerge when queer of colour diasporic literary and artistic practices are made to bear upon the critical notion of decolonial enunciations. With specific reference to the works of the artist Raju Rage (UK) and the fiction of Ocean Vuong (US), it turns to enabling affect of decolonial aesthesis through an engagement with queer and trans of colour frames, diasporas and colonial legacies, and attempts to link theoretical conceptualization to embodiment/inhabitation of queerness.