| dc.description.abstract | Audre Lorde wrote A Litany for Survival where she posited that “it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive” and that in the end what we are seeking is “a now that can breed futures”. The ability to imagine possible futures requires us to find existences in the present that allow for hope and joy. Still, many come to be their present selves despite current and past worlds that were designed against them. This project investigates the various ways of being constructed by people who have found ways to thrive in a world that denies their existence through laws, religions, social policies, gender and sexual discrimination, and racialized violence. Through an analysis that begins in languages, stories, and narratives, this project focuses on the world-making of Black, Queer, and (also) Indigenous people. More, this research works to address problems in the language of marginality for these groups. It offers the terms liminal people and the demonic to better encapsulate Black, Queer, and Indigenous identity and agency. This project then explores Barry Jenkins artistic use of moonlight in the film Moonlight to transition toward a study of identity, locality, and place-making as a means for survival and joy. In the midst of examining these created worlds, the role of nothingness emerges as a fertile ground of possibilities. This dissertation ends by considering the dysregulating and demonic force that liminal peoples’ fluidity offers in opposition to the restrictive and oppressive systems created by dominant groups. | |
| dc.subject | indigenous ways of knowing, queer theory, black studies, othering, liminal, demonic, possibilities, ontology | |
