(Re)tracing queerness: archiving indentureship's 'coolie homo/erotic'. Issue 4 (2nd October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wahab, Amar
• Is Part Of: Visual studies. Volume 34:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 388
• Page End: 394
• Publication Date: 2019-10-02
• Subjects: Visual perception -- Periodicals; Visual anthropology -- Periodicals; Visual sociology -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2020.1715245
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-586X

Abstract

Abstract : The erotic lifeworld of Indian indentureship remains buried. This visual essay probes the 'coolie homoerotic' as a creative reflection on the place of the homoerotic and queerness within the trans-oceanic lifeworld of coolie indentureship. It uses the methodology of visual assemblage to creatively and critically engage with a rare archival record of alleged sodomy on a coolie ship, the Mersey, bound for British Guiana from Calcutta in 1898. The author uses the archival document, as a residue of homoerotic possibility, to re-trace and deliberately reconfigure the historically present narrative of indentureship through a seven-image collection entitled Postcards from the Perineum. In critically responding to Victorian imagery of moral-labour discipline, the postcards were produced using techniques such as photography, sketching, painting, crafting and body printing. The aim is to visually and imaginatively open up a space for contemplating an aesthetic-eroto-political field of knowledge production in relation to the violence and indignities of indentureship. In doing so, the essay also suggests that indentureship is a site of contrapuntal queerness, through which we might critically provoke normative understandings of this term.