Reconstructing Manhood; or, The Drag of Black Masculinity

Abstract

The attempt to narrate and represent a coherent black masculinity in its singularity is in part what I want to respond to in this essay. But even more, I want to suggest that thinking about a range and variety of black manhoods and masculinities might provide analysts with a set of interesting refigurings of black manhood outside of its current and historical spectacularizations that offer a lens for seeing black manhood differently, and thus thinking about black manhood differently. I am interested in highlighting modes of self-fashioning that allow for a reconstruction of black manhood from the place of incoherence and femininity which might be best exemplified, or at the least typified, in recent representations of and by black trans-cultures, but not exclusive to them.