The French Creole term makoumè does not belong to the political and cultural discussions by French Caribbean LGBT communities seeking protection against abuse using the laws sanctioned by the French government. One would also be hard-pressed to find local and Caribbean theorizations of the term makoumè that reclaim the word defiantly, like the fathers of negritude such as Aimé Césaire have done with the word nègre, to conceptualize liberatory practices or set of principles. In this keyword essay, the author asks, Could theorizing makoumè as a marker of difference, of lack, of excess, of gender disturbance—namely, queerness—rather than as only a sign of masculine homosexuality in the Caribbean, expose a very French malaise around questions of genre and issues destabilizing heterosexual norms? This French Creole word could thus help us examine and (re)imagine queerness in the French Caribbean, even if queerness is not explicitly named.
“Ziggy, sé an makoumè”: Queering Otherness and Disturbing Identities
Jacqueline Couti works in the areas of French and francophone studies, exploring constructions of gender, race, sexuality, identity politics, and nationalism. She examines how local knowledge in the colonial and postcolonial eras has shaped the literatures—and the cultural awareness of the self—in former French colonies through specific representations of sexuality. She is the author of Dangerous Creole Liaisons: Sexuality and Nationalism in French Caribbean Discourses from 1806 to 1897 (2016) and Sex, Sea, and Self: Sexuality and Nationalism in French Caribbean Discourses, 1924–1948 (2021).
Jacqueline Couti; “Ziggy, sé an makoumè”: Queering Otherness and Disturbing Identities. Small Axe 1 July 2024; 28 (2 (74)): 156–166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-11382569
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