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.

You do not currently have access to this content.