Pulling the coat: postcolonial performativity in Black British women's drama

Abstract

This paper analyzes black British women's drama produced during the 1980s and 1990s to understand the transformations in black lesbian politics through these decades. It explores the intersections between queer cultures and postcolonialism as a political theory and ideology that thinks of colonialism as an encounter with specific material, linguistic and cultural effects on the colonizing and colonized populations. Using Audre Lorde's idea of the ‘progress’ and ‘future’ of black women's politics, I outline a critical model described in this paper as ‘postcolonial performativity’. This model, I argue, allows us to look at representations of black sexualities in literature, culture and society in relation to concerns of class, vocabularies of sexualities, place of origin and belonging. A close reading of works by black British women playwrights, Jackie Kay, Jacqueline Rudet and Valerie-Mason John, indicates that the plays serve as instances of public pedagogy, thereby transforming the cultural project into an activist one of ensuring racial and sexual justice. The paper concludes by suggesting black British women's drama draws upon the intersection of sexuality, race, and class based justice and it can serve as a model not only for the assertion of black sexualities in Britain as a postcolonial metropolis but also non-metropolitan postcolonial locations in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the metaphorical ‘homes’ of black diasporic populations.