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Paper short abstract:

Firstly, I am approaching this paper with the idea that Africa prefigures the future. Secondly, I am using José Esteban Muñoz”s idea of queer futurity. I am interested in African queer futurities by looking at the music and music video visuals of queer black artist Nakhane, and Desire Marea.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a meditation on the relationship between aesthetics and politics. There are two issues: Firstly, I am approaching this paper with the idea that Africa prefigures the future. Secondly, I am using José Esteban Muñoz”s idea of queer futurity, where he argues that “queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain.” I am interested in African queer futurities by looking at the music and music video visuals of queer black artist Nakhane, and Desire Marea. My analysis will focus on Nakhane’s “interloper” and “do you well”, and Desire Marea’s “you think I’m horny” and “tavern kween”. These two artists have created work that centralises black queer aesthetics, and because “the aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity” (José Esteban Muñoz), I am interested in the politics contained in the work of these artists as they imagine queerness and Africanness. I am interested in the possibilities created by and through their music and visuals, and how that possibility offers us ways to think of another world. A queerness-to-come that is beyond the idea of sexuality, but is more in line with bell hook’s idea of the queer; “‘queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything."