Erotic Cartographies

KRYSTAL NANDINI GHISYAWAN is an independent Indo-Trinidadian queer scholar, educator, and activist currently living in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

"Erotic Cartographies is a significant and a very welcome contribution to the small but growing body of scholarship on same-sex loving women in the Caribbean. Through subjective maps, Ghisyawan teases out Trinidadian women's articulations of identity, passion, friendship, and family, as well as how they resist homophobia and find spaces of safety and belonging. It is a finely crafted study that is theoretically and methodologically rich, clearly produced with much care and respect. A vital text in Queer, Caribbean and decolonial studies."— Kamala Kempadoo, author of Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Hu"For Ghisyawan, the erotic is a kind of self-knowing that allows us to reshape space into safe havens, shifting and eliminating the boundaries of what it means to transgress, while also intuiting unsafe spaces and knowing the kinds of performances that become necessary around the potential hostilities of family members, friends, coworkers, and strangers. Ultimately, Erotic Cartographies challenges us to consider the role the erotic plays in our lives as what moves us toward decolonial spaces that are more than just safe enough. By allowing ourselves to inhabit our erotic selves more fully, we also allow ourselves to map the world anew."— Jessica Díaz Rodríguez, Sx Salon"Ghisyawan makes an outstanding contribution to Caribbean knowledge production in this profound and insightful study of Caribbean sexuality and same-sex desire. Through a much-needed focus on same-sex-loving women and space-making practices, she offers a unique decolonial methodology through subjective mapping and intersectional feminist praxis that demonstrates complex understandings of safety, visibility, place, identity, and queerness. Erotic Cartographies locates and affirms queer Caribbean belonging and spaces by examining lived experiences, creativity, spirituality, and erotic subjectivities that are fiercely and powerfully defiant."— Angelique V. Nixon, author of Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture

• List of IllustrationsNote on Trinidadian LanguageProloguePart I: Introduction and Methodology1 Introduction: Erotic Cartographies and the Decolonial2 Subjective Mapping: Queer Decolonial MethodologyPart II: Confronting Binaries: Space, Gender, and Social Class3 Being in Public: Queer Transnational Subjectivities4 Contesting "Home": Unsettling Public-Private BoundariesPart III: State, Religion, and Personhood5 Religious Nationalism: Its Roots and Fruit6 "Dealing Up with the Spirit": Spiritual Knowledge and Erotic Fulfillment7 ConclusionAppendix 1. Analytics Used for MapsAppendix 2. Bio-Data of Research ParticipantsAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex