Makeshift assemblages: Queer maneuverings in historical archaeology

Drawing from feminist and queer theory and new materialist and affect theories in anthropology, this dissertation charts a series of archaeological case studies that examine makeshift assemblages of queer space in rural landscapes across the United States. The first section of this project investigates the stages that gave birth to Blues music in the rural South; These are sites where viscerally transformative genres emerged in smoke-filled, dimly lit rooms dotting the post-Reconstruction United States (1880-1920 CE). In a climate of state-sanctioned violence, legal disenfranchisement, and racial segregation, Black working-class sharecroppers and laborers found solace in jooks joints, which provided a cathartic mix of music, alcohol, gambling, and, prostitution. Scholars identify jook joints as African American-operated social gathering centers that bristled with a reckless air of criminality and deviance queered by Anglo American sexual norms (Hazzard-Gordon 1990; Hurston 1997; Pearson 2005). Black jook-goers navigated, disoriented, and challenged racial and sexual oppression. To set the stage, I examine the meanings and contingencies that imbricated queer Black experiences towards the turn of the 20th century. Following a queer of color critique, I discuss the representation of jooks in narratives within larger Black political movements and white racializing discourses. In the material and spatial analyses that follow, I trace the residues of jook performance, which cultivated erotic desire and intimacy in a climate of institutionalized violence. I locate race and racialization as a technology of domination in order to 1) understand how racializing discourses queered jook assemblages and 2) recognize how pleasure entertained in jooks erotically disrupted modes of sexual and racial oppression. The second and third sections explore queer affects and feelings circulating in two separate contexts – Pre-Columbian mound centers throughout the Midwestern United States and a suite of jug factories in rural South Carolina where an enslaved Black artist disrupted the pulse of industrial capitalism. These sections probe the queer entanglements of race and intimacy through an examination of an assemblage of bodies- both human and nonhuman- that forged transgressive intimacies. In the context of Pre-Columbian mounds, I examine how the presence and persistence of Native American pilgrims and ancestral connections to indigenous landscapes discharged queer atmospheres in Euro-American settler occupations. The persistence of indigenous inhabitants on the landscape challenged settler ideologies underlying 19th century Indian Removal campaigns in the United States. The final section turns to the context of rural stoneware potteries in South Carolina where a defiant African American potter subverted racialized forms of policing and cemented his artistic legacy in queer concatenations of clay. This case study synthesizes new materialist themes in feminist and critical queer scholarship, which collectively question how material relationships legitimate, arrange, and orient privileged forms of life. Drawing inspiration from the work of Audre Lorde, Hortense Spillers, Karen Barad, Sarah Ahmed, and Mel Chen, I consider the porous possibilities of distorted representations, slurred language, and liminal bodies. I mobilize feminist/queer conceptions of indeterminacy, interstices, poetry, and erotic power to examine the captivating artistry of an enslaved African-American potter known as Dave. Through a comparative survey of 19th century ceramic traditions in South Carolina, I capture the erotic textures precipitating at the interface of Dave’s life and art. Rather than focusing on the generative and reproductive capacities of material life, I argue that porosity dissolves being and becoming in a trans corporeal slurry of desire. By synthesizing evidence derived from archival documents, geospatial analyses, archaeological data, I thread together multiple lines of evidence to illustrate how historical queer intimacies were forged in various types of makeshift assemblages. Drawing from queer theory, I trace the physiological effects of intoxication on human bodies to discuss the transformative, disruptive potentialities of queer affects. This investment in a queer theory-inspired archaeology leads to nuanced interpretations of matter, space, and intimacy. I suggest that queer intimacies inspired alternative pleasures and intoxications that erotically disrupted sexual and racial norms. As in the case of jook joints, these makeshift assemblages carved out queer spaces and connections in rural landscapes often overlooked in queer historical research.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Arjona, Jamie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dominguez, Virginia R.
• Clancy, Kathryn
• Davis, Jenny
• Davidson, James

• African American Archaeology
• Queer Studies
• Historical Archaeology

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Jamie Arjona

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121261

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121261