There’s a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life

by Jafari S. Allen

Narrative theorizing is not only about the professional or vocational production of “texts” but also about the practice of everyday life among those who, though least authorized to produce “theory,” create and enact theory in their works of art and representation, everyday language, and on-the-ground practices. Anthropologists often call these folks “respondents,” but they are just as often the one who initiates/calls the question. Literary and cultural theorists may see their lives as “texts” to be bracketed and deconstructed. Here we are most interested in “grounding,” as Walter Rodney would have it—narrating experiences and imaginaries, and vetting creative and programmatic solutions that emerge from those grounds.49 As C. L. R. James has already told us, “Every cook can govern.”50 Everyone must therefore certainly be capable of telling their own story—of theorizing from experience, expertise, and practice.

Black gay folk have always practiced “flipping the script.” Rewriting it or merely acting the part—rehearsing lines with a very different feeling, for example. How else and how other than through transformative narrative theoretical practice could one withstand the multiple violences inflicted upon gender-insurgent or same-sex-oriented Black people?