Fiona Ngo’s monograph entitled “Imperial Blues” incorporates
queer of color critique and empire as a methodology by adopting “imperial” and
“queer” optics in understanding racial and sexual spatiality in the Jazz age
New York. Ngo’s argument is multilayered: “empire both opened and resolved
crisis of differentiation about the content of the modern through recourse to
discourses and practices about space and “Orientalisms” have a significant
effect on gender and sexual forms even in the absence of actual oriental
bodies” (Ngo, 27).
In her chapter entitled “Queer Modernities” Ngo utilizes “map
of the sensible” to make sense of the use of imperial tropes by black queer
artists to complement queer of color critique; for example, she suggests the
borrowing of European decadent forms including Oscar Wilde by the black queer
artist, Nugent.
Why was it inescapable for black queer artists to engage
with the hegemonic imperial discourse? Why was being an avant guarde artist an
impossibility for artists in such context?
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