ABSTRACT

Since the mid-2000s, scholars have written a plethora of transnational, global, and world art histories that have systematically begun to reimagine art history beyond Euro-America. Since roughly the same period, art historians have addressed the heteronormativity of art histories by incorporating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) subjectivities. However, there has not been any appreciable overlap between these two important developments in the discipline. Indeed, my own first book, Productive Failure: Writing Transnational South Asian Art Histories (Manchester University Press, 2018), incorporated LGBTQ perspectives into transnational South Asian art histories, but still focused primarily on the US and the UK. An LGBTQ transnational art history not focused exclusively on Western European and American contexts has yet to materialize. This monograph addresses the gap in the extant literature. Drawing on the compelling writings of Martinican-born poet and theoretician Édouard Glissant (1997) to theorize my approach to this book project. Multiple and one aims to offer an alternative to the way in which global art histories and LGBTQ art histories are being conceptualized. This book also acts as an antidote to the resurgence of toxic (and often white, male, and heteronormative) nationalism around the world.

Table of Contents

 Introduction

Chapter One: Aesthetics of queer opacity: present, past, and future South Florida

                  Break One: towards eastern Europe

Chapter Two: Queer, tidalectic roots/routes: eastern Europe 

                  Break Two: from eastern Europe to trans-Asia

Chapter Three: Art historical/queer errantry: passage through trans Asia

                  Break Three: from trans-Asia to middle and southern America

Chapter Four: Tout-monde, relation, and trans-ecology: middle and southern America and beyond

                  Break Four: back to South Florida 

Chapter Five (Parts One and Two): from archipelagic feeling to constellations of knowledge

Coda