Lex's Post on ¡Venceremos?

In Jafari Allen's (2011) ¡Venceremos? experiences of everyday life for black Cubans are described and analyzed as transcendent erotic subjectivities. He suggests that erotic subjectivities (deep understandings of the body and soul as related to sex and death) have the potential to be socially and politically transformative (Allen, 2011, p. 96). In making this claim through his ethnographic data, he is doing a lot of things, but I want to discuss an important methodological aspect of his argument. In linking together intimate practices of relationships and transnational political economy, Allen is explicit in his methodological justification for making this claim the way that he does. Throughout the book, he is clear about his commitment to black resistance, liberatory politics, and struggles for autonomy and freedom. Allen is not alone in this commitment, of course, but he does skillfully weave his commitment into his methods, analytics, and arguments in the book.

I have often been asked why I'm studying the effects of clinical prenatal screening encounters on cultural meanings of disability. It's a legitimate question, I suppose, but also comes with baggage. I have been encouraged to be more forthcoming about my commitments, but it also seems that there is an expectation that those commitments will come out of personal experience. For instance, several of my colleagues have disabilities that are genetic and are de facto (albeit somewhat essentialized) stakeholders in the debates around prenatal testing. Other colleagues are mothers and have experienced the process of prenatal testing.

I hold neither of these subject positions, but am in a couple of ways within the interstices ( small spaces between) them, or perhaps my position is more liminal or fluid. My partner has a genetic disability, and I anticipate the possibility of being pregnant sometime in the next decade. So I am not unaffected by the material and affective outcomes of these debates. However, my interest in my object(s) of study cannot be defined by these statements. In truth, I became interested in this before I even met my partner.

How then, should I articulate my commitments to disability both as a form of subjectivity and a result of material effects? Allen's work here has shown me that naming commitments does not always have to be "personal," but he has also convinced me that it is valuable not only to name one's commitments, one's rubric of accountability, but to use it for methodological purposes.

Looking for resistance, for agentic potential for social change can be an important component of methodology. Part of Allen's intervention is to find practices of black resistance in Cuba, where they have previously not been found or studied. In his last sentence, he contextualizes his findings and analysis as "agency akimbo" (Allen, 2011 p. 194), and again makes a strong statement connecting his work to assembling a toolkit for resistance. That is to say, his analysis of black erotic subjectivities in Cuba comes through and by his commitment to resistance. In following this path, Allen's work resonates with others we have read this semester, including Visweswaran (1994), Gilroy (1993), and Naber (2012).