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In Circuits of the Sacred Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Latinx Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit. Decena models what he calls a faggotology-the erotic in the divine as found in the disreputable and the excessive-as foundational to queer black critical and expressive praxis of the future. Drawing on theoretical analysis, memoir, creative writing, and ethnography of Santería/Lucumí in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Decena moves between languages, locations, pronouns, and genres to map the itineraries of blackness as a "circuit," a multipronged and multisensorial field. A feminist pilgrimage and extended conversation with the dead, Decena's study is a provocative work that transforms the academic monograph into a gathering of stories, theoretical innovation, and expressive praxis to channel voices, ancestors, deities, theorists, artists, and spirits from the vantage point of radical feminism and queer-of-color thinking.
List of contents
Gratitudes ix
Part 0. Orígenes (Origins)
Pensar Maricón (Faggotology): An Introduction 1
1. Re-membered Life: A Composition for Egun 23
Part I. Caminos
2. Bridge Crónica: A Triptych, with Elegguá 33
3. Experiencing the Evidence 57
Part II. Dos Puentes, Tránsitos
4. Loving Stones: A Transnational Patakí 81
5. ¡Santo! Repurposed Flesh and the Suspension of the Mirror in Santería Initiation 102
Part III. Trances
6. Indecent Conocimientos: A Suite Rasanblaj in Funny Keys 125
Epístola al Futuro/An Epistle to the Future 155
Notes 159
Bibliography 175
Index
About the author
Carlos Ulises Decena is Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and author of
Tacit Subjects: Belonging and Same-Sex Desire among Dominican Immigrant Men, also published by Duke University Press.
Summary
Drawing on memoir, creative writing, theoretical analysis, and ethnography in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit.
