Naila Keleta-Mae
Over the years I have learned that occupying a female black body in contemporary Canada produces a relationship of suspicion with the world, one that constantly queries the premise of each interaction in an attempt to parse apart the extent to which sex and/or race have defined its parameters and outcomes. The particularities of Canada's politics of sex and race are generally referred to as exemplary by disseminators of dominant discourse, and divisive by those without access to dominant epistemological modes.
The central objective of this dissertation, (Re)Positioning Myself: Female and Black in Canada, is to pursue the following under-examined line of inquiry: What do substantive contemplations of public and private performances of female blackness in Canada reveal about sex, race and nation? This dissertation asserts that those of us who inhabit bodies viewed by dominant culture as female and black constantly perform someone else's fantasies and/or our own in the public and private spaces that constitute our everyday lives. The conditions that necessitate this way of being are what I theorize in my dissertation as perpetual performance. I map this interplay of query, assertion and theory through my body and my experiences of female blackness, which makes me not only the writer of this dissertation, but also its primary subject.
This dissertation draws from performance, feminist and critical race studies, political science, literary criticism, as well as my creative writing, personal experience and lived experience. In particular it considers the artistic and intellectual insights of: Antony Anghie, Gloria Anzaldua, Gerald Belvett, Mae Belvett, Dionne Brand, Patricia Hill Collins, Andrea Davis, Harry J. Elam Jr., Frantz Fanon, Donna P. Hope, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, D. Soyini Madison, Anne McClintock, Jose Esteban Munoz, Samuel West, Patricia J. Williams and Sylvia Wynter. My central contention is that a deeply imaginative space is revealed when those of us read as female and black in Canada (re)position our relationship with our bodies to this is who I perform from this is who I am.
I would like to thank my doctoral committee: my supervisor, the late Dr. Lisa Wolford Wylam, my second reader, Dr. Leslie Sanders, and my third reader, Dr. Andrea Davis. Thank you for providing the intellectual insights and creative space that this research and writing needed. I appreciate the unwavering support, mentorship and friendship that you have offered me. I would also like to thank my extended dissertation defence committee for illuminating comments and questions: Dr. Marlis Schweitzer, Dr. Gail Vanestone and Dr. Ric Knowles.
I would like to thank Dr. Anna Agathangelou, Melanie Bennett, Dawn Bramadat, Dr. T.L. Cowan, Dr. Kate Eichhorn, Saul Garcia Lopez, Anna Griffith, Kate Hennessy, Kaie Kellough, Christine Korte, Dr. Laura Levin, Jean O'Hara, Mary Pecchia, Diane Roberts, Don Rubin, Djanet Sears, Vincent Tinguely and Dr. Shannon Walsh for valuable courses, conversations, advocacy and/or advice during my doctoral studies. Thank you to the faculty and students in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College. It was a privilege to teach and learn with you. Thank you to the graduate students I took courses with and the undergraduate students I taught at York University, your questions and perspectives informed my own. I would also like to thank the various committee members who determined that my doctoral research warranted a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ontario Graduate Scholarship from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and York Graduate Scholarship.
I would like to thank my friends and family for lovingly including me in their communities: Jehane Adam, the Belvett Family, the Eccleston Family, the Graham- Afriyie Family, the Gomez-Jones Family, the Jennings-Okoye Family, the McCalla Family, the McFarlane Family, the Patiy-St-Juste Family, the Promesse-Samuels Family, Monica Rosas, the Francis-Simpson Family, the Terrelonge Family and the West Family. I would especially like to thank my parents Mae and Gerald Belvett, my sister Dr. Gail Belvett, my mother-in-law Martina McCalla and my sister-friend Chilandre Patry for the laughter, cooked food, words of encouragement and other gracious displays of love that you always offer me. To my husband Robert McCalla, thank you for your steadfast love, your tremendous support, your rousing intellect and the gift of our beloved child. It is an enormous relief and immense joy to navigate this complex world with you.