Episode 2 – Hope is a Discipline: An Interview with Dr. Xavier Livermon

[0:00:04 Speaker 1] This is audio Q. T. The Podcast of Cute Voices, Thea Online magazine of the LGBT Q studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. This’d is Episode two Thank you all for listening Karma Chavez, your host of audio q T. These are intense times, to say the least. If the Cove in 19 Pandemic wasn’t enough, police and other vigilantes have continued to target black people and some of their white supporters, leading two months now of urban rebellions. These rebellions, as with so much organizing in the movement for black lives, have been largely led by young, black, queer, trans and feminist freedom fighters whose deeply intersectional politics refused to leave anyone behind and challenged the very foundations of the U. S nation state. As the election nears and white supremacy surges, violent vigilantes terrorized those who protest, as recent murders by a 17 year old white terrorist in Kenosha, Wisconsin, make so plain. Indeed, these are intense times, but they’re not necessarily unusual times in the context of global history, and they’re not helpless times, as black feminist radical thinker Maryam Kaba insist, Though hope is a discipline. What does it mean to have hope in this moment, What does it mean to even be political? To sift through some of these questions, I’ve invited Dr Xavier Leiberman, who for the past several years has been on the faculty in African and African diaspora studies here at UT but sadly for us that you t will join the feminist Studies faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as an associate professor this fall. Dr. Lieberman’s research exists at the intersection of pop culture, gender and sexuality in post apartheid South Africa and the African diaspora. He’s the author of Quito Bodies, Remastering Space and Subjectivity in post apartheid South Africa, which came out with Duke University Press this year and co editor of Black Sexual Economies. Race and Sex in a Culture of Capitol, published by the University of Illinois Press in 2019 Xavier Welcome toe audio Q t.

[0:02:20 Speaker 0] Thank you, thank you. I’m very happy to be here today,

[0:02:23 Speaker 1] so it’s ah, interesting times as I was talking about there in the intro. But I’m always in these moments returning Thio. What Merriam Kabas that’s about hope is a discipline. Does that resonate with where you are in this late summer moment?

[0:02:41 Speaker 0] absolutely. And I actually I love that That saying I hadn’t heard it before, but I think it does something mawr than kind of imagine hope as a kind of neo liberal formation. Rather, it suggests that it requires us to engage and study, engage in practice. And I think be very intentional about what exactly do we mean? If we are to have hope, right, it doesn’t. It’s not just a kind of emotion, but rather it requires certain kinds of praxis and action.

[0:03:15 Speaker 1] Yeah, well, of course, I’m sure. Reminds you as it does me of Jose Munoz is work, uh, increasing utopia where he’s advocating a politics of educated hope at as, ah, very queer politics on I’m one of you talk about how that influences or plays in your own work.

[0:03:36 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, actually, Munoz was an important interlocutor for my his earlier work was an important interlocutor for my book project. When I talk a lot about this, identification is a particular strategy that black queer folks also engage in. And so, yeah, I think it is a queer thing because in many cases, for queer people, we had to kind of imagine futures and possibilities in hopes. Right? Um, and that that often did require a new, explicit level of organization and of care for one another in order for us to be able to create any kind of semblance of a livable life or to imagine any kind of semblance of the future.

[0:04:25 Speaker 1] This reminds me I think a lot about your work more broadly, which one of the things that you’ve done so well is emphasized questions about creativity, questions about aesthetics. Um, not just questions about imagination, not just as play all the play is obviously very important, but as deeply political. And your work has focused on black queer youth, and they’re playful, creative, imaginative practices. And so I wonder if you might say a bit more about the role of aesthetics and imagination and play on how the queer youth you’ve worked with, um have, you know, kind of help Thio build the future there. They want to see.

[0:05:09 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I think I first of all, would start by saying that you know, any kind of, um, desire for change to the political system must begin with an imagination for something other than what we see Now, Um, when we talk about a certain kind of abolition politics or a certain kind of revolutionary or radical politics, they all are embedded in a re imagination. Onda faith that, you know, the things that we’re seeing now either can be transformed. They haven’t always existed. They don’t need to exist in perpetuity. And so I think that the work of creativity it is not to just assume it as a utilitarian base for quote unquote riel politics, right? I’m not I’m not saying that, but I think that the work of creativity is so key to helping us imagine something that’s different, right? That a lot of times, um, you know something a particular kind of freedom can be performed on the dance floor before it’s performed. You know, in in in a legislature, you know, space or in a courtroom, um, or it can be performed through, ah, poem or, you know, a gathering. And so I think that for me, that was what was. That was really important about what that relationship is between the kinds of playful practices that creative practices that black queer youth developed oftentimes, not necessarily with this idea that it would per se transformed the politics. But it became transformative because it became a space for helping us think about in the case of South Africa, what would this shift in political dispensation mean? Really? You know, what were the limits of it? How far can we push it? Right? And I think that that’s what we’re seeing. You know, frankly, in this moment here, um, in the US, with political organizing and black, queer and black trans youth being at the forefront and making a case for politics needing to be done differently. Um, not just about different faces in the politics, but a complete re imagination of what freedom possibilities look like.

[0:07:40 Speaker 1] I want to pick up on something you said earlier in the comment you just made, which is about something might be possible on a dance floor before it ends up in a Legislature in a courtroom. And I don’t know, Do you have any sort of concrete experiences from the research you’ve done or or folks who have theorized that kind of relationship to make it a bit more concrete for people who may have trouble wrapping their head around that I don’t know

[0:08:06 Speaker 0] if I have, ah, concrete example, but I just think about the fact that in my research I found that. And let me be clear. I companion it, you know, had a normative type. Marriage is not, You know, it’s not a thing that I’m like, Yea, you know, But but But I do want to say that, you know, there were people who were finding very informal ways right just in their communities to imagine what family and relationships would look like long before there was a case before the Supreme Court. Whether whether the Supreme Court in South Africa or the Supreme Court here in the United States, um that argued for, you know, a particular kind of, you know, we could argue limited definition, but of, you know, a certain kind of alternative family structure. I think about that right. I think about the fact that, um, people danced on dance floors with their with their partners long before they could sometimes even legally live with their partners right on. DSO in some ways cemented a relationships and possibilities. People, um, created alternative family structures that oftentimes came out of, you know, uh, queer clubs. And before there was ever You know, I don’t know the possibility of certain kinds of adoption or whatever that queer people could do. And of course, those alternative formations are still happening, right, so that are often times outside and push the boundaries of, um, certain kinds of legal forms of recognition. And I imagine that, you know, we’ll have different ways of thinking about family and community and interaction with one another. Um, that we continue to push those definitions. So I hope that helps the kind of maybe give it a slightly more concrete. Um um idea.

[0:10:16 Speaker 1] Yeah. No, I think it does. I think, um you know, for people who maybe aren’t involved in these communities, sometimes it is difficult to imagine that what just seems, um, maybe arbitrary in a way or playful or just leisure? Um Tiu really See it’s concrete connections Thio the realm of the political. And so I do think it’s helpful. Thio Concretize that a bit. And also I think related Lee, I’m interested Thio here you say a bit more about transformation and where transformation lies and what it looks like. And so, um, pushing on definitions, changing definitions may be doing engaging in practices in a creative space you can’t engage in in a legal er or traditionally political space. How have How is your view of what transformation is shifted over the duration of your time working with young people, sort of being in these spaces?

[0:11:17 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I think that I’ve learned so much, you know, because I think that I mean, I think one of the simple things that I’ve learned is that is that I’ve had to completely re imagine what what security means, right and where it comes from. Um and I think that, like many people you know who have been taught by a particular kind of fascistic pro police, right, pro punitive, um, kind of society here in the United States, you imagine security, you know, in the form of, you know, police or laws, formal laws or formal policing or the corollaries of those things, whether that be security guards or, you know, the child welfare system or whatever. Right. Um, and I think that being in those communities and seeing how for a lot of people the dance club was the space of hyper security for them was a space where they were cared for. It was a space where, um they were being fed literally. Um, it was a space that allowed them to potentially negotiate to, um, have a place to stay or a place to sleep or a job. Right. You know that it was doing this function of providing the security that in many ways, the state and the society was not able to provide for for black queer folks, right? And it just made me have to reimagine completely what that meant. And I think that that kind of framework, of course, becomes the basis for certain kinds of claims about, um, abolition, right in the fact that, you know, the interference of the police state, you know, into communities actually brings more violence and not more security. So I think that those transformative visions begin sometimes once again in spaces of creativity in spaces of leisure. Um, before they can kind of get expressed in kind of certain kinds of political demands. And of course, I see these things a symbiotic but my s o. I won’t say it’s solely in the creative and Lee and leisure world, right, But that there’s Ah, but there’s a space for a rehearsal or an imagination. And in that way, I build off of a lot of the work that was done on ballroom. You know, in this sort of early to mid dots around the fact that that was a space for people to kind of rehearse and imagine, um, certain forms of gender performative ity on DSO say that they would need Teoh be able to navigate the world right outside the ballroom.

[0:14:15 Speaker 1] And we say just a bit because there might be folks younger listeners who don’t know what ballroom culture is. Could you just explain that for a minute?

[0:14:22 Speaker 0] Yes, just really quickly. Um, it’s probably most popularized by the television show posed at this point, um, which actually think it’s a fairly, you know, decent rendering by Hollywood standards, right of, ah, community of color. Um, and in this case of sort of black, queer and trans community. But basically it’s a scene that grew up in a lot of urban areas with black and brown youth would use as ultimately a space to kind of create alternative families, but also a space, in my opinion, to create, um, alternative forms of imagining self worth and self fashioning on Did a lot of that included, um, it kind of breaking down and re imagination of gender categories. Andi then the performing of those, uh, gender categories, Uh, you know, in in a kind of competitive realm.

[0:15:22 Speaker 1] Yeah. Thank you for doing that. I just think it’s always useful for us to clarify. So we’re not in group and out group

[0:15:30 Speaker 0] mothers? No, no, no. Totally understood.

[0:15:32 Speaker 1] Yeah. So I wanna I wanna pick up on this notion of security because I think there’s there’s a lot going on in this concept and what you just said for queer folks more broadly and so I don’t want to re inscribe, of course, uh, sort of historical arc for queer politics that necessarily returns us to stonewall and all that that entails. But it is interesting for a moment to think about the club or the bar space for queer folks writ large and how that’s both always been a side of security. I even think of being like, ah young dyke in rural Nebraska in the 19 nineties, going to the queer bar two hours away because that was the one space you could be yourself, right? So there’s these long legacies and also always attention with law enforcement specifically before we were really there. But even now and vigilante violence thinking about pulse, Um And so I think there is something really to be learned from how Queer world making queer space making, um, that offers a critique right of state violence in particular. Does that resonate with you at all? Or, um, I just kinda No,

[0:16:49 Speaker 0] no, absolutely actually think that that that is the case. And I think that, you know, I don’t think it’s a surprise that queer space making, whether in the form of the club or other kinds of spaces, have been the site of a lot of vigilante violence over the years. Right. Um, I also don’t think that it’s a surprise that these spaces particularly I think, in a kind of pre, you know, I don’t know what the time period. I don’t you know that I that I would cut it off it. But it’s but certainly in a kind of, you know, an era where being queer was criminalized in various different ways. Right? Um, that the that the club space or the night club space or leisure spaces that were being created by queer people. Um were then all always kind of the site where queer people with were being oftentimes subjected to the most sort of day to day state violence. Right? Um and I don’t think that those are our surprises. I think that we can even make corollaries, um, beyond the queer community as faras the way that minorities communities in general, um, in the United States and their leisure spaces air sort of hyper surveilled, hyper police on bond, Oftentimes the sight of of intense violence from the state.

[0:18:15 Speaker 1] Yeah, which, of course, we can think, too, about all of the phone calls made on black folks who are doing ordinary things and

[0:18:24 Speaker 0] precise, particularly around leisure. Right, because there’s this idea that I think leisure is for the white and wealthy on DSO for people of color, you know, let’s say the white, the wealthy and this sort of, you know, just heteronormative, right? And so when other people engaged in leisure And I think particularly, um when folks who are kind of, I think, suitor to the idea that their purpose in this country is to be labor right are then kind of engaged in leisure practices. It does something I think that invites a certain kind of violence. E

[0:19:03 Speaker 1] think you’re right. And I think, um that is this interesting tension that I think your your work points us toward That is important for us to consider. And and so I want to kind of dig into maybe some of these questions a little bit more in relation to the way the movement movement for black lives. There’s various iterations of the way. What’s happening right now is described. But one thing is fairly consistent, which is this, uh, that queer and trans folks are at the front of these movements. Feminists are at the front of these movements. They are the thinkers who are animating what’s going on, uh, drawing on all of these sorts of experiences that we’re talking about And what What does this mean for black liberation? What does this mean for what we’ve known of black social movements in the US but across the, you know, African diaspora?

[0:20:01 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I would say two things. I think one is that you know, doing. And I’m nobody’s historian, so I I do

[0:20:10 Speaker 1] want to

[0:20:10 Speaker 0] be. You know, I do want to be clear that, you know, I kind of approach this outside from outside the field, in that sense. But, um, one of the things that we know about black social movements, at least you know, content, you know, kind of what we might call the sort of modern black freedom movement. Um, is that so many queer people had and folks that I don’t know if they would have called themselves feminists, But certainly I think that they would have imagined things that we might call a proto black feminism. Right. Um, all were involved in these movements and really substantive ways, Andi. Yet there was always this sense that, um, their queerness or the fact that they, in their quickness, slash transmits slash feminist politics. Right. We’re always somewhat of a a downplayed element, right? I mean, I I I’m thinking here in particular of the Hazel Carby work where she talks about to be the race man, right? And to be the person who kind of leads the movement, um, requires you then to be kind of stripped of any kind of queer nous, right? And she was talking specifically about James Baldwin in this case, and I was thinking about a recent conversation between two fairly well known black male scholars about Baldwin. And once again, there was this weird a razor of his queerness from that conversation. And so I take that as a starting point to just, um, talk about the fact that I think in this contemporary movement what I think black, queer Trans, um, and feminist, you know, folks. And, of course, keeping in mind those can all be embodied in with 11 individual. Um, um, I I feel that there’s this point where people are saying, Look, if we’re going to be the people doing the labor and organizing, we’re not going to kind of have our issues on the side any longer, and you don’t get to kind of use us as the face and labor of the movement, while kind of downplaying, um, the fact that black liberation has to be absolutely connected to questions of gender and sexuality if it’s going to actually be black liberation. And I think that and I don’t want to pretend that that’s not something that’s been said before, but I think that the difference is the kind of explicit and four fronting, um, of that. And I think the very visibility of black queer and trans folks claiming their black liberation from a particular black queer and trans on black feminist stance. And I think that. And I think being able to I think garner a certain kind of public platform to do that is what I feel like is new, right? Yeah, and I think that that’s important. I think what I hope it means is that, um is that black liberation actually becomes black liberation right on. But it doesn’t kind of continue to be, you know, I kind of black sis head mail, liberation, right? Or black cysts? Liberation. Eso That’s what I hope it means. You know, I think that, um we see the old habits die hard in some ways, but we also see that people are pushing back against that consistently and constantly and demanding that that this level of black politics looks different. It must look different

[0:23:58 Speaker 1] Well, and it changes the very face of what counts as black, I think to, um So there the symbol of blackness. If you put that you know in many people’s minds in the faces of MLK or someone of that sort, that that’s no longer the face of blackness for many people.

[0:24:17 Speaker 0] I agree, Yes, I think it changes this idea of of even what leadership means, because obviously, I think what’s also happening in a lot of these institutional structures is just a critique of the, you know, the sort of leadership model that kind of anoints, you know, a particular person as the leader, right? That then that, then is the, you know, the spokesperson and, um, that everyone’s supposed to kind of galvanized around. I think that they’re also, um, young, black, queer and trans folks and feminists also sort of pushing this more collaborative, less vertical, you know, types of of structures, right, definitely less hierarchal. And I think that’s the influence of of black feminism in particular. But to a greater extent, the way that black feminism has influenced queer and trans politics is well,

[0:25:15 Speaker 1] so I’m interested. This is ah, something we didn’t talk about in advance of our conversation to prepare, but it just was wondering what you think about. I know Audrey lorde influences your work. Um, what do you think she would think of this historical moment? What would her analysis be of where we’re at, where we’re heading?

[0:25:33 Speaker 0] I would like to think that she would be heartened by the ways that a lot of her essays around what black politics and black liberation and queer liberation should look like are being kind of really taken seriously by, um, you know, this new generation of of black, queer and trans activists. I think this you would be heartened by it, and I would like to believe that she would push us to, you know, she would like to push us a little further, right? I think she would like to say, You know, this is sort of the beginning and there’s still Mawr that, you know, there’s more that we need to do. There’s more that we need to do the respect difference. We have to kind of. There’s more that we need to do to think about what what you need. He actually means there’s more that we need to do. I think ASUs faras certain kinds of criticisms of particular kind of fascistic tendencies that you know in in corporate capitalist tendencies, right that that we need to fight against. So I think it would be a combination of hardened right and caution that we still be continuously vigilant. I find a lot of her work was about the need to be kind of continuously visually and cautious about reproducing. You know, certain kinds of hierarchal or the masters structures right in our in our own work,

[0:27:10 Speaker 1] right? I mean, not that there’s a right to that answer, but I like what you had to say. And I think that that caution is always so important. And I think that’s why I so often return to that quotation I started with about Hope is a discipline because I think that discipline piece that work piece that diligence that long game pieces so crucial to any of this kind of work. Andi Absolutely. That’s what Lord and so many other black feminist their work is about. Um I want itto maybe ask you Ah, kind of final question related Thio. You Your book has just come out. Um, you’re thinking about new things. You’ve actually had two books come out in the last two years. So you’ve been quite busy. Um, what are you thinking about? right now, What’s the direction that your your work is taking?

[0:28:04 Speaker 0] Yeah, I don’t know. And I’m going to be really honest about that. I am trying to kind of sit with this moment because I think that I had ideas about what the project was going to be. So I initially was really interested in looking at how black queer folks in South Africa were constructing belonging Andi. I was thinking about belonging as being something very distinct from, um citizenship, right or distinct from, you know, certain other words that we use the kind of ca note. Um, you know, certain kinds of citizenship and how belonging was really more communal. Um, it was, you know, and I was looking at kind of gestures of in ways that black queer folks were trying to construct belonging in their communities. So the fight wasn’t over legal status, right? The fight wasn’t over. You know, these things that I think, you know, folks are fighting for and much of the African continent and in here in the United States, right? Pretty much all the legal things that can be done, you know, have happened through activism in the South African context. But the question remains about those disconnects in community, right? This sort of lack of belonging, right? Eso I became really interested in what that would look like and there may Still, I still would like to pursue that project at some point, but I’ve also felt a particular urgency around. I think both how the combination of co vid and a sort of renewal in certain kinds of protests and social movements, um, and have created a kind of different kind of, I don’t know, urgency or idea about what my work should be doing or look like. And I’ve really, increasingly just become interested in thinking about where black queer people are in the middle of all of this. Um, and I don’t know if that’s going to be a creative type of thing or a kind of historical type of remembrance or a kind of I think, you know, imagination into how people are kind of, I don’t know, functioning philosophically or through political theory. I I haven’t decided yet, but I guess that’s a thing that has just really come to me, is that I’m I’m really interested in what? What does the black queer radicalism look like, because I feel like I feel like people are talking a lot about what black, radical politics look like. But it feels like that is a set of readings and practice that don’t seem toe always take into account queerness right on Ben. There’s a black queer reading that doesn’t always seem to engage in in what in what we might call black right or isn’t conceived of. Let me say that I actually think it is engaging black radical, but it’s not conceived of as being a part of the black radical tradition. And I think I want to kind of think about how to pull those things together. So those air those are things that I’ve been thinking about. Um, right now in this moment,

[0:31:31 Speaker 1] well, I love that, and I think you’re the perfect person. Thio do some of that thinking and really Thio push all of us to be able Thio understand the relationship between black radicalness, black queerness, um, and thes other things. We’ve been talking about aesthetics and play and imagination. And so I for one, I’m excited for what you come up with next, and I’m also gonna miss you around here, and so I really just want to wish you good luck at Santa Cruz. Um, I know they’re gonna be excited to have you, and they’re very lucky to have you. Um, and I also wanna thank you for joining me on the show today.

[0:32:13 Speaker 0] Yeah. Thank you for having me. And thank you so much for the well wishes. Um, this, you know, the Q T voices in the queer community that we’ve been able to build here in at UT will be definitely one of the things I will miss.

[0:32:29 Speaker 1] Well, we’re sorry we can’t give you a proper send off. So I guess this will have to do until we see each other in person again. But our guest today was Dr Xavier Lieberman, who is about to be an associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, leaving the University of Texas again. Thank you, Xavier. Thank you all for listening. This has been audio QT