The darkest hour is before the dawn: (de)colonial(ity) aesthetics in Here Comes the Sun (2016) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987)

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is investigating how two novels from migrant authors born in Jamaica, Michelle Cliff s No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Nicole Dennis-Benn s Here Comes the Sun (2016), portray the latent effects of coloniality, even though Jamaica s colonial period officially ended in 1962. Besides mapping the marks of coloniality in the characters and fictional universes, the purpose of this analysis is to underst how queer characters are constructed in both novels and how these characters relations with their bodies, community members and heteronormative system unfold. The concept of coloniality, the theoretical basis of this work, comes from Aníbal Quijano s propositions (2000), which elaborate on the notions of coloniality of power and knowledge. The author points out that the category race, fictional and heterogeneous, as Hall (1997) has stressed in the past, was one of the foundational axis of modernity. This category was key in the spreading and imposition of coloniality, assuring and cooperating with the settings of the social classes observed nowadays. The concept of coloniality is then expanded by Maria Lugones (2007, 2010) in order to comprise the ideas of gender and compulsory heterosexuality as manufactured impositions, and as core elements of this system. Another author who adds to the discussion is Grada Kilomba (2015), who proposes strategies of the decolonisation of knowledge. It is important to keep in mind Paul Preciado s concept of queer (2011) and the implications of the use of this epistemic tool when dealing with subjects from places that undergo the effects of coloniality. With the purpose of having an analysis focused on the specificities of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender characters in Caribbean literature, I will use notions posited by Dionne Brand (1994), Jenny Sharpe e Samantha Pinto (2006), Kemala Kempadoo (2009), Omise eke Natasha Tinsley (2010), amongst others. With the help of Jack Halberstam s queer failure theory (2011), this analysis wishes to highlight possible aesthetic effects generated by literary constructions which reject the notions of failure and success construed inside the coloniality system.