Description
Book SynopsisBlack queer lives often exist outside conventional civic institutions and therefore have to explore alternative intimacies to experience a sense of belonging. Civic Intimacies examines howand to what extentthese different forms of intimacy catalyze the values, aspirations, and collective flourishing of Black queer denizens of Baltimore. Niels van Doorn draws on 18 months of immersive ethnographic fieldwork for his innovative cross-disciplinary analysis of contemporary debates in political and cultural theory.Van Doorn describes the way that these systematically marginalized communities improvise on citizenship not just to survive but also to thrive despite the proliferation of violence and insecurity in their lives. By reimagining citizenship as the everyday reparative work of building support structures, Civic Intimacies highlights the extent to which sex, kinship, memory, religious faith, and sexual health are rooted in collective practices that are deeply political. These systems su
Trade Review“Civic Intimacies is a thoughtful, timely, and engaging critique that rethinks the category of citizenship not simply as the domain of those on the inside but as constituted through its outside, through those subjects or nonsubjects that are seen as the very antithesis of sovereignty, subjectivity, and citizenship. Van Doorn challenges hegemonic notions of citizenship while also demonstrating how Black queer subjects create new understandings of citizenship through political, social, and cultural work.”—Rashad Shabazz, Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University, and author of Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago
