Abstract:
In this article I engage South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s artistic practice
to flesh out the complexities that arise from the intersection of the terms Black
and queer. Drawing on diverse historical, social and textual resources, I interpret
Ruga’s dismantling of dominant post-apartheid and postcolonial narratives visà-
vis a close reading of some of his provocative avatars. Ruga’s practices of
staining, tainting and contaminating serve to expose the borders that produce
conventional notions of race and gender. The article employs camp discourse
in its allusion to performativity, displacement and artifice in order to 1) lay bare
prevailing normative structures; and 2) dismantle conventional views of identity.
To avoid being blindsided by camp’s flamboyance and ostentation, I propose a
view that favours an intimate embroilment with dirt – a stance I argue may furnish
camp acts with political intent and so help create a more sophisticated and
comprehensive view on the juncture of Blackness and queerness. Relying on
Ruga’s method of counter penetration as a way of fleshing out a hermeneutic
view of Black queer subjectivity, I show how counter penetration in Ruga’s
estimation is a subversive and transgressive act intent on contaminating and
infecting conventional narratives of history, identity and politics.
