Queer Coolie-tudes: ‘A living archive, an oblique poetics’

Abstract

Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies, interviews queer diasporic filmmaker and lecturer Dr. Michelle Mohabeer about her critical and creative documentary interventions – spanning over 30 years – which seek to queer indentureship and Indo-Caribbean diasporic identity and experience. The dialogue focuses especially on her creative essay documentary Queer Coolie-tudes (2019), which places the slurs – ‘queer’ and ‘coolie’ – into proximity and conversation as a way of critically reclaiming them. In so doing, Mohabeer expands the contours of what it means to queer indentureship’s archive by ‘visualizing an Indo-Caribbean diasporic aesthetic’.