Flamboyant

Abstract

This essay draws on the feminist and queer organization Flamboyant, the first and only nationwide Black and migrant women–run meeting place, active in the 1980s in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After five years, the collective was forced to leave their space due to a lack of funding and burnout. The organization was named after the tropical flamboyant tree (Delonix regia), which according to the founders “has not been tamed and would prefer to die instead of shrinking in the Dutch living room.” I argue that this metaphorical mission statement is an articulation of wildness that rejects Dutch colonial expectations of integration and order. Flamboyant’s refusal to be tamed eventually led to the demise of the only archive run by Black women and women of color. This essay firmly situates Flamboyant within a Black and women of color (WOC) European scholarly and activist experience. Drawing on archival materials and geographical reflections of place, I demonstrate how the loss of Dutch feminist and queer of color spaces and archives are embedded within transnational feminist genealogies of mourning.