Archives in drag

‘Archives in drag: Performing nachaniya towards a queer theory of indenture’ takes as its object the figure Indo-Jamaican dancer paradigm for re-thinking theories indenture. Nachaniya is highly stylized folk dance featuring heterosexual male dancing drag. The performance, which can be traced to nineteenth century, still common within present-day communities and diaspora. therefore presents both parts historical living archive. By using an archival photograph from 1960s point entry, I consider ways this genre performance demonstrates gender non-normativity deeply embedded indentured Since also read not necessarily but ‘cultural’, am interested tensions between refusal categorize kind drag while simultaneously elevating ‘cultural’ status slippage ‘queer’ ‘culture’. what Anjali Arondekar has termed site ‘ordinary surplus’ rather than exception. Through reading photograph, destabilizing narratives loss or absence that saturate approaches archive indenture suggest useful theorizing nexus at archives queers have been theorized ‘nothing see’.