Jamie Arjona—Things that Queer: Disorienting Intimacies in Late Nineteenth Century Jooks

This paper examines late nineteenth and early twentieth century jook joints as sites that generated queer African-American intimacies and animacies. Emerging in the 1880s throughout much of the rural United States, jook joints crafted a performatively queer medium within African-American communities. Particularly in the rural south, these jooks offered a haven for black music, dance, gambling, prostitution, and alcohol consumption that disoriented expectations of temperance and frugality. Drawing from affect theory, queer theory and ontological approaches to materiality, I attempt to understand how jook atmospheres generated intimate connections between people and things that were, in turn, condemned by a host of black leaders. The animate assemblage of performers and materials that once resided in these rural spaces contested models of reproductive futurity and craft a focal point for understanding affective disillusionment captured in material attachments.