Translating (Black) Queerness: Unpacking the Conceptual Linkages Between Racialized Masculinities, Consensual Sex, and the Practice of Torture

摘要

This essay argues that the 2005 documentary Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story uses narrative strategies that link it with the 2004 Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. The film tells the story of a Caribbean-born boxer who killed his Cuban-born opponent in the ring for allegedly calling him a homosexual. However, corroborating evidence of Griffith's homosexuality is as scanty in the documentary as it is in the boxer's life. Like the absent sexualities of actual gay men in the Iraqi scandal, Griffith's absent sexuality in the film relies problematically on a conceptual confusion between gender and sexuality.