LGBTQ+ Working Group Mission Statement

The Caribbean Philosophical Association’s LGBTQ+ working group is established to further the Carribean Philosophical Association’s goal of promoting the free exchange of ideas so as to foster an intellectual community that is truly representative of the diversity of voices and perspectives that is paradigmatic of, but not limited to, the Caribbean. The CPA LGBTQ+ Working Group recognizes the need to counter the dominance of Western conceptions of gender and sexualities and prioritize the intellectual and activist work that emerges specifically from the Caribbean and the Global South. Working from the premise that gender and sexuality are central to Western designs of colonial domination, the CPA LGBTQ+ Working Group is committed to bringing rigorous theoretical reflection informed by scholarly knowledges, activist practices, and artistic expressions that elucidate the place, form, and function of diverse sexual and gender expressions within broader contexts of “discovery,” conquest, racial and gender domination, genocide, capitalist dependency, and exploitation as well as freedom, emancipation and decolonization. This requires not only a representation of diverse voices, but also a further shift in the geography of reason, one that conceptualizes gender and sexuality as embedded within the CPA’s decolonizing and liberatory praxis. This would entail both an elaboration of anti-colonial and anti-racist expressions of gender and sexuality as well as a reckoning with transimperial iterations of gender and sexuality, whose neoliberal configurations have served to further imperialist projects within the Caribbean and the Global South. In keeping with the goals of the CPA, the CPA LGBTQ+ working group is committed to theoretical engagements with the broadest range of genres and practices towards collaborative and interdisciplinary understandings of what it means to be human and live in the world as such. For more information, contact Peter Park at pkjpark [at] gmail [dot] com.

Current Projects

• organize panels for CPA Conference 2022

• Queer Global South Bibliography

• Course Syllabus Collection