Relating racial and sexual difference in Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland and Welcome to Africville

This article applies Kalpana Seshadri’s ideas about race and sexuality to a comparison of two short Canadian films: Dana Inkster’s Welcome to Africville and Camille Turner’s Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland . It contrasts the presence of Newfoundland in Turner’s examination of race and enslavement with the absence of Africville in Inkster’s examination of sexuality and settler colonialism to illustrate the relationship between racial and sexual difference and the visibility of Black and/or queer bodies. It argues that Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland supports Seshadri’s view that racial identity is rigid when compared to sexual identity; at the same time, Welcome to Africville supports Seshadri’s view that racial difference is no more real than sexual difference, despite having a master signifier (‘Whiteness’) whose purpose is to justify the domination of Black lives.