On flamboyance: refusal and worldmaking in Rébecca Chaillon’s Carte noire nommée désir

This article explores the afrofeminist concept of flamboyance through an analysis of Rébecca Chaillon’s 2021 performance Carte noire nommée désir. I argue that Chaillon’s decolonial scenography deploys flamboyance along two axes: refusal and worldmaking. After providing a preliminary definition of flamboyance, I move to an exploration of these two axes. I first argue that the refusal of respectability at work in flamboyance translates into a refusal of the universalist injunctions that shape the lives of racialized postcolonial citizens in contemporary France. Then, I turn to the emerging futurities at work in this performance through material prefiguration, the related centering of care, and black aliveness as the circulation of flamboyance. Taken together, these examples show how Carte noire… sketches out flamboyance as a pedagogy of worldmaking.