Strange Fruits Queer of Color Intellectual Labor in the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s

This chapter offers a portrait of postcolonial queer of color formations emerged in the Netherlands through the 1980s and 1990s, paying specific attention to the nature of their intellectual labor. In the first section of the chapter, we sketch the conditions of emergence of Sister Outsider and Strange Fruit and we discuss the nature of their collective intellectual labor, including the work of translation. Hence, in the second and third sections, we offer brief portraits of two activist intellectuals: Andre Reeder of Strange Fruit and Gloria Wekker of Sister Outsider. We turn to Reeder and Wekker to complicate any simple account of collective intellectual labor. On the one hand, it is essential that we recognize the intellectual labor performed by collectives and movements themselves; and that we disarticulate, at least in part, the function of public intellectuality from the work of exceptional individuals. This is one of the central merits of this volume and one of the aims of our chapter. On the other hand, we maintain that it would be reductive to overlook the multiple interactions between collectives and intellectuals, and that the focus on collective intellectual labor should not write off the contributions of key intellectual figures. The stories of Sister Outsider and Strange Fruit, at least, suggest that the dialectic between political collectives and activist intellectuals is part and parcel of the intellectual labor performed by social movements.