Serving Each Other: Sharing Economies and Affective Labour in Montreal’s Kiki Scene

Against a tense socio-political backdrop of white supremacy, intensifying pressures of neoliberal fiscal austerity, and queer necropolitics, this thesis addresses performance-based activist forms of place-making for urban-based queer, trans, and gender nonconforming communities of colour. Using participant observation and qualitative interviews with pioneering members of Montréal's Kiki scene and Ottawa's emerging Waacking community and interpreting my findings through the theoretical lens of queer of colour theory, critical whiteness studies, queer Latinx performance studies and Chicana feminism, I argue that Kiki subculture, which is maintained by pedagogical processes of 'each one, teach one', is instrumental in facilitating i) life-affirming queer kinship bonds, (ii) alternative ways to simultaneously embody and celebrate non-normative gender expression with Black, Asian, and Latinx identity, iii) non-capitalist economies of sharing, and iv) hopeful strategies of everyday community activism and resilience to appropriative processes during economic insecurity and necropolitical turmoil.