383 pages

English

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Appropriating Blackness , livre ebook

Duke University Press - Johnson E. Patrick Johnson

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383 pages

English

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Performance artist and scholar E. Patrick Johnson's provocative study examines how blackness is appropriated and performed-toward widely divergent ends-both within and outside African American culture. Appropriating Blackness develops from the contention that blackness in the United States is necessarily a politicized identity-avowed and disavowed, attractive and repellent, fixed and malleable. Drawing on performance theory, queer studies, literary analysis, film criticism, and ethnographic fieldwork, Johnson describes how diverse constituencies persistently try to prescribe the boundaries of "authentic" blackness and how performance highlights the futility of such enterprises.Johnson looks at various sites of performed blackness, including Marlon Riggs's influential documentary Black Is . . . Black Ain't and comedic routines by Eddie Murphy, David Alan Grier, and Damon Wayans. He analyzes nationalist writings by Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver, the vernacular of black gay culture, an oral history of his grandmother's experience as a domestic worker in the South, gospel music as performed by a white Australian choir, and pedagogy in a performance studies classroom. By exploring the divergent aims and effects of these performances-ranging from resisting racism, sexism, and homophobia to excluding sexual dissidents from the black community-Johnson deftly analyzes the multiple significations of blackness and their myriad political implications. His reflexive account considers his own complicity, as ethnographer and teacher, in authenticating narratives of blackness.

Sujets

Africa

États-Unis

USA

Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

Publié par	Duke University Press
Date de parution	13 août 2003
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780822385103
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1548€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A P P R O P R I AT I N G B L A C K N E S S

Performance

and the Politics

of Authenticity

E. Patrick Johnson

A P P R O P R I AT I N G B L A C K N E S S

E. Patrick Johnson

AP P ROP R I AT I NG BL AC KNE S S

Performance and the Politics of Authenticity

Duke University Press Durham and London



Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper 

Typeset in Scala with Univers

display by Tseng Information

Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-

in-Publication Data appear on the

last printed page of this book.

Excerpt from ‘‘kevin the faggot’’

in chapter  used with the

permission of Marvin K. White.

For Jake McHaney,

Ray ‘‘Boot’’ McHaney, Mary Lee Jones, and

Johnny ‘‘Shaw’’ McHaney

Acknowledgments

C O N T E N T S

Introduction ‘‘Blackness’’ and Authenticity: What’s Performance Got to Do with It?  1The Pot Is Brewing: Marlon Riggs’sBlack Is . . . Black Ain’t 2Manifest Faggotry: Queering Masculinity in African American Culture  3Mother Knows Best: Blackness and Transgressive Domestic Space  4‘‘Nevah Had uh Cross Word’’: Mammy and the Trope of Black Womanhood  5Sounds of Blackness Down Under: The Café of the Gate of Salvation  6Performance and/as Pedagogy: Performing Blackness in the Classroom 

Appendix A Mary Rhyne’s Narrative  Appendix B Interview with Mrs. Smith  Notes  Bibliography  Index 

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

On July , , my hometown of Hickory, N.C., celebrated ‘‘Dr. E. Patrick Johnson Day.’’ I was given this honor because, to the town’s knowledge, I am the ﬁrst African American born in Hickory to earn a Ph.D. The celebration was initiated by a number of black leaders, namely city councilwoman and family friend Z. Ann Hoyle, who wanted to send a message not only to the whites of this small town in the foothills of western North Carolina, but also to the younger black children in the community aspiring to make something of their lives. The two running themes of that day, both of which were printed on the program and the cake, were ‘‘From Zero to Hero’’ and ‘‘They Said It Couldn’t Be Done.’’ While I was a little perplexed by the former (I’ve never thought of myself as ever being a ‘‘zero’’!), the latter spoke to this black community’s indictment of the institutionalized racism that for many years kept the educational system in Hickory separate and unequal. Held in the neighborhood where I grew up and in the gymnasium of the old black high school—Ridgeview High—the cere-mony, whileforme and in my honor, ultimately was notaboutme, for this community had come together to commemorate its fortitude, its undying determination to persevere in the midst of adversity. Indeed, the black folk of Ridgeview were thumbing their noses atthem—the white folk of Hickory—that said ‘‘it couldn’t be done.’’ That is, produce children who would make not only the black community of Hickory proud, but all of its citizens. This book, therefore, is in no small part indebted to the folks of Ridgeview who knew not only that it could be done, but also that itwouldbe done.