I went to the Ethnic Studies Research & Working Group that Dr. Stevens invited us to last week. This is a group of predominantly OSU faculty members (and a few graduate students) assisting the featured professor in their in-progress manuscript by offering feedback. Last week the featured professor was Koritha Mitchell’s from the English department. Her manuscript is “Enduring ‘Strange Fruit’: Lynching Drama, African American Citizenship, and US Culture, 1890-1930.” I found this session intriguing because I never knew there were plays about lynching authored by Blacks in the early 1900’s. A lynching drama is a play in which the threat or occurrence of a lynching, past or present has major impact on the dramatic action. Mitchell’s argument is that Black-authored lynching plays were mechanisms through which African Americans endured the height of mob violence still believing in their right to full citinzenship. It was interesting to hear how affect and performance played in not only the plays but also the lynching itself. Mitchell describes the actual lynching as “masterpiece-theater”. The title refers to the white master use of Black bodies to reinforce his master status. It’s theater because these were very public events where pictures were taken, postcards made and pieces of the black body were taken by white spectators as souvenirs. (That’s why many believe the word picnic came from pick-a-nigger). All I could think about throughout this entire session was the effect of affect and its manifestation through performance as it related to the past and the present. There many very different results of affect and performance that came out of these many years of black tortured bodies. Our very own Dr. Stevens has written about how the tramatic past of African-Americans has signaled endeavors to translate and retranslate troubling historical moments like lynching. But it’s not just lynching. It’s not just the deaths themselves that have been so traumatic. It’s memories of children going to school and seeing their neighbor castrated and dangling from a tree. It’s the emasculation of the black man by seeing his wife and daughter being raped by the slave master,then years later, the law enforcement and not being about to do anything about it. It’s about being that wife or daughter and not knowing how to look at your husband or father after watching him do nothing. Not that he didn’t want to, but what good is he to his family stung up on a tree like his neighbor who merely was “caught” looking at a white woman. (It’s classified as “eyeball rape” under Jim Crow law. An offense just as bad as the physical assault and punishable by death).How does this past mental affect African Americans? These memories, as Patricia Clough says, “touch on the psychoanalytically oriented account of trauma in order to welcome bodies haunted by memories of times lost and places left”. The hung bodies of the past still haunt many of us today.
I am reminded of the last presenter at the Comparative Studies conference a couple of weeks ago addressing black hyper-masculinity in hip-hop culture. The star of “The Mack” and many rappers are attempting to (consciously or subconsciously) create counter memories of their emasculated ancestors. Whether it be their ancestors who (once exiting the boat and landing in America) were castrated on the spot, their great-great grandfathers who were tortured in front of their families, their great grandfather who fought against Enlightenment thinking, their grandfather who had to fight off erroneous implications in the Moynihan Report or their disenfranchised brother. The Black hyper masculinity the conference presenter spoke of is their way of redefining Black male identity the best way they feel they can. Unfortunately they don’t see how similar their actions are to the whites who created the initial trauma. Lynching as an instrument of subjugation, symbolized whites’ control of the public sphere and their investment in whiteness. Whiteness is only defined by the stigmatization and exploitation of the Other. Whiteness is and can only be defined in opposition to brown/Black people. Black hyper masculinity is defined not only in opposition to the emasculate man in their affect memory but in opposition to the subservient Black female. It was the white male that could do as he pleased with Black men’s wives thus challenging and minimizing Black men’s manhood. Today he can now “own” and control the person his fore-fathers couldn’t (or at least appear as if he can through the numerous girls strategically placed in their music videos). However the affectionate protection that was in the best interest of females of past has been perverted. Hyper masculine black males are taking back their manhood through the way it was so easily taken from them…through their sexuality. They can show how manly they are with the numerous women by their sides that the white man can’t touch anymore. With penis intact, in their videos they flaunt “their women” who they knew were so appealing to the white men of yester year who came into their home to violate their family. Lynching as a performance to emasculate the Black male and hyper masculinization as a way to retrieve that which made them men and a productive citizen. An interesting way in which history (in some weird way) repeats itself. Affect and trauma are power forces. But what seems to be even stronger is the manifestation of traumatic memory. One must be careful as to not allow a tormented past to create a detrimental present.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Performance in Lynching and Cultural Counter Memories
Performance and Post-Colonial Thought
'Look, a Negro!' It was an external stimulus that flicked over me as I passed by. I made a tight smile. 'Look, a Negro!' It was true. It amused me.
'Look, a Negro!' The circle was drawing a bit tighter. I made no secret of my amusement.
'Mama, see the Negro! I'm frightened. Frightened! Frightened!’ Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible. My body was given back to me sprawled out. Distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day. ‘The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly; look, a nigger, it's cold, the nigger is shivering because he is cold, the little boy is trembling because he is afraid of the nigger, the nigger is shivering with cold, that cold that goes through your bones, the handsome little boy is trembling because he thinks that the nigger is quivering with rage, the little white boy throws himself into his mother's arms: Mama, the nigger's going to eat me up.’ Fanon writes that colonized people are forever “sealed in objecthood…abraded into nonbeing”. He asserts that Black men are at a disadvantage when trying to develop a bodily representation conducive to the removal the colonizer-imposed objecthood. Whites’ creation and perpetuation of Blacks’ subjugated status and Blacks’ internalization of this inferiority, has created a compromising position for Blacks as the definer of Blackness without enough agency to disconnect themselves from their empirically derived overdetermined state. Or what Fanon calls “a massive psychoexistential complex”. Taylor seems to concur. Regarding Fusco and Gomez-Pena’s performance, the audience’s dehumanizing interaction with the performers “suggested the impossibility of self-representation by the ‘indigenous’ contained through the tyranny of representation.” It is interesting to see the psychological and cultural effects of colonization in contemporary performance. The Native American (Arawack) left on display in the Spanish court to die, South African (Khoi Khoi) Sarah Baartman paraded for the pleasure of the colonizers, and the Guatinauians who, for one dollar, could be seen in the purest “human” form. Fanon emphasizes that it is only after Black men gain a consciousness of self and assert themselves as complete men will they be on their way to a “new humanism”. If this is true for all colonized people, interestingly for Fanon, the process of going from “objecthood” to consciousness is cyclical with Black men recognizing their fragmented selves through the abrogative eyes of the colonizer and returning to a state of despair.
Posts from Newsvine:
wow! you are really good on these points ; )
the gray blackness makes me think of "double consciousness" - it sounds like quite a burden.
in doing our performance studies stuff, especially on the identity/interpellation of Pecheux, there's an interesting question rattling around in my brain: if no one really fits in their identity category (because the ideal types are unattainable and sometimes undesirable), why are those who are most invested in hegemony deal with their alienation in such different ways?
to complicate this a bit more (and to bring it around to something I have a bit more familiarity with): can we claim that whites are still unable to be completely "assimilated" into whitness, they have to constantly compete for being more white? (getting an SUV, buying a nice house in the burbs). and why in the world do they think they are restricted to such grotesque options?
Another group that complicates this issue, at least in terms of discussing assimilation and recognition in my mind would be the GLBT community (not to make that too broad or singular, obviously all of these communities are plural and diverse). I am thinking about the pathologization and medicalization of homosexuality for most of the 20th century, and I guess the continuation of this type of discrimination in the 21st century. Particularly with the issue of gay marriage...this has been a right that has been highly publicized world-wide as an issue for the state, religion, and society in general. However, there are many GLBT organizations and groups who do not identify this as a key concern for the movement(s) as it continues to conform to the heterosexist paradigm, that to fight for marriage is to be invested in hegemony...
Different narratives: African-Americans and slavery and Africans and Colonialism
Sitting in AAAS 122, the class I TA for, I thought about our discussion about the two narratives regarding slavery: one from the African point of view and the other from the African-American perspective. AAAS122 focuses on Africa after slavery, therefore covers the affects of colonialism and imperialism. For African-Americans, many see the slave trade as a lost of identity and the reason we were so brutality treated during slavery, later reconstruction, then Jim Crow, later Civil Rights, the Black Power movement, urban rebellions and contemporary judicial discrepancies. The stereotypical sentiment is, “If it wasn’t for the slave trade, we would still be in our indigenous place, where we belong, living harmoniously in the ‘Mother Country’. If it wasn’t for whites shipping us over here, we would not have gone through all of this racist tragedy.” The narrative presented to us implies that after African people were extracted from their homeland, life went back to “normal”. But in actuality, colonialism may have been worse that African-American lives after emancipation.
African peasants are evicted from their land and confined in reservations ruled by chiefs. These chiefs were often employed by the European government. The European government implemented rules that were, for all intent and purposes, slavery. Colonialism presented high taxes, forced labor, mutilation and death. Peasants had to pay taxes to the European government. Forced taxes included hut taxes that could be paid in cash or crops, then poll taxes that were charged to males and could only be paid in cash. These taxes went to Europeans administrators and not to the community. Often taxes were raised while low wages remained the same. The cash to pay the taxes had to come from low-wage employment with European businesses. The jobs for the peasants could be working in mines or on infrastructure like the railroad system. Railroads were not built for African people’s usage. Blacks were working to create a system to better export African resources for European businesses. The working conditions on railroad systems and in mines were extremely dangerous. At one point over 30,000 Africans died while working on railroads.
In order for Europeans to make sure that Africans spent most of their time working in the hazardous conditions, Europeans created the pass system. Pass systems were introduced to control the movements of African people. Africans needed permits to move from the reservations (land now owned by the Europeans) to their work sites (the Europeans railroad work sites, rubber plantations, and mines). The “Pass System” consisted of ID books that only Black Africans had to present. The books stated the name, the “tribe”, the European administrator assigned to the individual, and the place that they work when they are not home. If an African was found anywhere else it was illegal. A repercussion could be losing their jobs. If they lost their jobs then they couldn’t pay taxes and ultimately had to move to the poverty-stricken reservations. This maintained controlled over Africans to make sure they produced for Europeans.
The most horrific may have been forced labor. African peasants were forced to grow crops that could only be sold to the European government at low prices. If Africans resisted working on the railroads, plantations or mines they were faced with physical repercussions: lynching, severed limbs and other forms of mutilation. Those who did work had to meet quotas and work long hours to pay taxes. Because these taxes paid the salaries of European government, often the taxes were raised but payment for Africans remained the same.
Considering some of the events that occurred after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, why do you think many African people see slavery as a minor part of history?
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Football, Prison, Violence and Black Masculinity
A few recent conversations with men plus some readings and debates on the evolution of American conceptions of masculinity prompted this note and I looking forward to folks’ responses. I have had, more than I would like to recall, conversations with Black men and their concerns/problems/fear/lack of respect for homosexuality; more so in relation to black men (finding gay women or bisexual women appealing and or fascinating). I have always wondered why black men disproportionately have an aversion to black male homosexuality. So I turned to the construction of maleness in the United States and that led me to the formation of sports, specifically football and incarceration. First, Black men, since slavery (beginning in the 1400s) have had their masculinity categorized in at least three different stereotypes (with other variations) but can be easily re-categorized as masculine and feminine: coon, brute, and Uncle Tom. The coon is a grown black man being compared to a child thus effeminate and sexless; the brute was categorized as a savage and violent black man (usually out to rape white women) thus masculine and overly sexual; and the Uncle Tom is the black man forever dedicated to his white master, also effeminate and sexless. After slavery ended in 1865 in the US (specifically during US Reconstruction, 1866 -1877) men were given a stage to eliminate or at least challenge the feminine characteristics assigned to them by the dominate culture. At this time white man’s definition was centered around being “hardy”, laborious, and hard-working. This posed a problem for middle and upper class white men who didn’t need to work outside. Interestingly, during Reconstruction football began in the US in about 1869. Football was a sport for middle class white men. A deadly sport where you could have upwards of 15 men die per season. Many protested for the sport to be banned, but President Theodore Roosevelt refused to ban the sport because (possibly among other things) it allowed white men to display their manhood in a way not offered to them due to their middle and/or upper class status. Beginning in the early 1900s white men’s definition of masculinity transformed and became in relation to his ability to work, provide for his family, and keeping his wife and children in their “place”. Thus the more resources he has, his ability to procreate, and his ability to get a wife, the more of a man he was.
Middle class blacks began to internalize this idea of masculinity but because of political, economic, social, and education barriers few black men were able to live up to these standards. Thus few black men were able to be “complete men” by these standards. So black men had to find other ways to exert their maleness. Two ways were to engage in armed defense/ability to protect his family and surviving prison. When black men appeared to be stepping out of their “safe” proscribed roles (coon or Uncle Tom) or the not so safe one (the brute), they often suffered from discrimination and/or mob violence ending in lynching (as document by Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s The Red Record publish in 1895). These lynching were often community-wide spectacles where the men were often castrated and left for public viewing (visual and literal emasculation). Therefore, many black men had to walk a fine line which usually meant subscribing to roles deemed “feminine”. Of course, black men wanted to assert their manhood openly which arguably built a substantial amount to frustration and anger in black men who, regardless of the outcomes, were willing to assert their ideas of manhood. The second was surviving incarceration. For example, Marcus Garvey exclaimed publicly that he was not scared of prison, once released in 1923. According to scholar George Mosse, prison served as a test to prove manhood. Meanwhile by 1923, thirteen African American men were or had been players in the NFL with the first being Charles W. Follis in 1902.
Taking a short step back to Word War I (1914-1918) many black men were welcomed in their black communities as strong soldiers. However, after fighting for their country and hoping to no longer be treated as second-class citizens, they found themselves and their families still in the middle of Jim Crow. Thus the definitions of white masculinity still not easily offered to black men. The frustration exploded in the late 1960s after the arguably passive Civil Rights movement and the Black Power Movement began. The Black Power Movement was a hyper-masculine movement which put many men at the forefront. Armed and ready to defend their civil rights, humanity and family, Black men (and women) were still relegated to the economic, political, and social margins. From the 60s through the 70s black men were portrayed as vocal and violent. A persona exemplified during the Blaxploitation movie era, with a key figure being football player turned actor Jim Brown. Melvin Van Peebles said to have begun the Blaxploitation era with his movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) with the opening stating “Watch Out. A baad asssss nigger is coming back to collect some dues.” Melvin Pebbles explicitly stated he wanted to go against the effeminate, sexless Black male portrayal created by white America. As the Blaxploitation era took off with movies such as Shaft and others, we find Black men no longer being portrayed as timid sexless boys but as gun-toting sexual men in control of their environment even though that did not appear to be the case in real life.
Black men have always been disproportionately incarcerated. But, COINTELPRO, various riots, demonstrations and unlawful actively in general (often related to poverty) put many Black men in prison during the 60s and 70s when Black men’s identity was supposedly getting a makeover. Thus there is a return, if you will, of a possibly inevitable prison culture in relation to manhood. But ironically, prison is the most emasculating place in the United States. Not only are a all of your liberties taken from you, but prison is the place a man will most likely be raped and willingly engaged in same-sex intercourse.
So the 70s provide a plethora of African American football stars. As more white men left the sport to peruse new versions of masculinity black men filled the sport. More Blacks are in the NFL and more black men are going to college and many are able to attend on college football scholarships. The 70s appear to be pivotal in the construction of black masculinity. Therefore, it appears that to be the most masculine, a black man needs to be able to play sports (or at least have a more than decent knowledge of sports in order to make up for his inability to play, this is probably due to education becoming a factor in being able to provide for his family thus becoming a part of masculinity), protect and provide for his family (at least protect), and survive harsh circumstances (such as prison). The physical nature of football especially provides a space for black men to assert their masculinity in the only masculine part of the binary offered to them by the dominate culture, the brute. In addition, football does offer other opportunities to black men such as an education and the ability to be a provider for his family whether it be through a football career or with the education he received.
So, I am thinking that most black men are still working off of this binary: Either a black man is effeminate or he is masculine, there is virtually no middle ground (but there is some). The little bit of middle ground that is available is mostly constructed in relation to class and education. Men with an education often times don’t go to prison. They live in middle to upper class neighborhoods so they don’t need to practice armed resistance and because of their education they can be providers. Black men are approaching the same dilemma white men were in the early 1900s: How can I still be a “hardy” male when I live a somewhat privileged life? So as black men are moving more and more in the middle ground they still have to differentiate themselves from other men deemed less masculine. This is where homophobia creeps in. For many black men defending, asserting, and/or protecting their masculinity, gay men (who can also reside in this middle ground) are deem effeminate, the very thing black men have been running from sense slavery. So many black men distance themselves (to undisclosed lengths) to separate themselves from homosexuality. What makes this most complicated is that all professional sports have gay players (in football, most disclosed their sexuality after leaving the league). It appears to me that black men in general rely on their sports knowledge and physical abilities to assert their manhood but middle class black men rely the heaviest on sports to secure and or assert their manhood, because the other ideas of a “hardy” man aren’t necessary for/to them (unless they are middle class and they have the ability to fix things about the house, fix a car or something else deemed “manly”). I am also thinking that black men are the most homophobic because black men in general have not been consistently offered a different version of manhood like white men have. For example to all of the OSU folks, no one challenges President Gee’s sexuality, but if he were black every black man would assume he was gay, or at least think twice about it.
Black men, if you are out there, I would like your thoughts please :-)
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
To the fiancé????
In response to post
A girl in my cohort (let's call her Amber) told me about this guy that her friend told her she should date. But the guy was in a relationship. So basically, Amber's friend wanted Amber to "steal" this guy away from this girl because Amber's friends believed that Amber was the better woman for him. I said, "Amber. Fa real?" (the "fa" is purposeful). "Haven't black women gone farther than this? A) Can't no man be stolen that don't want to be and B) With all the forces against black women do we REALLY need to be ANOTHER force working against us within ourselves? LEAVE THE BROAD'S MAN ALONE!" I say all that to say, I am for black women coalitions. We need more of them. Interestingly, in this case I'm not sure how to go about it. I was reading your post while in a class I was sitting in on at USC. As I was sitting there a few emotions/thoughts came over me. First, I put my journal online not to have people "all up in business" (not that I mind it too much since it is out there) or to help people fulfill some voyeuristic tendencies they may have, but there is some psychological relief in putting my thoughts out for all to see. It takes guts and I have to be held accountable in some way. Yet there is something….weird about talking about things that I have written. I was reading your post and I was thinking, "Ehhh", this is awkward. Weird. But mostly "Ehhh," as the bottom part of my mouth stretches to my ears and my eyebrows rise in awkwardness. I then re-read my blog post which I almost never do, (I have realized that I may need to do a bit of proofreading), in order to remember what I wrote and get a sense of what you were responding to. Then I thought, how did she find this? J could have told her about the blog (which I doubt because but possible). He told her my name and she searched for me. She is on facebook, saw the pics from caribana, he told her that he went to caribana with an ex-girlfriend and she decided to check to see who I was then found my blog page address located on my facebook page. Then as I clicked on your name I see that I can't see your blog (because it appears to be private) but you can see mind. Its an interesting dynamic. Under and over self exposure but at what cost and at what benefit.? Also what can be gained from the Amber story is that I am not in the business of trying to tamper in people's relationships. Toronto was a special case which was definitely not in the plans. (He wasn't even supposed to stay with us). I'm not making any special moves to be with him or see him. When my friends and I planned the caribana trip J just happened to be going to Toronto as well. I did want to see him because I hadn't seen him in over a year, and we had been talking for a some months before we met up in Toronto but it was all under the premise of two old friends meeting and catching up on old times.
Then I thought about how to give you what you may possibly be looking for. But I'm not sure what that is. I know you want or am expecting something because you provided your email address. Hmm. (????) Something similar has happened to me. I have met a guy. Talked to him maybe once or twice. Then out of nowhere (seemingly nowhere) a woman would call me (never rude) and ask me who I am and how I knew "her man". This has happened at least three times. I tell them that I barely know them. We met in a bar, club, mixer whatever and that's it. I have spent hours talking to the women. Listening mostly, about how they always knew something wasn't right. Now that they know I posed no threat to them, and I didn't really know "their man" and I definitely didn't know them, they could vent because I was willing to listen. I have nothing to hide. One, because the men didn't mean anything to me and second, black women need to be there for black women. So, I'm back my original dilemma. How do I engage you because we are talking about a man we both care about. How much do I share? What do I say? I can't just be a sounding board for you (or can I?) because I know the man this time. Do I be so honest that it might be hurtful? I'm not sure and I don't think I have the answers so I'm just simply going to say what's on my mind.
First, thank you for your comments and I appreciate you keeping my son and me in your prayers. You seem to be a nice person. I think I am nice but we seem like very different people. Maybe not very… but different.
Second, I went through a range of emotions. In my awkwardness I called J but he didn't answer. I left a message for him to call me back which he did. I couldn't talk when he called me so I told him I would call him. I called him and then he couldn't talk. We haven't talked yet. Now I am angry. Well, angry is a strong word. Not sure of the right word. But I feel like I'm in the middle of something that I really don't want to be a part of. This weird triangle thing.
Well, J told me that he was pretty transparent with you. He told me about the woman he has been sleeping with up there. He said you weren't happy with it but your relationship hasn't changed. This made me think back to his and my conversation about why he won't be in a relationship with me because he knows that isn't something I would stand for. So, if that is something he needs. An open relationship, then you appear to be the best person for him. I'm not interested in competing for J. For a while I have been trying to negotiate my relationship with him and it has gotten more challenging lately. Whether or not I should go to Montreal to see him. Whether or not I should go with him to Haiti. Whether or not I should tell him that I am telling you these things and whether or not I should tell them to you in the first place. How does that change, hinder, accelerate his and my relationship? One thing I do know is that I am definitely not interested in this triangle. I was/am really ok with thinking of you as a distant being. Someone that I need to be aware of but don't really need to or want to know. It becomes messy. Is messy. And it is upsetting to me that J is willingly making this messy.Why invite me to Haiti? He knows I have wanted to go since his dad invited me years ago, but that vacation would have NOT been a plutonic one. I told him no because I know he has a girlfriend. PLUS, he was been messing with some other girl in Montreal. All of this makes me very disappointed in J and somewhat disgusted. The other thing is I don't know how he talks about me to you. My initial feeling is that I (or we) am getting played. It's not a nice feeling. But, I'm not in a relationship with him so what he does elsewhere doesn't bother me. Hmmm, that's not accurate. I should say it doesn't bother the nature of our present relationship because we are only friends. However, if he ever was to come to me about getting in a relationship, I would take a serious pause. I would question my trust in him. But as he says, I appear to expect more (or something different) from him than you may. And what I expect does not encompass outside sexual relationships. (sigh). But that's the light you have been cast in whether that's correct or not.
Still not sure how to respond. I was going to wait until after I talked to J, but that didn't happen. And I think the post would have stayed mostly the same whether I talked to him or not. If anything, it would have also said what he and I discussed over the phone. However, I do want to let you know that I don't want to actively be in the middle on you and J' relationship. Whether I am discussed or not between the two of you is up to you all but I don't want to establish a link between you and I. It's really really really messy. Odd. Awkward. Weird. I'm not sure if I should say I appreciate you responding to the post. I don't object to it. At least not initially. Now there is a name associated with a person that I know existed but I'm not sure if I wanted that information. Really really messy. Odd. Awkward. Well, I hope/know/think/pray everything happens the way it is suppose to happen. Thank you for your comments and I wish you well.
Mel
here's a question that might related - political theorists who work on classical liberalism counter-pose two examples:
blacks vs. native americans.
a number blacks have vocally called for rights (inclusion and recognition maybe)
a large number native americans have actively refused assimilation.
are these two examples as oppositional as some theorists say they are? are recognition/inclusion opposed to assimilation? what would a "middle ground" look like, if there is one?