scholarly journals Positive Liberty and Black Female Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Sula

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Najd F. Alfaqir
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Female Autonomy ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
Closed Systems ◽  
Feminist Aesthetics

The essay investigates the representation of female subjectivity that is disturbed by issues of race, gender, and community in Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula. In my analysis, I bring to bear both the works of postmodernist theory and contemporary Feminist aesthetics in order to strengthen female subjectivity against the closed systems in which black women are objectified and separated from the autonomous existence they deserve. My representation of postmodernism is inspired by Linda Hucheon’s theory of Postmodernism in A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Her suggestion that postmodernism is a contradictory concept that simultaneously acknowledges and disregards any concept offers new possibilities; it blurs the lines that humans create between self/other and centered/decentered, undermining socially constructed notions of good and bad. As I closely examine the character of Sula, who embodies such postmodern concept, I attempt to rethink her position as marginalized and evil to think about her character as a quest to rise above the limitations resulting from the closed systems in which black women are objectified. In my conclusion, I suggest that Sula’s presence in the novel as radical on the surface is positive, for she transforms her otherness into a space from which female autonomy and liberty emerge. Throughout Sula, Morrison explores spaces of existence beyond constructed social conventions towards female individuality and Sula epitomizes that in her positive liberty.

scholarly journals Eccentricity and Conformity in Toni Morrison's A Sula: The Struggle for Life in a Patriarchal Society

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 233-240
Author(s):  
Mashhood Anjum ◽  
Raheel Rehman Khan ◽  
Yasir Khan
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
American Society ◽  
Existential Issues

The present research investigates the struggle of female entities throughout their lives in a maledominated society, either acting in congruity or incongruity with the norms and set patterns of the society in order to get societal acceptance or to assert their sovereign individual-selves. The American society that is full of discrimination victimizes the race of Blacks in general and Black women in particular. As a result, the oppressed and subjugated woman has suffered as the 'Other' in American society during and after the era of slavery. The present research has delineated the existential conflicts of the Black female and the submissive or assertive behaviors they adopt to survive as free individuals. It is a qualitative research of Toni Morrison’s novel that has been critically analyzed. The novel, A Sula has been analyzed by using the lens of the Feminist Conceptual Framework, and feminine existential issues have been discussed under the umbrella of Feminist Existentialism. The present study is expected to be a significant one because it highlights different situations of the individuals in which they can redirect their destiny by actively participating as 'subjects' or passively submitting as 'Objects'.

On Anger

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrion L. Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Female Subjectivity

This chapter takes up the position of the infamous “angry black woman” by avoiding righteous, revisionist, or reactionary arguments about black women and anger and instead considering black women’s anger as critical posture. The argument neither begins nor ends with the stereotype, but with the supposition that representational discourse has been largely unable to account for anger as an aspect of black female subjectivity. The case is therefore made that anger is inherently bound up with the notion of claim for black women, and accounting for this interaction requires an interrogation into the most intimate of black female spaces. The chapter ultimately turns to a discussion of reality television, Claudia Rankine’s discussion of Serena Williams, and a brief analysis of Toni Morrison’s Sula.

scholarly journals POS0173 METABOLOMIC PROFILING AND SYMPTOM BURDEN IN BLACK WOMEN WITH SYSTEMIC LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 299-300
Author(s):  
L. P. Kimble ◽  
A. Khosroshahi ◽  
R. C. Eldridge ◽  
G. S. Brewster ◽  
N. S. Carlson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
Symptom Burden ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Multiple Chronic Conditions ◽  
Systemic Lupus ◽  
Metabolomics Data ◽  
Metabolomics Analysis

Background:Black individuals with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), who are predominantly women, have disproportionately poorer health outcomes across the trajectory of their disease including increased mortality, higher symptom burden, and poor quality of life than non-Hispanic Whites. The heterogeneity of immunopathology and biochemical complexity of SLE create major knowledge gaps around the mechanisms of disease and differences in SLE symptom expression. Metabolomics may reveal biochemical dysregulation that underlies SLE symptoms and provide novel metabolic targets for precision symptom interventions.Objectives:We conducted untargeted metabolomic plasma profiling of Black females with SLE and Black female non-SLE controls to gain insight into metabolic disturbances associated with SLE.Methods:We analyzed blood specimens collected from 23 Black female patients with diagnosis of SLE during a routine outpatient rheumatology visit and from 21 Black female non-SLE controls whose data were collected as part of another study of obese caregivers. Data collection for both cases and controls was completed with harmonized protocols. Clinical data for cases were obtained via chart review and both cases and controls completed identical, reliable and valid measures of fatigue, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. A commercial metabolomics analysis company within the US conducted untargeted metabolomics on the 44 plasma samples using ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry along with metabolite identification and quantification to examine differences between SLE/non-SLE groups.Results:All SLE subjects met 2019 EULAR/ACR criteria (Aringer et al., 2019). SLE subjects were significantly (p < .05) younger (42.5 ± 12.2 vs. 63.2 ± 6.4), had a lower BMI (30.3 ± 9.4 vs. 34.9 ± 4.1), and greater co-morbidities (2.3 ± 1.3 vs. 1.1 ± 1.3) than non-SLE controls. SLE subjects reported higher symptoms than controls across all measures, but differences were not statistically significant. Metabolomics analysis revealed 290 biochemicals that were statistically significant (p ≤ .05) between SLE and non-SLE groups. Random Forest analysis had a predictive accuracy of 91% in differing between the two groups using out-of-bag sampling. Significant metabolic differences between groups were noted in biochemicals associated with glycolysis, the TCA cycle (see Table 1), fatty acid metabolism, branched chain amino acids, sterol levels, heme catabolism, and potential markers of renal impairment. Overall, the differences would suggest reduced energy production among SLE patients compared to controls.Conclusion:Black women with SLE had biochemical profiles consistent with reduced energy production which has implications for the high burden of fatigue and other symptoms in this population. Future work with larger sample sizes should involve integrating symptom and metabolomics data to identify potential biomarkers of symptom burden.References:Aringer, M., Costenbader, K., Daikh, D. et al. (2019). 2019 European League Against Rheumatism/American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus. Ann Rheum Dis, 78,1151-1159.Acknowledgements:This work was supported by a research re-entry supplement to L. Kimble under the parent award 1P30NR018090-02S1 Center for the Study of Symptom Science, Metabolomics, and Multiple Chronic Conditions (Song, PI) funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health, USA.Disclosure of Interests:Laura P. Kimble: None declared, Arezou Khosroshahi Consultant of: Have received honorarium for advisory board but has no relationship with this work., Grant/research support from: Have received a research grant from Pfizer; but has no relationship with this work., Ronald C. Eldridge: None declared, Glenna S. Brewster: None declared, Nicole S. Carlson: None declared, Elizabeth J. Corwin: None declared

A Conceptualization Framework of Allyship: Bidirectional Allyship Between Black Heterosexual Women and White Gay Males

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110353
Author(s):  
Peter Scaramuzzo ◽  
Michael Bartone ◽  
Jemimah L. Young
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Black Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
Gay Males ◽  
Social Justice Movements ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Complex Dimensions ◽  
Justice Movements

Allyship is a complicated idea laden with multiple, layered assumptions. One should not presume that allyship conceptually permeates all social justice movements. One should not presume that allyships develop to combat or dismantle a predefined socially constructed ism. A critical interrogation of allyship and allyship constructions necessitates recognition of broader, universal tenets of allyships anywhere. This must go further to embrace the nuanced, situated, dynamic, critically problematic, and complex dimensions rooted in individual lived experiences intersecting multiple marginalizations which contribute as praxis toward an actualizing of individual allyships. Although we will blur constructed distinctions as we progress, here, we endeavor to surface and deliberate upon the derivations and functions and shapes of allyships between two demographic categories, made arbitrarily distinct here for the purposes of engaging in discursive analysis: cisgender heterosexual Black women and cisgender gay White men. In short, we are proposing a way to view this allyship as bidirectional allyships, grounded in social justice frames of existing: a way to see each respective group as traveling within their own lane down a collectively traveled highway. Each traverses the space along their own course, traveling down “their own road.”

Nina Simone as Poet and Orchestrator

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147
Author(s):  
Marcus R. Pyle
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Nina Simone

How do you fashion an identity in a society that, at every turn, tries to snuff you out? In this article, I address Nina Simone's praxis of renaming and reinvention to demonstrate strategies of resistance. To this point, I analyze the musico-poetic setting of Nina Simone’s songs “Images” (1964) and “Four Women” (1965) to argue that her artistic musical choices sonically orchestrate varying issues of Black female subjectivity, identity, and self-making. In Simone’s songs, she refuses to discount the materiality of the Black body; instead, she envelops the Black body with signifiance and significance. The sonic bearers of semantic content become extensions of the Self—transmutable and heterodox. The compositional and poetic subtleties in these songs claim that the gaze of the Other can potentiate exteriority and freedom—what I term the “exo(p)tic.”

Counting Frequency

Social Text ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Christen A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Body Counting

Abstract Examining Black women's experiences with policing, this article argues that police terror is not predicated upon gender; rather, it enacts gender by undoing gender. Thus, it requires a new arithmetic of time and space in order to read beyond normative, hypermasculine narratives of police violence. While the dominant discourse of race and policing asserts that police terror disproportionately affects Black men, the frequency of Black women's experiences with police terror attunes to a lingering yet deadly impact beyond the linear, Cartesian dimensions of body counting, a frequency the article terms sequelae. Policing stretches and bends time and space as part of its (un)gendering practice. Through a brief survey of cases in Brazil and the United States, this article considers sequelae as a new arithmetic for calculating the multiple frequencies of police terror against Black women. Specifically, the article examines the case of Luana Barbosa dos Reis, a Black lesbian mother who was beaten to death by police officers in São Paulo in 2016. The article argues that her beating was an act of (un)gendering—a desire to both discipline her as a Black female/mother and erase her potential humanity by denying her desired gender identification (female). In this sense, her death was an act of anti-Black terror “in the wake.” Through a close reading of the police ledger, the police report, and the physical violence she endured, the article argues that her story teaches us the need for a new way of counting the frequency of police terror in relationship to time, space, and the Black female/mother body.

“I Just Wanted a World That Looked Like the One I Know”

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Ralina L. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Black Female ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strategic Ambiguity ◽  
The Press ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One

Chapter 3 examines showrunner Shonda Rhimes’ twenty-first century Black respectability politics through the form of strategic ambiguity. Joseph traces Rhimes’ performance of strategic ambiguity first in the pre-Obama era when she stuck to a script of colorblindness, and a second in the #BlackLivesMatter moment when she called out racialized sexism and redefined Black female respectability. In the shift from the pre-Obama era to the #BlackLivesMatter era, this chapter asks: how did Rhimes’ careful negotiation of the press demonstrate that, in the former moment, to be a respectable Black woman was to perform strategic ambiguity, or not speak frankly about race, while in the latter, respectable Black women could and must engage in racialized self-expression, and redefine the bounds of respectability?

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