scholarly journals Black Women Dancers, Jazz Culture, and “Show Biz”: Recentering Afro-Culture and Reclaiming Dancing Black Bodies in Montréal, 1920s–1950s

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-265
Author(s):  
Emilie Jabouin
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Women Dancers ◽  
Show Business ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conceptual Meaning

The documentary Show Girls, directed by Meilan Lam, makes an unprecedented contribution to the history of jazz and Black women jazz dancers in Montréal, Quebec, and to the conversation of jazz in Canada. Show Girls offers a glimpse into the lives of three Black women dancers of the 1920s–1950s. This essay asks what the lives of Black women dancers were like and how they navigated their career paths in terms of social and economic opportunities and barriers. I seek to better understand three points: (1) the gap in the study of jazz that generally excludes and/or separates dance and singing from the music; (2) the use of dance as a way to commercialize, sell, and give visual and conceptual meaning to jazz; (3) the importance of the Black body and the role of what I would define as “Afro- culture” in producing the ingenious and creative genre of jazz. My study suggests there is a dominant narrative of jazz, at least in academic literature, that celebrates one dimension of jazz as it was advertised in show business, and that bringing in additional components of jazz provides a counternarrative, but also a restorative, whole and more authentic story of jazz and its origins. More specifically, by re- exploring jazz as a whole culture that relies on music, song, and dance, this essay explores three major ideas. First, Black women dancers played a significant role in the success of jazz shows. Second, they articulated stories of self, freedom, and the identity of the New Negro through jazz culture and dance. Third, Black women’s bodies and art were later crystallized into images that further served to sell jazz as a product of show business.

scholarly journals Black women’s bodies as reformers from the dungeons: The Reformation and womanism

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fundiswa A. Kobo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Church Building ◽  
The Church ◽  
Society Today

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective.

scholarly journals Transformative racism: The black body in fan works

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poe Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Texts

This article examines the potential pitfalls with the depiction of black bodies in transformative fan works that do not actively consider and account for the history of racism directed toward black bodies throughout American mass media texts.

Black Bodies/Libidinal Economies in Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Carolyn Jones Medine ◽  
Lucienne Loh
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Slave Ship ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Blacks And Whites

Abstract Barry Unsworth’s Booker Prize winning novel, Sacred Hunger (1992), explores the Middle Passage from the perspective of two central protagonists: Erasmus Kemp, the son of a slave ship builder and owner of the Liverpool Merchant, and Matthew Paris, his cousin and the ship’s doctor. The novel asserts that the “sacred hunger” of the slave trade is the desire for making money, at any cost. In this essay, we argue that one cost, the novel suggests, is the commodification of women’s bodies, particularly black captive women entering the trade. Exploring this libidinal economy, we examine the role of the ship’s doctor, in Paris, as the keeper of the gateway to slavery; the sexual exploitation of both black and white women, and Unsworth’s use of the trace—in this case, the elusive figure of the Paradise Nigger, or Luther Sawdust, who is Paris’ son, Kenke, conceived in a new settlement based on democracy undertaken in Florida and engaged in by both blacks and whites from the wrecked Liverpool Merchant. Capitalism, through human competition, enters that community, which, ultimately, is destroyed as Kemp discovers it and retakes his property. The Paradise Nigger represents a counter-memory and counter-force: a hope that the repetition of master-slave dichotomy in the libidinal economy can be interrupted by something “other” that suggests alternative shapes of human freedom.

scholarly journals Black Bodies White Culture: A Black Feminist [Re]Construction of Race and Gender in Morrison's Paradise

2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Mumtaz Ahmad ◽  
Fatima Saleem ◽  
Ali Usman Saleem
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
And Gender

'This article intends to explore and expose through the analysis of Morrison's Paradise how the Afro American female writers [re]construct the potential of Afro American ecriture feminine to seek the true freedom and empowerment of black women by appealing them to 'write-through bodies'. To achieve this purpose, this article articulates its theoretical agenda, through the exploration of the work of the outstanding, widely acknowledged award-winning, English speaking Afro American female writer: Toni Morrison. Though it aims to highlight the significance and contribution of the Afro American female novelists towards broadening the frontiers of 'ecriture feminine', it does not aim to offer the generalized history of women writing in Afro American literature. It seeks to propose alternative ways of informed analysis, grounded in discourse and Feminist theories, to evaluate Toni Morrison's contribution to 'ecriture feminine'.

scholarly journals Aquela que diz não à sombra: biografia e obra da escritora martinicana Françoise Ega / The One Who Denies Her Shadow: Life and Work of the Martinican Writer Françoise Ega

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Samanta Vitória Siqueira ◽  
Karina De Castilhos Lucena
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Women Intellectuals ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women Of African Descent ◽  
The One ◽  
Shed Light

Resumo: Este artigo apresenta a biografia e as obras da escritora, empregada doméstica e militante social martinicana Françoise Ega (1920-1976) buscando dar visibilidade para sua trajetória de vida e para suas publicações ainda pouco conhecidas nos círculos acadêmicos e literários brasileiros. Primeiramente, apresentamos a biografia da autora com foco em seus deslocamentos e atuação política. Depois, comentamos brevemente suas obras Le temps de madras (1966), Lettres à une noire (1978) e L’Alizé ne soufflait plus (2000), relacionando-as com a vida da autora e com a sociedade martinicana. Por fim, sob uma perspectiva que não dissocia literatura e sociedade e que considera a história específica de socialização de mulheres diaspóricas afrodescendentes, propõe-se uma reflexão sobre o lugar de intelectuais negras na história da literatura latino-americana.Palavras-chave: Françoise Ega; escritoras diaspóricas; literatura antilhana.Abstract: This paper presents the biography and works of Martinican writer, laborer and social activist Françoise Ega (1920-1976), seeking to shed light on her life story and her lesser known publications among Brazilian academic and literary circles. Firstly, we present the writer’s biography, focusing on her relocations and political engagement. Secondly, we introduce Ega’s works Le temps de madras (1966), Lettres à une noire (1978) and L’Alizé ne soufflait plus (2000), and their relationship with both her life and the Martinican society. Ultimately, from a perspective which compromises literature and society, acknowledging the specific socialization history of diasporic women of African descent, we propose a reflection on the role of black women intellectuals in the history of Latin American literature.Keywords: Françoise Ega; diasporic writers; Antillean literature.

“Africanist Presence” and the Role of Black Bodies

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-124
Author(s):  
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
The Difference

Chapter 4, “‘Africanist Presence’ and the Role of Black Bodies,” taking its title and cue from Toni Morrison’s seminal study of race in American Literature, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, examines O’Connor’s exploration of the essential role played by African Americans in the construction of a white consciousness. It also considers the work of womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland on “enfleshing freedom” in which she meditates on the imaging of the black body in Western culture and its implications in the Christian Church. The chapter considers the difference between what anthropologist Mary Douglas refers to as “physical bodies” and “social bodies” and the ways in which these representations and perceptions of the body enter into O’Connor’s work (73). The chapter includes analysis of “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “The Artificial Nigger,” and “Judgement Day” (reprise).

‘As it was bodily, so it is politically’: Prostitutes, Wives, and Political Power in Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudo Mudiwa
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Social Breakdown ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
History Of

This chapter argues that the term ‘prostitute’ is part of the political grammar in Zimbabwe, used to discipline women’s participation in party politics. Rather than approaching the use of this term as an unfortunate but prosaic aspect of politics, it situates the term in the now well-documented history of colonial policing and administration. ‘Out of place’ black women were linked to chaos and social breakdown, spurring attempts to control their visibility and mobility. The chapter argues that in likening politicians to prostitutes, women who monetize their own sexual labour, the term reveals the extent to which the control of women’s bodies, sexuality, and labour remains a key focus of the post-independence state. Moreover, it examines the use of this term alongside the growing visibility and tacit acceptance of sex work in Zimbabwe’s cities. Drawing from media coverage and interviews, this chapter examines the careers of four Zimbabwean female political figures, Joice Mujuru and Grace Mugabe from ZANU-PF, along with Thabitha Khumalo and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga from the MDC factions. It examines how these differently situated women have managed their public visibility under such constraints by deploying, rebuffing, or reappropriating the term prostitute.

scholarly journals “bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored”: The Metaphysical Dilemma in Ntozake Shange, Sherley Anne Williams, and Toni Morrison

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Flávia Santos De Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Ntozake Shange ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Sherley Anne Williams ◽  
Black Women Writers ◽  
Textual Representations ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Sherley Ann Williams

This essay is an analysis of three literary works by black women writers from the U.S.: Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Sherley Ann Williams’ novel Dessa Rose, and Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In my analysis, I use Shange’s trope of the “methaphysical dilemma” to consider the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality in these writers’ textual representations of black women’s bodies. Writing against a historical legacy of colonialism and domination that defined black bodies as “primitive” or “unbridled” (bell hooks 1991), I argue that these works illustrate some of the artistic/literary strategies contemporary black women writers use to re-claim the power of voice/voicing as they depict black women’s subjectivities as unfinished, complex, but self-fashioned creations.

scholarly journals The Healing Power of Art in Intergenerational Trauma

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Gloria Swain
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Black People ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Strong Black Woman ◽  
Generational Trauma ◽  
History Of

Throughout this paper, I use a political and activist lens to think about disability arts and its potential role in opening up a necessary conversation around how madness is produced by experiences of racism, poverty, sexism, and inter-generational trauma within the Black community. I begin by explaining how the Black body has a history of being the site of medical experimentation. From the perspective of my own experience, I suggest that this history of medical abuse has caused Black people to be suspicious and wary of the healthcare system, including the mental healthcare system, which forecloses discussions around the intersection of Blackness and mental health. I go on to argue that this discussion is further silenced through the trope of the ‘strong Black woman,’ which, in my experience works to perpetuate the idea that Black women must bear the effects of systemic racism by being ‘strong,’ rather than society addressing this racism, and she must not admit the toll that this ‘resilience’ might have on her mental health. I close with a discussion of how my art practice seeks to open up a conversation about madness in the Black community by suggesting that madness is political.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

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