Race and Affect: Pleasurable Mixing in Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness

The critical field of The Masque of Blackness often annotates Queen Anne and her ladies’ blackface performance with a courtier's eye-witness comment that the “lean cheeked moors” were “loathsome” and “ugly.” Yet Ben Jonson's performance text, when read beside Dudley Carleton's correspondences, resists the undue influence of the aristocrat's anecdotal disparagement. This project refuses to take Carleton's denigration as fact. Instead, it investigates the masque's representation of Niger's daughters to develop the affective experience of pleasurable mixing across racial identities and to show how the opulence, innovation, and beauty afforded by blackface are the means to underwrite arguments of political authority. Rather than a deviation from the performance's magnificent appeal, racial impersonation is constitutive of the masque's demonstration of beauty and invention of pleasure. As such, the allegory of King James I's power hinges on a fiction of idealized incorporation that is ideologically powerful precisely because it is primarily an aestheticized, affective experience. Beyond the ostensible trope of racial transformation, Jonson presents the pleasure of mixing across racial identities as the precondition for Britannia's absorption of migrant bodies. Blackness is a visual reminder of an indelible difference that can be absorbed, incorporated, indeed “salved,” by the monarch's faculties of conversion. The affective experience afforded by blackface is thus an argument for the sovereign's power of unification, underwriting what was a largely unfulfilled and controversial political agenda: the coalition of realms under the aegis of Great Britain.

Download Full-text

Travellers, Connoisseurs, and Britons: Art Commentaries and National Discourse in the Travel Writings of Daniel Defoe and Tobias Smollett

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia ◽

10.1515/stap-2017-0014 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 365-375

Author(s):

Jakub Lipski

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

National Identity ◽

Great Britain ◽

Travel Writing ◽

Daniel Defoe ◽

Political Agenda ◽

Tobias Smollett ◽

The South ◽

National Discourse ◽

Travel Writings

Abstract This article seeks to explore the interrelationship of two facets characterising eighteenth-century travel writing – art commentaries and national discourse. It is demonstrated that one of the reasons behind the travellers’ repetitious attempts to fashion themselves as connoisseurs was a need to re-affirm their national identity. To this end it offers an analysis of two travel texts coming from two different political moments – Daniel Defoe’s A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1726), constituting an attempt to read the British as a “great” and prosperous nation after the union of 1707, and Tobias Smollett’s idiosyncratic Travels through France and Italy (1766), shedding light on the British attitude towards the South in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War and at the outset of the cult of feeling in Britain. It will also be argued that the numerous art commentaries throughout the narratives had a political agenda and supported the national discourse underpinning the texts.

Download Full-text

Background in the United States and Great Britain to 1950

10.5406/illinois/9780252038518.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Great Britain ◽

Folk Music ◽

The United States ◽

Major Influence ◽

Political Agenda ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

The Public ◽

The 1950S

Throughout the twentieth century, folk music has had many definitions and incarnations in the United States and Great Britain. The public has been most aware of its commercial substance and appeal, with the focus on recording artists and their repertoires, but there has been so much more, including a political agenda, folklore theories, grassroots styles, regional promoters, and discussions on what musical forms—blues, hillbilly, gospel, Anglo-Saxon, pop, singer-songwriters, instrumental and/or vocal, international—should be included. These contrasting and conflicting interpretations were particularly evident during the 1950s. This chapter begins by focusing on Alan Lomax (1915–2002), one of the most active folk music collectors, radio promoters, and organizers during the 1940s. Lomax had a major influence on folk music in both the United States and Great Britain, tying together what had come before and what would follow. The chapter then discusses folk festivals and performers; British folk music, musicians, and trans-Atlantic musical connections; and Carl Sandburg's publication of the The American Songbag in 1927.

Download Full-text

Blackface Behind Barbed Wire: Gender and Racial Triangulation in the Japanese American Internment Camps

TDR/The Drama Review ◽

10.1162/dram_a_00264 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 123-142 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emily Roxworthy

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Japanese Americans ◽

Japanese American ◽

World War ◽

Internment Camps ◽

Us History ◽

Japanese American Internment ◽

Racial Impersonation ◽

Blackface Performance

In a dark footnote to a dark chapter in US history, Japanese Americans interned by their own government during World War II performed in blackface behind barbed wire. Exploring blackface performance in the camps raises questions regarding the potential resistance of racial impersonation and blackface's potential for triangulating race.

Download Full-text

“Open”: the changing relation between citizens, public administration, and political authority

JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government ◽

10.29379/jedem.v3i2.66 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 182-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Ursula Maier-Rabler ◽

Stefan Huber

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Local Level ◽

Open Data ◽

Political Authority ◽

Open Government ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Public ◽

Active Approach ◽

Government Data ◽

The Right

"Open" is not just a fancy synonym for transparent and accountable. The "Open" in Open Government, Open Data, Open Information, and Open Innovation stands for the changing relation between citizens and authorities. Many citizens no longer accept the passive stance representative democracy held for them. They take an active approach in setting up better means of collaboration by ICTs. They demand and gain access to their historically grown collective knowledge stored in government data. Not just on a local level, they actively shape the political agenda. Open Government is to be seen in the context of citizens‘ rights: the right to actively participate in the process of agenda-setting and decision-making. Research into open government needs to address the value of the changing relation between citizens, public administration, and political authority. The paper argues finally for the application of the Public Value concept to research into open government.

Download Full-text

Universities Scottish, Irish, and European: Lyon Playfair (1818–98) and University Reform

History of Universities ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198865421.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 157-197

Author(s):

Robert Anderson

Keyword(s):

Great Britain ◽

Technical Education ◽

Social Needs ◽

University Education ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Political ◽

National System ◽

Starting Point ◽

University Professor ◽

Member Of Parliament

This chapter assesses Lyon Playfair's views on universities. Playfair was a Scottish scientist who became an administrator, a university professor, and a politician. He has been praised as ‘one of the chief architects of the system of technical education in Great Britain as it exists to-day’. As a Member of Parliament (MP), he had to engage with practical university problems, in England and Ireland as well as Scotland, as they arose on the political agenda. But his starting-point was Scotland, and in putting Scottish problems in a wider British and European context, Playfair was part of a distinctive nineteenth-century discourse. Scottish academics and intellectuals were stimulated to think in comparative terms by the obvious contrast between Scottish and English universities; by the need to adapt university education to new social needs; by discussions which surrounded major legislation in 1858 and 1889; and by the widely shared feeling that Scotland had a national system of education closer to continental than to English traditions.

Download Full-text

Representation as a political-theological concept

Philosophy & Social Criticism ◽

10.1177/0191453717741935 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 44 (5) ◽

pp. 507-527 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alessandro Mulieri

Keyword(s):

Political Theology ◽

Political Authority ◽

Carl Schmitt ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Political ◽

Roman Catholicism ◽

Democratic Discourse ◽

Political Form ◽

Field Of Inquiry ◽

Theological Concept

In his 1923 work, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Carl Schmitt claims that representation is a complexio oppositorum (a unity of opposites) and incarnates a hierarchical form of political authority, which is alternative to liberalism. This article shows that Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the political theology of representation is based on a misreading. Schmitt selectively overlooks some meanings of the theology of repraesentatio to build his decisionistic political agenda. An investigation of the original conceptual meanings of representation in Tertullian, the first Christian author who theorized representation and established many of its subsequent theological meanings, shows a different picture. At its inception, representation already included mechanisms of plurality and participation, which anticipated, and perhaps motivated, the absorption of the representation vocabulary within democratic discourse and practice. Political theology is a valuable field of inquiry to prove the claim that there is no participation without the logic of representation.

Download Full-text

The Inner Incompatibility of Empire and Nation: Popular Sovereignty and Decolonization

Sociological Perspectives ◽

10.2307/1389384 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 367-384 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

David Strang

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Great Britain ◽

Political Institutions ◽

The United States ◽

Political Authority ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

Popular Sovereignty ◽

Global Models ◽

External Pressures ◽

Political Theories

This paper argues that metropolitan political theories and institutions grounded in popular sovereignty help to produce decolonization. Radical distinctions between metropolis and dependency only arise when communities, and not rulers, are the theoretical source of political authority. Metropoles organized around popular sovereignty tend to legitimate peripheral claims to autonomy, and to construct political institutions (most importantly colonial legislatures) that voice such claims. An analysis of Western empires shows that, where political models were based on popular sovereignty (Great Britain, the United States, and France), decolonization resulted from internal tensions between theory and practice. Where empire was organized around dynastic principles (Spain and Portugal), empires dissolved as a result of external pressures. Dominant global models have additional effects, blurring differences between empires when popular sovereignty is widely accepted.

Download Full-text

Black, White and Blue: Pregnancy and Unsettled Binaries in The Masque of Blackness (1605)

Multicultural Shakespeare ◽

10.18778/2083-8530.22.02 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (37) ◽

pp. 15-36

Author(s):

Pascale Aebischer ◽

Victoria Sparey

Keyword(s):

Foreign Bodies ◽

Cultural Beliefs ◽

White Male ◽

Reference Points ◽

English Court ◽

Racial Identities ◽

Black And White ◽

Humoral Theory ◽

White Face ◽

Blackface Performance

This article examines the construction of national and racial identities within Ben Jonson’s and Inigo Jones’s Masque of Blackness against the backdrop of King James’ investment in creating a ‘British’ union at the start of his reign. The article re-examines the blackface performance of the Queen and her ladies in the contexts of the Queen’s and Inigo Jones’ European connections, the Queen’s reputation as ‘wilful’, and her pregnant body’s ability to evoke widespread cultural beliefs about the maternal imagination’s power to determine a child’s racial make-up. We argue that the masque’s striking use of blue-face along with black and white-face reveals a deep investment in Britain’s ancient customs which stands in tension with Blackness’ showcasing of foreign bodies, technologies, and cultural reference points. By demonstrating the significance of understanding Queen Anna’s pregnancy and her ‘wilful’ personality within the context of early modern humoral theory, moreover, we develop existing discussions of the humoral theory that underpins the masque’s representation of racial identities. We suggest that the Queen’s pregnant performance in blackface, by reminding the viewer that her maternal mind could ‘will’ the racial identity of royal progeny into being, had the power to unsettle King James I’s white male nationalist supremacy in the very act of celebrating it before their new English court and its foreign guests.

Download Full-text