scholarly journals “Have You Ever Seen the Crowd Goin’ Apeshit?”: Disrupting Representations of Animalistic Black Femininity in the French Imaginary

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Elodie Silberstein
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Black Subject ◽  
Jay Z

16 June 2018. London Stadium. Beyoncé and Jay–Z revealed the premiere of the music video Apeshit. Filmed inside the Louvre Museum in Paris, Beyoncé’s sexual desirability powerfully dialogues with Western canons of high art that have dehumanized or erased the black female body. Dominant tropes have historically associated the black female body with the realm of nature saddled with an animalistic hypersexuality. With this timely release, Apeshit engages with the growing current debate about the ethic of representation of the black subject in European museums. Here, I argue that Beyoncé transcends the tension between nature and culture into a syncretic language to subvert a dominant imperialistic gaze. Drawing on black feminist theories and art history, a formal analysis traces the genealogy and stylistic expression of this vocabulary to understand its political implications. Findings pinpoint how Beyoncé laces past and present, the regal nakedness of her African heritage and Western conventions of the nude to convey the complexity, sensuality, and humanity of black women—thus drawing a critical reimagining of museal practices and enriching the collective imaginary at large.

The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Hypatia ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Janell Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory

I assess representations of black women's derrieres, which are often depicted as grotesque, despite attempts by some black women artists to create a black feminist aesthetic that recognizes the black female body as beautiful and desirable. Utilizing a black feminist disability theory, I revisit the history of the Hottentot Venus, which contributed to the shaping of this representational trope, and I identify a recurring struggle among these artists to recover the “unmirrored” black female body.

Letters from an imaginary enemy, Angela Davis

2018 ◽  
pp. 72-100
Author(s):  
Kimberly Lamm
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Angela Davis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Iconic Images ◽  
American Media ◽  
A Site

Chapter 2 analyses Angela Davis’s written reflections on her transformation into the ‘imaginary enemy’ of the US nation-state. A spectacle in the most consequential sense, the iconic images of Davis telegraphed across American visual culture in the early 1970s, many of which highlight her Afro, demonstrate that the black female body is perceived to be a malleable ground upon which fears and fantasies of racial and sexual difference can take visual form. Beginning with the FBI’s ‘Wanted’ poster of her, this chapter tracks the images of Davis that circulated through the American media and came close to inscribing the accusation of her criminality into legal truth and commonly held belief. I argue that Davis’s ordeal demonstrates that visual culture serves as a site where the pathologies of racism and sexism compound each other and force black women into positions of subordination, and that it therefore offers a powerful context for understanding the stakes of Piper’s textual interventions into the iconicity of the black female body. Reading a range of Davis’s writings (her autobiography, her letters to George Jackson, her own defence statement) in relation to Piper’s artwork, this chapter shows that Davis also deployed language to contest the legacies of ‘ungendering’ and undo the visual logics that have determined black women’s visibility..

Prologue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittney C. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Women Intellectuals ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Embodied Discourse

Beyond Respectability employs an Anna Julia Cooperian approach to reading and interrogating the theoretical work and lived experiences of Black women intellectuals. To understand this methodological approach, one needs to first become acquainted with two of Cooper’s cardinal commitments. They include: 1) a commitment to seeing the Black female body as a form of possibility and not a burden, and 2) a commitment to centering the Black female body as a means to cathect Black social thought. In Voice, Cooper places the Black female body and all that it knows squarely in the center of the text’s methodology. She fundamentally believed that we cannot divorce Black women’s bodies from the theory they produce. The author recognizes these forms as an embodied discourse, which predominates in Cooper’s work. Embodied discourse refers to a form of Black female textual activism wherein race women assertively demand the inclusion of their bodies and, in particular, working class bodies and Black female bodies by placing them in the texts they write and speak. By pointing to all the ways Black women’s bodies emerge in formal and informal autobiographical accounts, archival materials, and advocacy work, this work disrupts the smooth function of the culture of dissemblance and the politics of respectability as the paradigmatic frames through which to engage Black women’s ideas and their politics.

scholarly journals Rosana Paulino and the Art of Refazimento: Reconfigurations of the Black Female Body in the Land of Racial Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Author(s):  
Flavia Santos de Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Digital Printing ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Racial Democracy ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
Visual Artist

This essay analyzes the historical and aesthetic significance of the visual art project Assentamento(s) (2012-2013) by Rosana Paulino. Her work re- inscribes the black female body into the historical narrative of Brazil, complicating long-established notions of “Brazilianness”. By using art techniques and materials that combine lithography, digital printing, drawing, sewing, video, and sculpting, Paulino develops a multi-layered artistic assembly that she describes as a process of refazimento (“remaking”). Paulino pushes the boundaries of the historical archives, highlighting both the struggles and agency of black women within Brazilian society. I argue that, as a contemporary black woman visual artist, Paulino engages in a method of historical interpretation that Saidiya Hartman defines as “critical fabulation”. My study explores how Paulino’s refazimento represents a method of inquiry that confronts the legacies of Brazil’s racial democracy and its ideology of mestiçagem. Paulino’s visuality reclaims Afro-Brazilian ancestral memory and black female complex subjectivities.

A Sleight of Hair

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
A.E. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Natural Hair ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Comedies

This essay considers the presence of Black women’s hair as a necessary fact of embodiment that disrupts postfeminist romantic comedies. It focuses on Something New (2006), notable as the first film in which the director, producer, writer, and star were all Black women, arguing that the ontological ruptures created by Kenya, the main character, disrupt the film’s neat classification into the postfeminist romantic comedy genre. The article argues that the Black female body, through the signifier of Black natural hair, invites a chaos into the narrative that makes the film’s contribution to the genre invisible. This calls for a critique of the social order that the genre treats as essential to its foundation.

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

scholarly journals THE FEMINIST AGENDA, A FALL OF HIERARCHAL REDRESS OR AN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISHING AN ‘EQUAL’ SOCIETY GONE WRONG: AN INTERNAL CRITIQUE TO FEMINIST THEORIES

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Motshweni
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Critical Race Feminism ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Point Of Departure

The aim of this paper is to interrogate the post-1994 feminist approaches to jurisprudential discourse. This interrogation will include a consideration as to whether critical instead of ‘traditional’ feminist theories contribute in transforming or decolonising South African law and jurisprudence. It is my suggestion that the inquiry to address ‘gender equality’ before and without addressing issues of racism and racial classism simultaneously in South Africa contributes effectively to the continued marginalisation of black women. As such, my position attempts to engage with the critical feminist approaches in order to address the prejudices that traditional feminist approaches impose on black women. The focal theoretical point of departure for this interrogation is critical race feminism.2 Critical race feminism proposes a progressive initiative for addressing the inconsistencies embodied within the traditional feminist approaches and is thus suitable for the South African post-apartheid context as it may trigger ‘transformative possibilities’.3 It is my contention that in order to address the marginalisation of black women, the traditional feminist approaches (such as the dominant feminist approaches) must be done away with for they are a hindrance to legal reform, as they prejudice the very structure they claim to protect.

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