Black Female Politics & (Re)presentations

A curatorial and ethical praxis p.s. my functioning tumblr page is tumblr.com/strongbrowngod

[strongbrowngod]

Mickalene Thomas, Black Odalisque images

Thomas’s images show black women who are “beautiful, sexy and strong, set against a lush backdrop, which recalls a specific cultural moment in the 70s…She has created a kind of feminist baroque portrait in which the extreme use of lighting draws the viewer into the delight of worshiping at the altar of female beauty. Thomas’ work transcends any possible accusation of narcissism because she has so effectively considered the mood and tone of her paintings. They convey an ebullient sensibility rather than a self-serving eroticism. She has accomplished something wholly pleasurable and refreshing in her art, something which will be exciting to follow” -Anne Swartz

[theblackcondition-blog]

Mickalene Thomas offers us a reclamation of the exotifying Odalisque representations of women in exotic settings, particularly in regards to the Black female nude. It is widely documented that the Black female nude is absent from fine art, though the white female nude has been canonized in art and of "great concern both academically and aesthetically" (Wallace-Sanders). Thomas's usurp of the Odalisque as an image of promiscuity to represent the beautiful and strong Black woman is innovative, pleasing, and ethically ambiguous. 

[theblackcondition-blog]

Problematics of the "Matriarch"

"The stereotype of the “strong Black woman” occupies heroic standing within African American culture, yet her lack of femininity obscures her gender."- Wallace Sanders

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[theblackcondition-blog]

Most popular stereotypes for Black American women:

Figure 1: passive, domestic worker, the “Mammy”

Figure 2: the promiscuous “Jezebel”

Figure 3: the emasculating “Matriarch”

Why do we need counter-narratives to such stereotypes? "Stereotypes call forth routine and immediate responses, again keeping us from relating to people as people and substituting automatic reactions...Stereotypes also create of exaggerate differences that serve to keep our hearts closed" (Weston). Critics agree that narrative is a key tool to combat racism and stereotypes. 

For example, Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his analysis of slave narratives and autobiographies, says that self-portraits possess do far more than create a historical record. "He argues that these writers must use their bodies and their stories to fashion a public self, a subject position otherwise unavailable within dominant cultural discourses." (Carol E. Henderson)

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[theblackcondition-blog]

In addition to being a form of adornment and serving aesthetic purposes, African hairstyles often served a social purpose by conferred status or tribal affiliation. [Ethical consideration of the black-and-white photograph is pertinent given the historical period in which these photos were taken]

"Cultural images of the body- of hair and fashion- are manipulated through forms of stereotype, appropriation and resistance."- Kadiatu Kenneh

Keeping this quote in mind and the politics of black hair, one of the ways ethical theorist Anthony Weston urges us to practice ethical investigation is to expand our possibilities beyond the "dilemma". In the case of Black Hair politics in the United States of America, can we produce other possibilities out of the omnipresent conflicting values of style vs. cultural affiliation. Perhaps we can eliminate the premise that natural hair signals cultural affiliation. Perhaps we can create counter narratives that show how stylization of straightened (i.e. Europeanized hair) could potentially signal Black identity. The possibilities are endless!

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A.M. Duggan-Cronin, Ovambo (Ogandjera) Woman, 1936 . Image courtesy of the Walther Collection.

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A proud display of the body and bodily adornment. In contrast to hair and dress politics in African American discourse centered around the notion of "Black community" here hair and fashion in conjunction speak to a culturally or tribe specific form of adorning the body and exalting the body's relationship with nature.

[anotherafrica-blog]

Ethiopia series by photographer Christian Witkin. Image courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved.

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Black hairstyling in Africa as a form of cultural celebration and belonging.

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What is meant by the colonial gaze?

"The act of looking involves the gaze, but it is not restricted to or by it. The gaze, as Mercer allows, is spectatorial. It presumes there is a visually noticeable object that is dialectically connected to a codified and signified subject. Scripting [the process by which Black bodies were inscribed with a set of meanings] includes the gaze and also the social prescriptions that disprivilege racialized, politicized, and commodified Black bodies."- Ronald L. Jackson II

We know that representation was used under colonialism as a means to create, distinguish, and classify the "Other". So if Black female bodies have a history of being gazed upon, that is objectified, and disfigured, how can Black females bring dignity, agency,power, and beauty to their bodies through the act of representing themselves, self-representation? What does self-representation offer in terms of a liberating potential? It offers a counter narrative, of course, and expands the possibilities of what being a Black female means. In an environment where stereotype threat is prevalent, such an expansion of the narrative space offers the possibility of eradicating dominant stereotypes (most of which are negative) and their debilitating effects on Black women.

[theblackcondition-blog]

Wangechi Mutu Uterine Catarrh 2004

Excellent piece from Wangechi Mutu exploring the history of the dissection of Black female bodies. It is a grotesque and almost repulsive portrayal of the ways in which Black females have been reduced to objects of sexuality by the colonial gaze, a gaze which fixates on the hypersexual and monstrous. The surgical tool penetrates a Caucasian vagina that is permanently but unnaturally lodged in the space designated for the Black brain. The pastiched image draws attention to the perverse and pervasive White beauty standards that Black females are confronted with (see plump Caucasian pink lips atop the natural women's lips; also see small Caucasian ears). 

I believe at the level of ethical inquiry is that what makes this image aesthetically pleasing and powerful dialectically relates to its ethical objectives. I argue that aesthetic sensations can bring about ethical considerations, even considerations relating to the appropriateness of depicting the subject aesthetically in such grotesque manners.

But why are grotesque images of reproductive organs so powerful ethically? To the latter Bakhtin might provide an answer. 

Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as: “...a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body. [...] This is why the essential role belongs to those parts of the grotesque body in which it outgrows its own self; transgressing its own body, in which it conceives a new, second body: the bowels and the phallus. These two areas play the leading role in the grotesque image, and it is precisely for this reason that they are predominantly subject to positive exaggeration, to hyperbolization: they can even detach themselves from the body and lead an independent life [...]. Next to the bowels and the genital organs is the mouth, through which enters the world to be swallowed up. And next is the anus. All these convexities and orifices have a common characteristic; it is within them that the confines between bodies and between the body and world are overcome [...]” (Bakhtin 1984: 317).

Reproductive organs, as borderlines of the body, are liminal areas dividing outside from inside; they are "metonymical marks of power relations in a colonial and postcolonial society."

[theblackcondition-blog]

Wangechi Mutu and the Grotesque

Mutu, a Kenyan-born Brooklyn-based artist has a penchant for the grotesque in connection with the female body, or more specifically, female body parts. Reclaiming the segmentation of the body by the European gaze and hand (as exemplified in Saartjie Baartman's history in Europe freakshows and dissection for a museum's gaze), Mutu dissects the female body in her artworks to articulate a history of colonization and coloniality predicated on violence against women.

Mutu states, "Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.”

I think part of Mutu's appeal as an artist that works with the notion of the grotesque is that she recalls African literary writers who employ madness in their writing, whether inadvertently or purposefully, to "subvert dominant structures of thinking and ruling in the colony and post-colony" (Veit-Wild). The grotesque could easily be interpreted as a form of madness. 

[theblackcondition-blog]

Wangechi Mutu Adult Female Sexual Organs 2005

"Piecing together magazine imagery with painted surfaces and found materials, Mutu’s collages explore the split nature of cultural identity, referencing colonial history, fashion and contemporary African politics. In Adult Female Sexual Organs, Mutu uses a Victorian medical diagram as a base: an archetype of biased anthropology and sexual repression. The head is a caricatured mask – made of packing tape, its material makes reference to bandages, migration, and cheap ‘quick-fix’ solutions. Mutu portrays the inner and outer ideals of self with physical attributes clipped from lifestyle magazines: the woman’s face being a racial distortion, her mind occupied by a prototypical white model. Drawing from the aesthetics of traditional African crafts, Mutu engages in her own form of story telling; her works document the contemporary myth-making of endangered cultural heritage."  Quote from: Merrily Kerr, Wangechi Mutu's Extreme Makeovers, Art On Paper, Vol.8, No. 6, July/August 2004. 

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Marsha Hunt 1968 Photo Patrick Lichfield

Kobena Mercer says that "black-and-white photography is indeed racial fetishism, the fetishism of the contrast between whiteness and blackness."- Margo Natalie Crawford 

The Black Arts movement provides an interesting site to interrogate Black Body politics, given its efforts to reclaim the Black "primitive" and dark-skinned blackness. One could argue that in its pursuit of this reclamation, it produced a counter narrative to that of prevalent colorism (preference for light-skinned Blacks) in the African-American community, which although uplifting, created a fetishization of dark-skinned beauty. 

As is the case in contemporary American society in Black attitudes towards the politics of hair, Black Arts participants thought the presentation and representation of the Black body was a potent signifier of Black allegiance. The Black Arts privileged beauty standards that were "natural" and "African" which means that dark-skinned blackness and "natural" hair were epitomized as authentic Black beauty. Given that beauty coincides with conceptions of femininity, it is mostly women who suffer the gaze of Black body politics.

  My ethical questions are similar to those advanced towards black hair in the previous post. However in the case of hair texture, which can easily be manipulated, skin tone is another matter. Artists such as Michael Jackson and contemporary celebrities (Lil Kim) who have undergone drastic skin lightening procedures have had a profound impact on how Black peoples, or to be more specific, dark Black women value themselves. The Black Arts movement was undeniably empowering for those with darker skin tones on the level of bodily politics. However, it created a void in terms of how to articulate light skinned blackness, and ultimately created a rift in the two shades of skin. Community was lost.

Ethically, I wonder how processes of reclamation affect community between privileged and dis-privileged groups? Is there a way to ethically celebrate one party without losing the support of another? I wonder...

[theblackcondition-blog]

A model proudly shows her natural hair.

Politics of natural hair in the African-American imagination...Let's discuss

Kobena Mercer says: “We require a historical perspective on how many different strands--economic, political, psychological -- have been woven into the rich and complex texture of our nappy hair, such that issues of style are so highly charged as sensitive questions about our very “identity”."

  Hair stands as an important marker of identity for African-Americans in the United States, in not only style and color, but more importantly, texture. The way one dons his/her hair projects an identity that extends to represent one's cultural affiliations, that is to say, whether one affiliates with African or European culture. The act of transgression against societal dominant norms, in this case, straight chemically treated hair, in favor of natural hair signifies and signals for many one's ability to attack European forms of body politic bent on oppressing Black peoples.

Ethically, what are the implications when we choose to favor a texture of hair that does not align with conceptions of Black identity? Can our hair be contextualized to have different meanings in different African-American spaces? Is the way we choose to wear our hair a form of racial masking? What happens when we identify with Blackness but wear straightened hairstyles for stylistic purposes...conflicting values? How can we reconcile these conflicting values? Through our dress? Should we think of hair as analogous with skin color, and is the first value (style) a false value if it is at the expense of our "essential" identity, our natural hair?

[theblackcondition-blog]

"Within the interplay of race relations, corporeal zones such as that of skin color and hair texture automatically evoke feelings, thoughts, perhaps anxieties, if they are already resident or dormant."

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Crisis of Representing the Black Body

"The history of the traffic in the Black female body causes a crisis of representation, particularly for artists who have inherited the culture of dissemblance...Sight of the Black model’s body haunts [...], for it conjures up various economies of the flesh. This appears to be the logic behind much of the avoidance of the Black female body."- Lisa Collins

This is in reaction to the findings of Judith Butler who surveyed the Black female nude in African American art history and found that no nudes were depicted in the entire 19th century, and that it was only in the 20th century that the Black nude female became a permissible subject for Black American artists.

Depicting the Black female nude is a crisis of representation for Black artists and the lack of nudes reinforces a pervasive culture of dissemblance, an understandable one too given the history of overexposure of the Black body, most often as an object, a monstrosity, an erotic. But the lack of Black nudes in art by African Americans calls attention to that very absence and distorts the narrative about the possibilities of the Black body's appeal or pleasurability.

Ethically, how does one reconcile these two conflicting values? One to respect the body given the history of exploitative representation, and two, to represent the body as pleasurable and desirable in a process of liberation and reclamation?

[theblackcondition-blog]

Black Bodies viewed through Toni Morrison's Beloved

"The female body that emerges from the water in Beloved is a body formed by death, violence and mourning, which has rocked the foundations of home, which forms and channels desire, disturbs the unities of love and revisits dead rages upon the living. Her name a metaphor for the gathering at the grave, her death a necessity of love, her resurgence reconstitutes the past as incarnation and female experience as an embodiment of histories within the present. It is suffering that lives on, that forces itself into physical reality, inhabiting tangible places through the agonising creativity and destructiveness of love. Beloved theorises a Black conception of the body and of home as realities formed in the shape of past experiences, which insist upon their place in the present through the exigencies of grief and anger."- Kadiatu Kenneh

 The water archetype is a fitting one to inculcate the notion of rebirth. Here, the black bodies scattered across the oceans of the Triangular Trade symbolically come back to life to voice their pain and urgency in the present. Morrison reverses the literal drowning of Black bodies of the past to highlight not only the possibility for a new future as signified through the rebirth, but to call attention to the morbidness and terror that comes with witnessing and recognition of a living and pertinent past, a walking dead. Narrative choices here are an ethical praxis to reclaim the Black body and  silenced Black history.

[theblackcondition-blog]

Marie-Guilhelmine Benois, Portrait d'une négresse, 1800. 

"This image of a presumably African servant woman with her chest partially bare and a breast exposed, though sensitively rendered, is nevertheless suggestive of the connection in the European mind during the nineteenth century between Black womanhood and sexuality. The obligatory headdress and partial nudity mark her as different from civilized white womanhood. The whiteness of the cloth that drapes her contrasts sharply with the blackness of her body and calls attention to her “otherness” in the realm of the physical and social as well."- Guy-Sheftall

Furthermore, the fact that her shirt is pulled down to reveal her breasts is ultimately more distasteful than nudity would be. Her clothing is removed for the sole purpose of the photograph and conveys the sexual attitude, perhaps even pornographic gaze of the Western photographer. 

What does this matter? Sexuality is a human condition with ethical import. Sexuality usually involves intimacy and is an intense act by which we give others access into our physical and psychological sensibilities. When we reduce Black female bodies down to their sexuality, we treat them as objects without agency to be used solely for external sexual purposes. The consequences of such disparaging and sexual representations close off our hearts. In order to engage in ethical matters, as stated by Weston, we need to open up our hearts.

"Ethics asks us to resist closed-heartedness, to keep the heart open... Nothing is so chilling as knowing that you are only a thing to someone else...Sexual exploitation- realizing that you are only a body to someone else, only a means to someone else’s momentary pleasure-- is far more deeply chilling. All trust, all sense of standing as one person among others, is betrayed."- Weston

[theblackcondition-blog]

Woman breastfeeding over her shoulder, title page from Verum et Historicum Descriptionem Avriferi Regni Guineaa, in Theodor de Bry, Small Voyages, vol. 6

Depictions of women highlighted their Otherness through portrayals of what must have appeared to be deviant sexuality and child-bearing. In the photo above, a child suckles from his mother's breast while on her back, while the mother focuses looks into the distance, seemingly captivated by other occurrences. This image would cement in the European gaze the seeming ease and therefore meaningless with which Africans bear children and the "monstrosity" with which their bodies are able to perform difficult tasks (here, breast-feeding over the shoulder).

"Women enslaved in the 17th and early 18th centuries did not give birth to many children, but descriptions of African women in the Americas almost always highlighted their fecundity along with their capacity for manual labor. 17th century English medical writers, both men and women, equated breast-feeding and tending to children with work. Erroneous observations about African women’s propensity for easy birth and breastfeeding reassured colonizers that these women could easily perform hard labor in the Americans while simultaneously erecting a barrier of difference between Africa and England... African women entered the developing discourse of national resources via an emphasis on their mechanical and meaningless childbearing." - Guy Sheftall