This Time It’s Personal
THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL. PROFESSOR CAROL TULLOCH PROFESSORIAL PLATFORM 17 MARCH 2016 UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON Published to coincide with Carol Tulloch’s Professorial Platform 17th March 2016 Designed by Graphicsi ISBN 978-1-906908-39-3 Published by University of the Arts London 272 High Holborn London WC1V 7EY Copyright © Carol Tulloch 2016 Images: © Syd Shelton […]
The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861
Abstract AS A YOUNG WOMAN, NANCY WILLIAMS JOINED OTHER ENSLAVED PEOPLE and “cou’tin’ couples” who would “slip ‘way” to an “ole cabin” a few miles from the Virginia plantation where she lived. Deep in the woods, away from slaveholding eyes, they held secret parties, where they amused themselves dancing, performing music, drinking alcohol, and courting. […]
The Nazareth Scotch: Dance Uniform as Admonitory Infrapolitics for an Eikonic Zion City in early Union Natal
ABSTRACT Uniform has been called a ‘fetish object’ which through ritual organisation helps nationalism’s ‘theatrical performance of invented community’ (McClintock, A. 1995: 374–375). In both male and female sectors of the Nazareth Baptist Church’s holy dances today, an overwhelming majority outfitted in neotraditional ‘IsiZulu’ uniform gives onlookers the impression of a standard-bearing ecclesiastical nationalism—a ‘Zulu […]
Stylin’: The Great Masculine Enunciation and the (Re)Fashioning of African Diasporic Identities
ABSTRACT In this article, Christine Checinska aims to: (i) outline the carnivalised theoretical approach that characterises her analysis of African diasporic cultural expressions, (ii) explore the creolised aesthetic that shapes the styling—or stylin’, in colloquial terms—adopted by African diasporic men in the Caribbean, and (iii) to posit the notion of stylin’ as a creolised non-verbal […]
Style – Fashion – Dress: From Black to Post-Black
Abstract This article examines terms that are central to critical thinking on dress associated with the African diaspora. Through a series of case studies produced and/or used in the UK, the USA, and South Africa, notably London, New York, and Soweto, the terms style, fashion, dress, black, and post-black are considered with regard to specific […]
Saga Bwoys, Rude Bwoys, and Saggers: Rebellious Black Masculinities
ABSTRACT Recycled in white cultural hegemonic representations of the black male body are colonial fantasies, based on fear and desire. Yet, in the formation of diasporic black masculinities, these tropes have been subverted and resisted. Diaspora, here, is a performative process of “becoming” (S. Hall. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Colonial Discourse and PostColonial Theory. […]
Of What Value is Feminism to Black Men?
Abstract If the ultimate purpose of critical engagement with black men and masculinities is the development of progressive masculinities, the growing body of scholarly, pedagogical and media-related work on men and masculinities in South Africa has reached a dead end – or something close to it. This article employs three media pieces as springboards to […]
Mirror Mirror on the Wall/Who is the Fairest of Them All?
Abstract IN THE LATE 19605, REX NETTLEFORD was my tutor in the undergraduate course “Modern Political Thought”, and the class, made up of Trinidadians, Guyanese, Barbadians, Antiguans and Jamaicans, met in his office in the Trade Union Education Institute, University of the West lndies (UWI), Mona. I remember studying the text Two Concepts of Liberty […]
Dilemmas in African Diaspora Fashion
Abstract This article examines the political assertions that are central to where andhow the African Diaspora is situated within Western culture. The articlewill examine how the Diaspora uses fashion objects in social and visual(re)constructions of self. A contention is that the relationship between thedominant mainstream culture and the African Diaspora is insecure,encompassing opposing referential territories […]
Caribbean Women, Creole Fashioning, and the Fabric of Black Atlantic Writing
Abstract On October 1,1768, Jamaican overseer and plantation owner Thomas Thistle wood recorded the following incident between two enslaved seamstresses: he writes, “Phibbah’s Coobah marked on Silvia’s smock bosom. D Τ S J H, for Dago, her husband; Mr. Meyler’s Tom, her sweetheart; and John Hart[nol]e, who she is supposed to love best; and other […]