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MARKS OF THE FETISH:
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (MIS)PERFORMANCES OF THE
BLACK FEMALE BODY
by
Terrion L. Williamson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)
August 2011
Copyright 2011 Terrion L. Williamson
Object Description
| Title | Marks of the fetish: twenty-first century (mis)performances of the black female body |
| Author | Williamson, Terrion L. |
| Author email | terrionw@usc.edu;terrion79@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | American Studies and Ethnicity |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2011-03-09 |
| Date submitted | 2011-05-26 |
| Date approved | 2011-05-27 |
| Restricted until | 2011-05-27 |
| Date published | 2011-05-27 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Keeling, Kara |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Halberstam, Judith Hancock, Ange-Marie Moten, Fred Gray, Herman |
| Abstract | Marks of the Fetish: Twenty-First Century (Mis)Performances of the Black Female Body considers the discursive formulations and cultural histories of contemporary narratives of black women that coalesce within popular media texts under the following five typologies: the “angry black woman,” the “nappy-headed ho,” the “good Christian girl,” the “strong black woman,” and the “baby mama.” I contend that each of these typologies is a particularized ideation of the black female body that is invested with, to invoke Hortense Spillers, semiological and ideological values whose origins are concealed by the image itself. That is, these typologies mark a fetish object—the black female body—whose history has been transformed into pathology via the very same productive logics that serve to make it articulable within the cultural marketplace. Marks of the Fetish departs from foregoing conversations about “stereotypes,” or what I refer to as “stereotype discourse,” that seek to locate pathology in certain material bodies and/or attempt to position black female iconography along a continuum of negative or positive representations. Instead, I suggest that the typologies I name are not embodied by any particular person or person, but are overlapping narratives for which particular persons stand in. As such, the operative questions I want to engage concern not whether these ideations of black female identity are “good” or “bad,” but rather, how the originary impulses that produce them continue to deceptively foreclose alternative forms of black sociality. Using theories of performative raciality in conjunction with feminist work on the performativity of the gendered body as a starting point, I propose a theoretical methodology for analyzing the constitutive contingencies of race and gender that has the potential to profoundly affect traditional understandings of the representative black body. Ultimately, I argue that the racialized gender performances, and attendant misperformances (that is, performances that deviate from hegemonic norms), of black women within public culture, including within film, television, music, the blogsphere, public and legal policies, and political and social commentary, evidence the fraught terrain of black subjectivity while simultaneously revealing the radical potentialities of difference. |
| Keyword | African American women; black feminism; cultural studies; fetishism; popular culture; stereotypes |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Rights | Williamson, Terrion L. |
| Access conditions | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume71/etd-Williamson-5-0.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | MARKS OF THE FETISH: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (MIS)PERFORMANCES OF THE BLACK FEMALE BODY by Terrion L. Williamson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY) August 2011 Copyright 2011 Terrion L. Williamson |
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