Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910088
Rocio Rayo
“Mic check, one, two, one, two”: Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City Rocio Rayo (bio) Shanté Paradigm Smalls’s Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City, New York: New York University Press, 2022 Shanté Paradigm Smalls comes in hot with their recently published Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City. In the first few pages, Smalls clearly defines why NYC, why aesthetics, and why queer; then shifts deeper into defining both queer and Black aesthetics—ultimately answering the question of why hip hop. As they remind us that “hip-hop is middle-aged,” they very clearly maintain it is a genre housed squarely with young adults and teenagers. Hip hop’s mercurial nature is one that constantly changes underfoot—making it solid ground to build a queer, Black, hip hop aesthetic framework. Smalls decided to locate hip hop aesthetic in “disorganized street culture” permitting messiness. This beautiful chaos allows the reader to jump on the beat Smalls produced through their demand to disrupt “and eradicate settled public modalities” of what “authentic” hip hop meant (and means) in NYC. They state, “The book argues that New York City hip-hop artists use queer, Black, and hip-hop aesthetics to queerly—disruptively, generatively, inauthentically—articulate gender, racial, and sexual identitarian performances through specifically New York City based aesthetic and artistic practices and cues” (24). Importantly, Smalls clarifies that this is only possible due to the “creativity and expansiveness of Black genius.” Hip Hop Heresies is broken up into four chapters, with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter, “Wild Stylin’ Martin Wong’s Queer Visuality in New York City Graffiti,” queers the narrative that there is a “lone wolf” success story in hip hop and instead focuses on the origin point, where different styles, cultures, and people intersect. While the protagonist of this chapter is Martin Wong and his contributions, the undercurrent is the liminal space that focusing on Wong carves out and defines in relationship [End Page 265] to Latinidad and Blackness within a hip hop context. Wong’s location on the lower east side of Manhattan connects him to “Nuyorico” while simultaneously erasing his connection to Blackness. Smalls does a phenomenal job of locating him within the body of a Black hip hop aesthetic history. In their second chapter, “Ni[99]a Fu: The Last Dragon, Black Masculinity, and Chinese Martial Arts,” Smalls “offers an alternative model for Black racial formation, queer heterosexual Black masculinity, and a hybrid cultural identity” (59; spelling changed by me). Focusing on “The Last Dragon” allows Smalls an opportunity to reorient heterosexual Black masculinity as queer by removing it from an embodied experience “in relation to white, patriarchal, hetero norms” to a Black masculine experience that challenged controlling images of what it meant to be both Black and masculine. Leroy’s popular performance (
{"title":"“Mic check, one, two, one, two”: Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City","authors":"Rocio Rayo","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910088","url":null,"abstract":"“Mic check, one, two, one, two”: Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City Rocio Rayo (bio) Shanté Paradigm Smalls’s Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City, New York: New York University Press, 2022 Shanté Paradigm Smalls comes in hot with their recently published Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City. In the first few pages, Smalls clearly defines why NYC, why aesthetics, and why queer; then shifts deeper into defining both queer and Black aesthetics—ultimately answering the question of why hip hop. As they remind us that “hip-hop is middle-aged,” they very clearly maintain it is a genre housed squarely with young adults and teenagers. Hip hop’s mercurial nature is one that constantly changes underfoot—making it solid ground to build a queer, Black, hip hop aesthetic framework. Smalls decided to locate hip hop aesthetic in “disorganized street culture” permitting messiness. This beautiful chaos allows the reader to jump on the beat Smalls produced through their demand to disrupt “and eradicate settled public modalities” of what “authentic” hip hop meant (and means) in NYC. They state, “The book argues that New York City hip-hop artists use queer, Black, and hip-hop aesthetics to queerly—disruptively, generatively, inauthentically—articulate gender, racial, and sexual identitarian performances through specifically New York City based aesthetic and artistic practices and cues” (24). Importantly, Smalls clarifies that this is only possible due to the “creativity and expansiveness of Black genius.” Hip Hop Heresies is broken up into four chapters, with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter, “Wild Stylin’ Martin Wong’s Queer Visuality in New York City Graffiti,” queers the narrative that there is a “lone wolf” success story in hip hop and instead focuses on the origin point, where different styles, cultures, and people intersect. While the protagonist of this chapter is Martin Wong and his contributions, the undercurrent is the liminal space that focusing on Wong carves out and defines in relationship [End Page 265] to Latinidad and Blackness within a hip hop context. Wong’s location on the lower east side of Manhattan connects him to “Nuyorico” while simultaneously erasing his connection to Blackness. Smalls does a phenomenal job of locating him within the body of a Black hip hop aesthetic history. In their second chapter, “Ni[99]a Fu: The Last Dragon, Black Masculinity, and Chinese Martial Arts,” Smalls “offers an alternative model for Black racial formation, queer heterosexual Black masculinity, and a hybrid cultural identity” (59; spelling changed by me). Focusing on “The Last Dragon” allows Smalls an opportunity to reorient heterosexual Black masculinity as queer by removing it from an embodied experience “in relation to white, patriarchal, hetero norms” to a Black masculine experience that challenged controlling images of what it meant to be both Black and masculine. Leroy’s popular performance (","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093
Dána-Ain Davis
Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych, Part 1 Dána-Ain Davis (bio) The short man muttered to himself as he limped toward his seat in the fifth car of the Palmetto leaving Charleston, South Carolina . . . the car where Negroes sat. His body was slight, wisp-like, but his mouth sounded like he was swishing seven marbles. He spoke kind of funny because apparently, he never left his Haitian accent back in Acul-du-Nord, even though he arrived in Edgefield County, South Carolina, ten years earlier. The pout of his lips, from which the accent fell, was why they called him Frenchy—a name a lot of South Carolinians called Haitians who first came to Charleston in the 1700s from Saint Dominique. Frenchy boarded the train in his gray pants and light-blue short-sleeve polo shirt. He had the collar up, and the top two buttons were undone so his gold necklace was visible. His hair was slightly conked and combed back. Such a dapper man might have had a larger suitcase, but his was just a medium-size, tan tweed and cognac-colored leather. His valise was the size of man who had left someplace in a hurry. Yet, his manicured nails—perfectly square with rounded edges—told a tale of living a well-appointed life. Those hands, almost dainty, pulled out a ticket from his pant pocket. It read “15A,” which came as a relief because it was the window seat. When Frenchy found the location, a young woman was already getting settled in 15B and was reaching over the aisle to hand the two little girls across from her, orange sections in a napkin. Frenchy sighed because now he was going to have to navigate another person taking up space in his own small world. The young lady looked up as Frenchy lingered by the arm of the seat before hoisting his suitcase to the overhead bin. The suitcase, the size of which suggested its owner did not [End Page 285] have much or did not plan to stay where he was going for very long, nestled in its place much more easily when Frenchy turned it sideways. Now came the small talk that would get him to his window seat. Ma’am that’s my seat. Ok, give me a second, she said. Frenchy waited all of five seconds for the woman to swivel her hips and legs to the right so he could inch his way past her. Frenchy made his wispy body even smaller by holding in his nonexistent stomach and side-shuffled to his seat. When his body arrived, he sat down and was so glad to be doing so. Now he could rest his head on the window instead of taking a chance that when sleep came to get him, his head would drop and lean into the aisle. That could be the job of the lady, he thought. She could create the disturbance in the aisle, not him. As soon as Frenchy sat down, one of the two little girls said, Mama, when we gonna get there? The little girl’s mother looked around, checking people’s faces against the volume of her daughter’s voice. She put a red-painted finger up to her lips and told her daughter, Gilda-girl, hush, don’t nobody wanna hear you. Gilda-girl whined, But Mama, I
{"title":"Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych , Part 1","authors":"Dána-Ain Davis","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910093","url":null,"abstract":"Palmetto, from Black Girl in Triptych, Part 1 Dána-Ain Davis (bio) The short man muttered to himself as he limped toward his seat in the fifth car of the Palmetto leaving Charleston, South Carolina . . . the car where Negroes sat. His body was slight, wisp-like, but his mouth sounded like he was swishing seven marbles. He spoke kind of funny because apparently, he never left his Haitian accent back in Acul-du-Nord, even though he arrived in Edgefield County, South Carolina, ten years earlier. The pout of his lips, from which the accent fell, was why they called him Frenchy—a name a lot of South Carolinians called Haitians who first came to Charleston in the 1700s from Saint Dominique. Frenchy boarded the train in his gray pants and light-blue short-sleeve polo shirt. He had the collar up, and the top two buttons were undone so his gold necklace was visible. His hair was slightly conked and combed back. Such a dapper man might have had a larger suitcase, but his was just a medium-size, tan tweed and cognac-colored leather. His valise was the size of man who had left someplace in a hurry. Yet, his manicured nails—perfectly square with rounded edges—told a tale of living a well-appointed life. Those hands, almost dainty, pulled out a ticket from his pant pocket. It read “15A,” which came as a relief because it was the window seat. When Frenchy found the location, a young woman was already getting settled in 15B and was reaching over the aisle to hand the two little girls across from her, orange sections in a napkin. Frenchy sighed because now he was going to have to navigate another person taking up space in his own small world. The young lady looked up as Frenchy lingered by the arm of the seat before hoisting his suitcase to the overhead bin. The suitcase, the size of which suggested its owner did not [End Page 285] have much or did not plan to stay where he was going for very long, nestled in its place much more easily when Frenchy turned it sideways. Now came the small talk that would get him to his window seat. Ma’am that’s my seat. Ok, give me a second, she said. Frenchy waited all of five seconds for the woman to swivel her hips and legs to the right so he could inch his way past her. Frenchy made his wispy body even smaller by holding in his nonexistent stomach and side-shuffled to his seat. When his body arrived, he sat down and was so glad to be doing so. Now he could rest his head on the window instead of taking a chance that when sleep came to get him, his head would drop and lean into the aisle. That could be the job of the lady, he thought. She could create the disturbance in the aisle, not him. As soon as Frenchy sat down, one of the two little girls said, Mama, when we gonna get there? The little girl’s mother looked around, checking people’s faces against the volume of her daughter’s voice. She put a red-painted finger up to her lips and told her daughter, Gilda-girl, hush, don’t nobody wanna hear you. Gilda-girl whined, But Mama, I","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910079
Susan Stryker
Abstract: This short essay reflects on desires for body modification expressed by civil rights activist Pauli Murray and jazz innovator Ornette Coleman to offer some preliminary thoughts on the concept of “nonbinary Blackness.” It compares the different ways Murray and Coleman negotiated the “glandular imaginary” that informed mid-twentieth-century ideas about sex, gender, and identity, and influenced decisions they made about their own bodies. The transmasculine Murray reconciled to living as a woman once medical examinations determined that there was no hormonal or gonadal cause for her/their masculine identifications, while Coleman, a seemingly cisgender man, drew creative insight from his decision to undergo the genital surgery of circumcision.
{"title":"The Nonbinary Blackness of Pauli Murray and Ornette Coleman: Constraint and Freedom within the Glandular Imaginary","authors":"Susan Stryker","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910079","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This short essay reflects on desires for body modification expressed by civil rights activist Pauli Murray and jazz innovator Ornette Coleman to offer some preliminary thoughts on the concept of “nonbinary Blackness.” It compares the different ways Murray and Coleman negotiated the “glandular imaginary” that informed mid-twentieth-century ideas about sex, gender, and identity, and influenced decisions they made about their own bodies. The transmasculine Murray reconciled to living as a woman once medical examinations determined that there was no hormonal or gonadal cause for her/their masculine identifications, while Coleman, a seemingly cisgender man, drew creative insight from his decision to undergo the genital surgery of circumcision.","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"376 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910077
Chris Straayer
Abstract: This essay argues that nonbinary artist Kris Grey deploys a genderqueer aesthetic to undo taxonomy. Their ceramic sculpture and performance art cross and diffuse binaries through reversals, implosions, conversations, and invitations. I contextualize Grey’s art within the work of other contemporary artists who have creatively investigated and engineered gender, sex, and sexuality. Following Vittorio Gallese, I argue that Grey’s embodied images haptically share nonbinary physicality with audiences. Through centrifugal and centripetal reconfigurations, they make new experiences visible, imaginable, and available. Following Caroline Walker Bynum, I argue that by queerly foregrounding the nonbinary underpinning of a master aesthetic discourse, Grey shows the seemingly unfamiliar nonbinary body to be affectively comprehensible.
{"title":"Queerly Comprehensible: The Nonbinary Art of Kris Grey","authors":"Chris Straayer","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910077","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This essay argues that nonbinary artist Kris Grey deploys a genderqueer aesthetic to undo taxonomy. Their ceramic sculpture and performance art cross and diffuse binaries through reversals, implosions, conversations, and invitations. I contextualize Grey’s art within the work of other contemporary artists who have creatively investigated and engineered gender, sex, and sexuality. Following Vittorio Gallese, I argue that Grey’s embodied images haptically share nonbinary physicality with audiences. Through centrifugal and centripetal reconfigurations, they make new experiences visible, imaginable, and available. Following Caroline Walker Bynum, I argue that by queerly foregrounding the nonbinary underpinning of a master aesthetic discourse, Grey shows the seemingly unfamiliar nonbinary body to be affectively comprehensible.","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/wsq.2023.a910074
C. Libby
Abstract: This article places Marcella Althaus-Reid’s theological reflection on popular devotion to the figure of Santa Librada in Argentina in conversation with scholarship on androgyny, nonbinary identity, and medieval gender-crossing saints. Tying together strands of medieval writing on wondrous bodies and contemporary articulations of nonbinary identity foregrounds how nonbinary embodiments destabilize modern conceptions of binary gender. Although I am not suggesting a return to premodern conceptions of the body, medieval texts are instructive insofar as they offer an epistemology of embodiment that evades the consolidation of binary categories of sex and gender.
{"title":"Wondrous Bodies: Trans Epistemology and Nonbinary Saints","authors":"C. Libby","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.a910074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.a910074","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article places Marcella Althaus-Reid’s theological reflection on popular devotion to the figure of Santa Librada in Argentina in conversation with scholarship on androgyny, nonbinary identity, and medieval gender-crossing saints. Tying together strands of medieval writing on wondrous bodies and contemporary articulations of nonbinary identity foregrounds how nonbinary embodiments destabilize modern conceptions of binary gender. Although I am not suggesting a return to premodern conceptions of the body, medieval texts are instructive insofar as they offer an epistemology of embodiment that evades the consolidation of binary categories of sex and gender.","PeriodicalId":37092,"journal":{"name":"WSQ","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：