Pub Date : 2020-02-13DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2020.1726577
Olivia M. Hagedorn
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the life of Dr. Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs, a teacher, writer, artist, and public historian who founded Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961. Throughout her life, Burroughs used art, education, and public history to forge a distinct brand of diasporic cultural feminism that linked Chicago to the African world. I use this term to elucidate the transnational and intersectional feminist consciousness of Burroughs, who rejected perceptions of black women as sexually promiscuous, reshaped dominant practices of respectability through her art and travel, and emphasized connections among racial, gender, and class oppression in diasporic terms. As a theoretical framework, diasporic cultural feminism extends the geographical scope of the African diaspora to include the Midwest, demonstrates how black women were authoritative progenitors of black internationalist thought, and illuminates how race, space, and gender shaped diasporic politics in Chicago.
摘要本文分析了Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs博士的生平，她是一位教师、作家、艺术家和公共历史学家，于1961年创建了芝加哥杜萨伯非裔美国人历史博物馆。在她的一生中，巴勒斯利用艺术、教育和公共历史打造了一个独特的散居文化女权主义品牌，将芝加哥与非洲世界联系在一起。我用这个词来阐明巴勒斯的跨国和跨部门女权主义意识，她拒绝接受黑人女性性滥交的观念，通过她的艺术和旅行重塑了主流的受人尊敬的做法，并用流散的语言强调种族、性别和阶级压迫之间的联系。作为一个理论框架，流散文化女权主义将非洲流散者的地理范围扩展到了中西部，展示了黑人女性如何成为黑人国际主义思想的权威先驱，并阐明了种族、空间和性别如何塑造芝加哥的流散政治。
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Pub Date : 2020-02-10DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2020.1723849
Sheryl Felecia Means
ABSTRACT The Steve Biko Cultural Institute (Biko) is one of various institutions that aim to educate civically active Afro-descendant youth in Salvador who hope to enter higher education spaces. From this institution emerge the Bikudas, the female students. This paper analyzes semi-structured interviews and observations of this group from 2015 to 2016 and their shared experiences. The three aims of the paper are as follows regarding analysis of: (1) the plurality of Black identity; (2) the intersectionality Bikudas navigate as part of their social positioning within family, and relationships; and (3) how Black womanhood manifests on the body. This paper discusses how participants described their social standing as the lowest rank and struggled with their interactions with others on the basis of color, were often rejected by family members for wearing their hair naturally and assuming outward markers of Black identity, and endured greater socioeconomic burdens than their male counterparts.
史蒂夫·比科文化学院（Steve Biko Cultural Institute，简称Biko）是众多旨在教育萨尔瓦多公民活跃的非裔青年的机构之一，这些青年希望进入高等教育领域。从这所学校里出现了女学生Bikudas。本文分析了2015年至2016年这一群体的半结构化访谈和观察，以及他们的共同经历。本文的三个目的是：（1）黑人身份的多元性；（2） 作为他们在家庭和关系中的社会定位的一部分，Bikudas所处的交叉性；以及（3）黑人女性在身体上的表现。这篇论文讨论了参与者如何将自己的社会地位描述为最低级别，并在与他人的互动中因肤色而挣扎，如何经常因头发自然而被家庭成员拒绝，如何承担黑人身份的外在标志，以及如何比男性承受更大的社会经济负担。
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Pub Date : 2020-02-10DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2020.1723850
Owen Nyamwanza, V. Dzingirai
ABSTRACT This paper explores relationships among Zimbabwean irregular migrants trying to survive a rough informal settlement neighbourhood in Pretoria, South Africa. These migrants suffer some degree of illegitimacy, which leaves them open to hostilities and abuse in the foreign cityscapes they occupy. Using the deep-hanging-out ethnographic technique, the paper studied relations among inhabitants of Plastic View informal settlement. Here, migrants engage in relations of convenience – some might say patronage – with well-positioned migrants and other prominent figures, big-men in local parlance. The resultant systematic exchange dyads that punctuate these relations of convenience ensure the provision, by big-men to clients, of services such as protection from adversity, connection to piece-jobs, physical security among others. In return, clients reward big-men through allegiance and other material or immaterial forms of ‘repayment’. Ultimately, the obtaining patron–client relationships are undergirded by transactional interchanges – sometimes unequal – with parties aiming to derive maximum benefits out of the exchange relationship.
{"title":"Big-men, allies, and saviours: mechanisms for surviving rough neighbourhoods in Pretoria’s Plastic View informal settlement","authors":"Owen Nyamwanza, V. Dzingirai","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2020.1723850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2020.1723850","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores relationships among Zimbabwean irregular migrants trying to survive a rough informal settlement neighbourhood in Pretoria, South Africa. These migrants suffer some degree of illegitimacy, which leaves them open to hostilities and abuse in the foreign cityscapes they occupy. Using the deep-hanging-out ethnographic technique, the paper studied relations among inhabitants of Plastic View informal settlement. Here, migrants engage in relations of convenience – some might say patronage – with well-positioned migrants and other prominent figures, big-men in local parlance. The resultant systematic exchange dyads that punctuate these relations of convenience ensure the provision, by big-men to clients, of services such as protection from adversity, connection to piece-jobs, physical security among others. In return, clients reward big-men through allegiance and other material or immaterial forms of ‘repayment’. Ultimately, the obtaining patron–client relationships are undergirded by transactional interchanges – sometimes unequal – with parties aiming to derive maximum benefits out of the exchange relationship.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2020.1723850","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48154408","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 : 2020-01-24DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2020.1716519
Beverley Bryan
ABSTRACT Using autoethnography as the research tool, this paper explores the formation and evolution of a Black community identity in the austerity phase of Britain in the 1970s. Focusing on one life, it examines this period of intense social upheaval when Caribbean people in Britain were moving from migrants to settlers. Central to that Diasporic shift were Black women who were beginning to set and direct a Black agenda for collective survival to meet basic common needs and defend the emerging settler communities in areas such as policing, immigration and education. This autoethnography is supported by artefacts evoking the collective voices of the period, and critical contextual descriptions to articulate a community becoming. The paper examines the critiques of the vagaries of memory, the privileging of the subjective, and argues for the use of the kinds of research practices and tools that can increase dialogic engagement to generate social action.
{"title":"From migrant to settler and the making of a Black community: an autoethnographic account","authors":"Beverley Bryan","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2020.1716519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2020.1716519","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Using autoethnography as the research tool, this paper explores the formation and evolution of a Black community identity in the austerity phase of Britain in the 1970s. Focusing on one life, it examines this period of intense social upheaval when Caribbean people in Britain were moving from migrants to settlers. Central to that Diasporic shift were Black women who were beginning to set and direct a Black agenda for collective survival to meet basic common needs and defend the emerging settler communities in areas such as policing, immigration and education. This autoethnography is supported by artefacts evoking the collective voices of the period, and critical contextual descriptions to articulate a community becoming. The paper examines the critiques of the vagaries of memory, the privileging of the subjective, and argues for the use of the kinds of research practices and tools that can increase dialogic engagement to generate social action.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2020.1716519","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44640232","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 : 2020-01-12DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1701810
C. Dixon
ABSTRACT This article examines changing representations of women of colour within the realm of the visual arts and considers the aesthetic qualities, historical significance and cultural impacts of a diverse body of image-making spanning several centuries. The research focuses on selected works from the portfolios of the following four, early to midcareer artists of Caribbean heritage, whose nuanced depictions of black and brown womanhood in the twenty-first century have achieved international acclaim: American interdisciplinary artist Aisha Tandiwe Bell; American collagist Andrea Chung; French figurative painter Elizabeth Colomba; Danish photographer, video artist and performance installationist Jeannette Ehlers. The complex diasporic identities and imagery reflected in the oeuvres of these four contemporary artists are contrasted with fine art from earlier eras. The compositional, technical and social modalities of a number of notable works are assessed to determine why some have become celebrated images within the international canon and others have been deemed problematic.
{"title":"Four women, for women: Caribbean diaspora artists reimag(in)ing the fine art canon","authors":"C. Dixon","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1701810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1701810","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines changing representations of women of colour within the realm of the visual arts and considers the aesthetic qualities, historical significance and cultural impacts of a diverse body of image-making spanning several centuries. The research focuses on selected works from the portfolios of the following four, early to midcareer artists of Caribbean heritage, whose nuanced depictions of black and brown womanhood in the twenty-first century have achieved international acclaim: American interdisciplinary artist Aisha Tandiwe Bell; American collagist Andrea Chung; French figurative painter Elizabeth Colomba; Danish photographer, video artist and performance installationist Jeannette Ehlers. The complex diasporic identities and imagery reflected in the oeuvres of these four contemporary artists are contrasted with fine art from earlier eras. The compositional, technical and social modalities of a number of notable works are assessed to determine why some have become celebrated images within the international canon and others have been deemed problematic.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1701810","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44137033","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 : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1637604
Talia Weltman-Cisneros
ABSTRACT The performative role of the museum as a ‘historical map’ has long served to construct strategic cartographies of identity and community. In addition, the nature of the relational experiences within museum spaces, places these histories and cartographies in a contact zone, in which structures of power and agency influence the locus of enunciation through which subjecthood and objecthood are derived. This essay examines the influential role of museums in Mexico in imaging, framing, and performing strategic configurations of mexicanidad. Particularly, I interrogate how museums have historically muted and made invisible the representation of Mexicans of African descent.Then, I analyze two important regional museums and theorize how they present a transition from objecthood to subjecthood, in which Afro-Mexican knowledge and consciousness is reified to configure an alternative mapping of African heritage within the space of museums and within constructions of racial formations and narratives of being and belonging in Mexico.
{"title":"‘From objects to subjects: the museumification of Blackness in Mexico’*","authors":"Talia Weltman-Cisneros","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1637604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1637604","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The performative role of the museum as a ‘historical map’ has long served to construct strategic cartographies of identity and community. In addition, the nature of the relational experiences within museum spaces, places these histories and cartographies in a contact zone, in which structures of power and agency influence the locus of enunciation through which subjecthood and objecthood are derived. This essay examines the influential role of museums in Mexico in imaging, framing, and performing strategic configurations of mexicanidad. Particularly, I interrogate how museums have historically muted and made invisible the representation of Mexicans of African descent.Then, I analyze two important regional museums and theorize how they present a transition from objecthood to subjecthood, in which Afro-Mexican knowledge and consciousness is reified to configure an alternative mapping of African heritage within the space of museums and within constructions of racial formations and narratives of being and belonging in Mexico.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1637604","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45219705","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 : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1639297
Johannes Bhanye, V. Dzingirai
ABSTRACT This paper discusses strategies utilized by migrants/squatters in accessing land for settlement and livelihoods in places where the state and the indigenes are not sympathetic to their needs. Although of significant policy and theoretical significance, this area has not received attention from scholarship, its dominant focus being on understanding the diverse origins, destinations, drivers and processes of migration. In addressing this issue, the study uses the case of Malawian migrants located in Zimbabwe’s peri-urban area of Norton. The finding of the paper is that there are as many strategies for acquiring land as they are migrants. The identified strategies (inheritance, seizures, and purchase) are contingent based – varying according to the access of the parties involved in the transactions.
{"title":"Plural strategies of accessing land among peri-urban squatters","authors":"Johannes Bhanye, V. Dzingirai","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1639297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1639297","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper discusses strategies utilized by migrants/squatters in accessing land for settlement and livelihoods in places where the state and the indigenes are not sympathetic to their needs. Although of significant policy and theoretical significance, this area has not received attention from scholarship, its dominant focus being on understanding the diverse origins, destinations, drivers and processes of migration. In addressing this issue, the study uses the case of Malawian migrants located in Zimbabwe’s peri-urban area of Norton. The finding of the paper is that there are as many strategies for acquiring land as they are migrants. The identified strategies (inheritance, seizures, and purchase) are contingent based – varying according to the access of the parties involved in the transactions.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1639297","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46258385","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 : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1639298
Afiya M. Mbilishaka, Moriah Ray, J. Hall, In Wilson
ABSTRACT People across the African Diaspora have developed a complex socio-visual-language system of hair as a means of self-expression; however, the decades of economic sanctions in Cuba generated a unique political dynamic that has shaped concepts of self-image and cultural expressions. Sixteen Afro-Cuban women were interviewed about the cultural significance of their hair using The Guided Hair Autobiography methodology. Participant themes included aesthetic pride and confidence, hair bullying and embarrassment, and hair damage and distress. A Cuban cultural critique underlines how Afro-Cuban women have been socialized to have a bias towards straightened long hair over tightly coiled hair textures. These findings suggest that despite the ‘raceless’ political revolutionary spirit infused into Cuban cultural ideology, people of African descent process racial politics and identity through hair.
{"title":"‘No toques mi pelo’ (don’t touch my hair): decoding Afro-Cuban identity politics through hair","authors":"Afiya M. Mbilishaka, Moriah Ray, J. Hall, In Wilson","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1639298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1639298","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT People across the African Diaspora have developed a complex socio-visual-language system of hair as a means of self-expression; however, the decades of economic sanctions in Cuba generated a unique political dynamic that has shaped concepts of self-image and cultural expressions. Sixteen Afro-Cuban women were interviewed about the cultural significance of their hair using The Guided Hair Autobiography methodology. Participant themes included aesthetic pride and confidence, hair bullying and embarrassment, and hair damage and distress. A Cuban cultural critique underlines how Afro-Cuban women have been socialized to have a bias towards straightened long hair over tightly coiled hair textures. These findings suggest that despite the ‘raceless’ political revolutionary spirit infused into Cuban cultural ideology, people of African descent process racial politics and identity through hair.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1639298","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44905577","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 : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1637143
Antonio José Bacelar da Silva
ABSTRACT In 2000s Brazil, an unprecedented number of Brazilian afrodescendentes (Afro-Descendants) have been mobilizing to secure rights and resources for the Brazilian black population. From carnival parading in ‘cultural’ groups to electoral campaigning, from consciousness-raising education to antiracist community outreach, black activists have been aggressively taking a critical stance toward the discursive fabric of Brazilian race relations and national identity. Placing examples of their discursive struggles over Afro-Brazilian history and culture under the lens of intertextual and heteroglossic relations, I illustrate black activists’ efforts to dispute what they see as misconceptions about black people and blackness that have found their way into the dominant narrative conceptions of Brazilian society. In doing so, I argue, they are accomplishing something of broader social significance: They are revising not only the history and collective memory of race relations in Brazil but blackness itself.
{"title":"Exu is not Satan – the dialogics of memory and resistance among Afro-Brazilians","authors":"Antonio José Bacelar da Silva","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1637143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1637143","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 2000s Brazil, an unprecedented number of Brazilian afrodescendentes (Afro-Descendants) have been mobilizing to secure rights and resources for the Brazilian black population. From carnival parading in ‘cultural’ groups to electoral campaigning, from consciousness-raising education to antiracist community outreach, black activists have been aggressively taking a critical stance toward the discursive fabric of Brazilian race relations and national identity. Placing examples of their discursive struggles over Afro-Brazilian history and culture under the lens of intertextual and heteroglossic relations, I illustrate black activists’ efforts to dispute what they see as misconceptions about black people and blackness that have found their way into the dominant narrative conceptions of Brazilian society. In doing so, I argue, they are accomplishing something of broader social significance: They are revising not only the history and collective memory of race relations in Brazil but blackness itself.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1637143","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43135154","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 : 2019-11-15DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2019.1686109
S. Jayawardene
ABSTRACT Ceylon Africans are an Afrodiasporic community in Sri Lanka and are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island from the 16th–20th centuries. This article focuses on the deployment of Ceylon African mānja performances as an embodiment of memory and Afrodiasporic identity both in private and public spheres. I argue that Ceylon African mānja performances extend beyond an expression of identity and functions as an Africana aesthetic praxis that facilitates memory-keeping work among African-descended peoples in South Asia. Combining theories of Africana aesthetics, memory, and performance with ethnography, I illustrate how mānja performance is a catalyst for individual and communal African identity. This study reveals how mānja performances are not merely limited to enactments of unique cultural practices for the education or admiration of an audience but also about acknowledging the significance of memory, remembering, and re-membering to their life worlds, Africanity, and futurity.
{"title":"Ceylon African Mānja performance: enactments of Black ways of being and Knowing in Sri Lanka","authors":"S. Jayawardene","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2019.1686109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2019.1686109","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Ceylon Africans are an Afrodiasporic community in Sri Lanka and are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island from the 16th–20th centuries. This article focuses on the deployment of Ceylon African mānja performances as an embodiment of memory and Afrodiasporic identity both in private and public spheres. I argue that Ceylon African mānja performances extend beyond an expression of identity and functions as an Africana aesthetic praxis that facilitates memory-keeping work among African-descended peoples in South Asia. Combining theories of Africana aesthetics, memory, and performance with ethnography, I illustrate how mānja performance is a catalyst for individual and communal African identity. This study reveals how mānja performances are not merely limited to enactments of unique cultural practices for the education or admiration of an audience but also about acknowledging the significance of memory, remembering, and re-membering to their life worlds, Africanity, and futurity.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2019.1686109","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46840530","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}
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