'She'll Wake Up One of These Days and Find She's Turned into a Nigger' Passing through Hybridity  

Oleh:

Ahmed, Sara

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Theory, Culture & Society vol. 16 no. 2 (Apr. 1999), page 87-106.
Topik: a Nigger; Black; Joke
Fulltext: 87TCAS162.pdf (159.35KB)

Isi artikel

In this article, I examine racial narratives of passing and their relationship to discourses of hybridity. Rather than defining passing as inherently transgressive, or as one side of identity politics or the other, I suggest that passing must be understood in relationship to forms of 242 Theory, Culture & Society social antagonism. I ask the following questions: how are differences that threaten the system recuperated? How do ambiguous or hybrid bodies get read in a way which further supports the enunciative power of those who are telling the difference? In what ways is 'passing' implicated in the very discourse around tellable differences? Although to some extent all identities involve passing - insofar as the subject never 'is' what it 'images' itself to be - we still need to theorize the differences between passing as white and passing as black. I argue that passing as black as a white subject can function as a technique of knowledge which assumes 'blackness' to be imageable and hence beable. However, for black subjects to refuse to pass as white - that is, for black subjects to pass as black -can make visible the violent histories concealed by the invisibility of the mark of passing. Such a process of passing as black subjects is tied to a politics of the collective - a coming together through the recognition of the lack that engenders passing in the first place.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali