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Interviews | November 19, 2009

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Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity

by E. Patrick Johnson

Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity Cover

ISBN13: 9780822331919
ISBN10: 0822331918
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Performance artist and scholar E. Patrick Johnson's provocative study examines how blackness is appropriated and performed--toward widely divergent ends--both within and outside African American culture. Appropriating Blackness develops from the contention that blackness in the United States is necessarily a politicized identity--avowed and disavowed, attractive and repellent, fixed and malleable. Drawing on performance theory, queer studies, literary analysis, film criticism, and ethnographic fieldwork, Johnson describes how diverse constituencies persistently try to prescribe the boundaries of authentic blackness and how performance highlights the futility of such enterprises.

Johnson looks at various sites of performed blackness, including Marlon Riggs's influential documentary Black Is . . . Black Ain't and comedic routines by Eddie Murphy, David Alan Grier, and Damon Wayans. He analyzes nationalist writings by Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver, the vernacular of black gay culture, an oral history of his grandmother's experience as a domestic worker in the South, gospel music as performed by a white Australian choir, and pedagogy in a performance studies classroom. By exploring the divergent aims and effects of these performances--ranging from resisting racism, sexism, and homophobia to excluding sexual dissidents from the black community--Johnson deftly analyzes the multiple significations of blackness and their myriad political implications. His reflexive account considers his own complicity, as ethnographer and teacher, in authenticating narratives of blackness.

Synopsis:

""Appropriating Blackness" is a wonderful study that makes important and timely contributions across many fields. E. Patrick Johnson is a skilled reader of texts and offers useful introductions to complex theories of race, sexuality, and culture."--David Roman, author of" Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS"

Synopsis:

"With "Appropriating Blackness," E. Patrick Johnson has given us a book worthy of the breadth its title signals. It is written in an excellent and refreshingly clear prose style which sacrifices nothing in the way of complexity of the ideas being presented. Johnson makes his observations about the relatedness of performance and blackness more compelling with each successive case study."--Dwight A. McBride, coeditor of "Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction" ""Appropriating Blackness" is a wonderful study that makes important and timely contributions across many fields. E. Patrick Johnson is a skilled reader of texts and offers useful introductions to complex theories of race, sexuality, and culture."--David Roman, author of" Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS"

Product Details

ISBN:
9780822331919
Author:
Johnson, E. Patrick
Publisher:
Duke University Press
Author:
E. Patrickjohnson
Author:
Johnson
Location:
Durham N.C.
Subject:
People of Color
Subject:
United states
Subject:
Performing arts
Subject:
Intellectual life
Subject:
Race relations
Subject:
African Americans
Subject:
Authenticity
Subject:
African Americans in popular culture
Subject:
cultural heritage
Subject:
African Americans - Intellectual life
Subject:
United States Race relations.
Copyright:
Series Volume:
107-774
Publication Date:
January 2003
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
384
Dimensions:
9.08x5.98x.90 in. 1.15 lbs.

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