Can I call you Black? The limits of authentic heteronormativity in African Diasporic discourse
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12915784 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michelle M Wright (Northwestern University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-16 |
| Publication date | 2012-12-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African and Black Diaspora An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-8631 • E-ISSN: 1752-864X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17528631.2012.739910 |
| OpenAlex | W2008292959 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 6 |
This article argues that the assumption of a ‘normative’ and ‘authentic’ blackness that girds many dominant discourses on blackness in African Diaspora studies effectively marginalizes those black identities read outside of heteronormativity. Beginning with an essay by Black British political scientist Barnor Hesse, in which his British identity was implicitly read as less authentic, the article then compares and contrasts the introductions to The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. ‘Can I call you Black’ concludes that despite the fierce abolitionist sentiments expressed in each text, the gender performance of Wonderful Adventures – including its encomia to Seacole's late white husband – marks the author as suspect. While Equiano's personal life receives little comment, interracial marriage is valorized as proof of his commitment and thus authenticity. Keywords: African Diasporaheteronormativitygendersexualityblackness Notes 1. Works that have overturned previous conceptions of African-American and African Diasporic formation include Tera Hunters To ‘Joy My Freedom, which reveals forms both ante- and post-bellum forms of resistance by African American women in the South; Michael Gomez’ Exchanging Our Country Marks, which examines how the African diversity of US slave populations impacted Southern cultures; Daylanne English's Unnatural Selections, which uncovers African-American discussions on eugenics in the early decades of the twentieth century; Rod Ferguson's Aberrations in Black, which exposes African-American bourgeois homophobic anxieties about newly liberated slave populations, and most recently Thavolia Glymph's In the House of Bondage, which shows how female slaves in the South often had to contend with deeply malevolent rather than benevolent or sympathetic white women on the plantation. 2. The documentary is based on the equally popular book of oral histories edited by Mike and Trevor Phillips. 3. My thanks to Sandra Jackson for this valuable critical intervention. 4. Nell Boyce, ‘Out of Africa? New questions about the origins of a seminal slave narrative.’ From the February 10, 2003 Culture and Ideas section of usnewsclassroom.com 5. Carretta himself has discussed how his findings open up more questions rather than provide any sort of definitive answer. Reminding us that Equiano is a self-actuated subject rather than a passive object on to whom an ‘authentic’ identity is placed, he explains that he may have found it strategically useful to record himself as a black from North America to prevent being traced and recaptured by former dishonest owners (see Carretta Citation1999). 6. Here I am referring to the nations of Carthage, Nubia, and Egypt, all of whom traded technologies, philosophies, science, materials, and culture with the Ancient Roman Empire both before and after their incorporation into it
Adventure · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Diaspora · Heteronormativity · Identity (music · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sociology · Suspect · White (mutation · Gender Studies · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Citations per year | 0.56 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2023 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |