The Cosby Lament

Rape, Marital Alibis, and Black Iconicity

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5138495
AutoresRebecca Wanzo (autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume29
Fascículo2
Páginas96-125
Data de publicação2018-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
Periódicodifferences (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1040-7391 • E-ISSN: 1527-1986
EditoraDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/10407391-6999788
OpenAlexW2891992682
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas16

This essay is an attempt to work through the nature of the cultural injury produced by the African American male celebrity—an injury that is frequently enacted as intimate violence—and to hypothesize why public accusations of such injuries so often affectively challenge black subjects. Remedies for these injuries frequently gesture toward heteronormative or otherwise regulatory racialized sexual scripts. Stories of African American male celebrities accused of sexual harassment and assault are frequently marked by stories of marital alibis. In discussions of Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Nate Parker, and Kobe Bryant, this essay considers how the marital alibi makes hypervisible the belief that black people have too much to lose if these injuries are addressed. The idea of black male guilt circulates in the media as a black cultural injury, while heteronormative scripts are mobilized to offer not only innocence but repair

Art · Ceremony · Criminology · Harassment · Innocence · Lament · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Media Studies and Communication · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Psychology · Social Psychology