Theory and Writing: Black Thought
Freshman year of undergraduate; Paris 2023
Hortense Spillers: Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe
“The African-American woman, the mother, the daughter, becomes historically the powerful and shadowy evocation of a cultural synthesis long evaporated – the law of the Mother – only and precisely because legal enslavement removed the African-American male not so much from sight as from mimetic view as a partner in the prevailing social fiction of the Father’s name, the Father’s law”
Table of Contents
Overarching Essay:
Preconceived Notions of the Black Female Body and their Disruptions to the self
Piece 1:
Harriet Jacob: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harlem Shadows, Claude McKay
Piece 2
What My Mother And I Don’t Talk About: Bernice L. McFadden, Fifteen
Piece 3
Hortense Spillers, Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe; The Dismantled Black Family
Piece 4
Lacan, DuBois, Welang: Racialized Liminality, Commodity to Consciousness Linked from the Misrecognition of the Social
Piece 5
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley: Femmes Of Color; Queer Liminality, The Personal Transition Space
Footnotes
Film and Art: A Division of Black Self-Suspended between Girlhood and Womanhood
Jezebel (2019, Film) “Isn’t She Pretty?” Clip, Netflix (0:00-4:41)
Statistics and Revealing Research: The Fracture of Black Girls Childhood, Georgetown Law
Key Words: Commodity, Girlhood, Womanhood, Liminal Space, Personal Identity
This paper aims to analyze and compose the embellished history of the black women’s label as ‘commodity’ and how this characterization not only became a generational cycle but is reciprocated through mother to daughter. Developed as a ‘Coming of Age’ anthology, the presented pieces develop the black female’s liminality toward Gender, Racialization, and Queerness. Referenced in the title, the objective aim can be concluded to the subjectivity of liminal space and personal identity to redefine the shift between girlhood and womanhood as a black female.
To outline the premise of liminal space presented in this work, the established parameters of this are marked as a transitional period within a person’s life, in this case the black woman. Victor Turner continues the subject defining liminality to be, “divided […] into three analytically distinct phases and during which the individual undergoes a transition from one social status to another, for instance […] when a girl becomes a woman. During the middle phase of such a process the individuals involved are understood to be ‘no longer’ and simultaneously also ‘not yet’. […] liminal personae are “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed” (Turner 1969: 95). Liminality in the context of this anthology is sectioned into three sectors of the black female in the socio-economic and political sphere.
To elucidate the termed use of the word ‘commodity’ in reference to the black female self, the text will reference to the transitional period known as ‘girlhood’, the allotted space before liminality can be addressed, or in reference to the first stage of Victor Turner’s Liminality. Commodity in its use was embedded in the structural foundation of slavery, where they were referenced as ‘transatlantic commodities’ allowing for the objectification and abuse of their body, 1their flesh, but also the complete removal of their self-hood to diminish their bodies as only being able to provide or offer (1). Addressing the history of this term, the paper aims to utilize the relevant historical usage of commodities and their present relevance two hundred years later which can be translated by Iman Cooper’s explanation, “[…] human commodities to market. Over time, the replication of individual choices to capture, buy, and trade African slaves created a societal structure that equalized the value of human life with a market value” (Cooper 2). Applying Cooper’s exposition of a commodity to the context of a ‘Coming of Age’ narrative for the black female self, the encompassing objective of market value / exchange of goods produces the object self [in this case the black woman] to then become a product of material or property. The degradation of the self is not a social consent, but an ingested denomination of themselves.
To further to conversation of disruption, the rationale toward this anthology was contrived by the misrecognition of black women in connection with the abundance of representation from the white public and adjacent to the patriarchy, black men. Toni Morrison advances the subject of exclusivity of black women in her novel Sula: “When I think of how essentially alone black women have been – alone because of our bodies, over which we have had so little control; alone because the damage done to our men has prevented their closeness and protection; and alone because we have had no one to tell us stories about ourselves. […] Because of these writers, there are more models of how it is possible for us to live, there are more choices for black women to make, and there is a larger space in the universe for us” (Morrison, Sula). Morrison’s decision to end her monologue by addressing the ‘possible’ space black women can take, can make for themselves, drives my reasoning for these pieces – this anthology. The lack of representation for women of color, can be examined in legislative roles, social justice movements, STEM environments, leadership positions, and healthcare equity and when restated the intersection of social constructs puts them as “victims of racial oppression, sex discrimination, and class stratification” (OJP)
The theorists introduced in their individual pieces seek to uncover this gap, marked as a transitional and/or liminal space between phase one and three of the black women. In doing so, the historical context of enslavement in the specified pieces and essays continues to codify the current lack of representation and attention they receive. Hortense Spiller’s speaks on the period of the Middle Passage to rediscover gender and further dislocation of the black self, eventually defining the black family, and in this context, the female black self becoming ungendered, furthering separating her from self-actualization by removing the personhood to be used as a commodity. Jacques Lacan, W.E.B. DuBois, and Nuham Welang, rationalize the black self through psychanalysist to deliver the black consciousness in socio-economic and political matters, ultimately creating a distinct “twoness” within the black self. Omise’eke Tinsley take on queerness and sexuality in her novels depict female black love untarnished by the acceptance of one’s sexuality and reflection of thyself.
A desire for this anthology is to not only address the marginalization that black women are to encounter and thus endure, but to also highlight the importance and the need for such transitional space to occur to the black girl. Hortense Spiller, Jacques Lacan, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley each present the case of the black female self in reference to the social oppression they are to encounter. My proposal plans to link suppression with liminality, that would in hindsight address the black personal identity which would evolve from such subjugation. As statistics are limited in this anthology, the paper revolves around a philosophical and psychological approach to the identity of a black woman which targets the mental processes affected from outside influences. The goal is to present the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ as wrongfully coinciding within the black body to produce such questions revolving around black identity.
I hope these pieces can shed to light not only historically – to educate on the horrific and abusive acts women of color faced during slavery and oppression, but how these themes continue presently in law and social standings. Studies, articles, healthcare, law, and movements often put black women in the background asking them to fight but lack acknowledgment for their struggles. I hope to create a piece to recognise the lack of help black women and girls have received to inspire movement for social reform.
What My Mother And I Don’t Talk About: Bernice L. McFadden [Fifteen]
A collection of essays bound by the singular idea of ‘the ways our mothers fail us and we fail them’ Bernice McFadden depicts the cycle of generational trauma and abuse as she beings to replicate the harshness her mother employed in their relationship onto her own daughter. McFadden, an American novelist whose writing can be outlined in her fifteen published books, opened her essay with the establishment of the father figure, one who determines their relationship to be outsourced by his power over her. McFadden writes, “[…] I attended private school and my classmates were privileged white girls who spoke to their parents any old kind of way, and he wasn’t going to tolerate that type of insolence from his black daughter” (McFadden 104). The cycle of power which extends past the mother directly to the daughter, in which the mother avoids the actions of the father for her self-preservation, even at the expense of her daughter, begins to create a lack of need and/or nurture from daughter to mother. The actions of the mother are further solidified when the mother’s continual return to the abusive father leaves the daughter to fend for herself: “Over the years, I ran away again. He was still a drunk, and you still left and went back, left and went back” (McFadden 104).
A relationship now tarnished by the mother’s inability to stand up not only for herself, but for her daughter’s sake, starts the deterioration of their relationship as the daughter natural thought is to mirror that of her mother, a phase outlined by Jacques Lacan, that eventually is adopted into the term “Real Other” – “the maternal figure initially features for the infant as a Real Other —more specifically, as an obscure omnipotent presence who is the source of all-important love” (Stanford Encyclopedia). As the daughter can no longer mirror herself in the mother due to her needs for self-preservation, the daughter will now seek to fight back. McFadden continues this system when speaking of her father, “Yes, I still lived under his roof, but I no longer a child, muted by my age and dependency. I saw myself as a grown-ass woman. Now, when he barked, I barked back” (McFadden 105). The daughter’s emphasis on ‘dependency’ can be outlined in the feedback loop she feeds to her mother, but the lack of change caused her to digress within a state of independence. As the daughter only exists within the world of herself and the family, a differing reaction or action toward those near her will not vary much in practice, as the daughter in this case has yet to know of a more substantial response. The transitional space is outlined between the threshold from girl hood to womanhood, in this case the only substantial wavering of the daughter is her reactive response to her father. Due to her environment, this space lacked movement as the daughter grew into motherhood before reaching womanhood, therefore not allowing a need transition to a developed personal identity.
As the daughter now has borne a daughter of her own, the lack of attitude toward interpersonal relationships like that with her children and family have not had the time to alter. Omise’eke Tinsley paper, “Making Lemonade out of Marriage, Motherhood, and Souther Tradition” depicts Beyonce’s album ‘Lemonade’ by piecing together the stories each song delivered to recover black queer identities and a critique on patriarchal norms, excluding alternative arguments toward the woman’s struggle. Tinsley recovers the abuse black women face in motherhood due to social norms affixed to white women to follow compliancy, she writes, “In her devastating study of black battered women, Beth Richie finds that black women who idealize their mothers are more likely to form abusive relationships – that emulating the “perseverance,” “discipline” and “strong sense of morality” they admire in their strong black mothers leads them to stay with violent partners, believing real women are strong enough to “take it” and do the “right thing” by keeping fathers with their children” (Tinsley 48). That the abuse in this relationship not only covers the mother, but the child [daughter], who is to witness the mistreatment of her mother, knowing that it could extend to her. Tinsley puts the theory into practice as she delves into the lipstick the daughter would use with hopes to become her mothers, Tinsley explains, “’You find the black tube inside her beauty case where she keeps your father’s old prison letters. You desperately want to look like her. You look nothing like your mother. […] But — like the slave quarters visible behind the garden as the blonde girl comes up the path – a hint of disquiet shoes through this home scene as the narrator advises: “You go to the bathroom to apply your mother’s lipstick. Somewhere no one can find you. You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face” (Tinsley 52). The lipstick becomes synonymous with the mother’s compliance toward the father mistreatment, a patriarchal incarceration, which becomes synonymous with the daughter’s desire to become her mom, to wear the disappointment, and to do so behind her back and the generational cycle continues.
Continuing with Bernice McFadden, her depiction of enacting the emotional turmoil her mom previously treated her with, she delivers her response to humiliating her daughter writing, “On the phone, I loudly berated her to friends and family, hoping to shame her into submission […] When her normally stoic and unbothered façade crumbled into tears, I felt vindicated” (McFadden 106-107). Her daughter followed in the footsteps of running away, of missing classes, leaving with other men, until Bernice’s own mother pleaded to not turn her daughter into jail, like her mother did. The cycle has not failed her, as each daughter, woman, and mother all were facing the same fate: compliancy toward mistreatment in every personal relationship. Bernice was the only one to delve into 1self-confrontation, so her daughter did not have the same fate. The mother-daughter relationship displayed in Bernice McFadden’s, Fifteen, depicts each daughter’s desire for personal identity only to be constricted from their mother’s lack of developing her own. The liminal space between ‘girlhood’ and ‘womanhood’ has no indicators, rather the girls adopt motherhood before a transitional period can be enacted: “You were expected to get yourself up, dressed, fed, and off to school. Back at home, you finished your homework and started dinner. You were nine years old” (McFadden 110). 2The lack of development for black girls to womans can incite a systematic nature in which the woman is to bend in childhood and adulthood, to familial and personal relationships for the supposed ‘betterment’ of their present life. The generational cycle will continue unless one is willingly to be admonished for their own self-actualization.
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1‘Self-confrontation’ in Achille Mbembe: Afropolitanism, 210
2 Law, Georgetown. “Girlhoood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood.” Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, 2020, https://genderjusticeandopportunity.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/girlhood-interrupted.pdf.
Harriet Jacob: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Claude Mckay, Harlem Shadows
Harriet Jacob, an African American abolitionist, wrote her narrative, Incidents in the life of a slave girl, depicting her life in slavery and the sexual history while a slave. Jacob’s first chapter sets the scene of the injustice black families 2(see Spillers) endured while enslaved, declaring her present status in the beginning, “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away” (Jacob, Childhood I). The intricacies of slavery in this context revolve heavily around the commodity of women, in particular, sexual engagement for survival. Harriet’s childhood is outlined in her first chapter, Childhood, that carries a tone of sympathy for an adult perspective, recounting details like, “I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment,” (Jacob, I) where her consciousness has been developed to understand her body to be akin to ‘a piece of merchandise.’ The commodification of enslavement is engrained in their existence as the parents struggle to buy their children back from their masters. (Jacob, I). The devaluement of Harriet accompanies her with her growing age as the forefront of reproduction toward black women starts in the early years. Hortense Spiller’s addresses the injustice of reproduction as the 3ungendering of the body into property allows them to become quantifiable commodities, legitimizing racial violence and torture as the subject has not legal or social ground to dissuade. Spiller’s also continues on the basis of sexual encounters by quoting Harriett Jacob’s encounter with a white woman by writing, “Since the gendered female exist for the male, we might suggest that the ungendered female – in an amazing stroke of pansexual potential – might be invaded / raided by another woman or man” (Spillers). A precedent recently centered around being used for sexual pleasure by a man has now integrated women to enact pain onto the flesh of black women.
Returning back to the novel, Harriet Jacob displays a personal narrative of apology for her actions when involved with another white man as means for protection. Fred Moten, an American theorist and poet exploring critical theory and black studies, develops the speaking commodity off of Karl Marx, where the subject speaks in order to 4critique the notion of the commodities value. Harriet Jacob’s view of her condition turns to become a criticism of capitalism and her devaluement as a commodity as she writes, “Women are considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner’s stock. They are put on a par with animals. This same master shot a woman through the head, who had run away and been brought back to him. No one called him to account for it. If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked, and set upon him, to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman. He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower” (Jacob). Jacob’s respite develops into sincere apologies for her entanglement even with her disgust toward capitalism and the treatment they face in society. Her 6consciousness toward her treatment of livestock, of the value placed on her reproductive capabilities as a woman, furthers 5Hortense Spiller’s conceptualization of the ungendered body for capital gain of the master. Harriet Jacob delivers an apology to the readers for her actions as written, “Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another” (Jacob). The position of the slave, denied citizenship and human rights due to their race, defending their sexual encounters and expose with the white man to their readers, addressing themselves as a victim with desperation for her case, passes W.E.B DuBois concept of Double Consciousness by correlating with Nuham Welang Triple Consciousness. Harriet Jacobs is not only aware of the power indifference of race as she is ‘unprotected by law or custom’ with the man but also her identity as a woman who is reduced ‘to the condition of cattle.’
Along with Harriet Jacobs, Claude McKay, a Jamaican poet during the Harlem Renaissance utilizing sonnets to create a language for black lived experiences. His poem, Harlem Shadows, features young black women in Harlem surviving as sex workers. McKay’s depiction of the women, often seen as little, creates inquiry into the commodity of young girls, the overt sexualization they face due to their race, gender, and age. He writes in his poem, “I see the shapes of girls who pass / To bend and barter at desire’s call. / Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet / Go prowling through the night from street to street! (McKay 3-6). The imagery of the scene is not lost on the young girl’s duty to ‘bend and barter’ on the streets to escape their current situation. Returning to liminality, its function for the young girl becomes untouched, her identity diminished to the personal objective to enact sexual pleasure for the opposing man. The nature of this anthology was centered around a ‘coming of age’ theme, where the young black girl would be ranked as a commodity before an adapted consciousness took root toward the self. McKay’s depiction of these young women highlights the boundaries of free will for their action and the youthfulness in which they carried themselves. He denotes, “Through the long night until the silver break / Of day the little gray feet know no rest; / The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet” (McKay 7-8, 11). Personal identity, and lack thereof, cannot be established as the girls regard to survival depends on their ability to perform, the money they are to make for the use of their body, and rather than denote the girls to ‘property’ they become prostitutes. McKay eventually outlines the premise for their action as he states, “Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, / Has pushed the timid little feet of clay, / The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!” (McKay 14-16). In piece one, Bernice McFadden outlines a generational cycle between women, mother and daughter, and when dissecting McKay’s piece, the generational cycle continues past enslavement toward recognition where citizenship is granted, yet no resources are given to dimmish their present due to the eradication of their race in the socio-economic and political sphere. With poverty and the dishonor they hold due to their flesh, they are stuck trying to develope stability in society, for the women, the outlet continued from years prior as a commodity for physical pleasure. This space in which African-Americans were left to create their own stability is what i allocate as being a liminal space. One that was previously tarnished due to their race and gender.
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3 Spiller’s class notes, Dr. Sneharika Roy
4 Moten Class Notes, Dr. Sneharika Roy
5 Hortense Spiller: Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe, Piece 3: The Dismantled Black Family
6 Reference to Jacques Lacan, Mirror Stage to further the context of Harriet Jacob’s consciousness toward her past experiences.
Hortense Spillers, Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe; Ungendering Liminality – A Conscious Relationship between Mother and Daughter
Hortense Spiller, an American critic and literary scholar, published article, Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe, argues the lack of an established black family while enslaved. Her distinctions lie in not only the inability for the family to be formed due to their classification of being property, but also the ungendering of the female self as they are denominated to a commodity. Spiller’s argument of women not being able to co-exist within their familial relationship and within the self, creates the loss of identity for the women. Spillers writes, “’femininity’ loses its sacredness in slavery’, then so does “motherhood” as female blood-rite /right. To that extent, the captive female body locates precisely a moment of converging political and social vectors that mark the flesh as a prime commodity of exchange” (Spiller 75). Removing the label of woman from the female self, leaves her with no identifier. She is not the self because of her stripped label as being a ‘woman’ and/or ‘girl’ and she is not the Other because she no longer is identified as a woman in social terms. As the ‘woman’ no longer exist within the terms of her existence, she is denoted in this case to a commodity due to her race, and therefore her being is regarded only for the value she can provide. The other facet to both past and present circumstances was the importance of reproduction as an identifier of women, or their responsibilities.
While enslaved, the black women were stripped of their title as ‘women’ or ‘female’ and utilized for the ability to continually reproduce, enabling the masters to not have to outsource slaves financially. The stripping of titles toward the women places her ‘self’ to be based on her ability to reproduce, continuing the trend of her being a commodity. Spillers elaborates on the use of reproduction as she writes, “[…] we do not read “birth” in this instance as a reproduction of mothering precisely because the female like the male, has been robbed of the parental right, the parental function” (Spillers 78). The flesh becoming a signifier of commodify for the women diminishes her parental function, but also her label of a ‘birthing’ mother, which then compares her existence to that of an animal – one stripped of humanization from outside sources and used for their reproduction value. Moving forward the relationship between the mother and child is tarnished, wholly impossible as, “The offspring of the female does not “belong” to the Mother, nor is s/he “related” to the “owner,” though the latter “possesses” it, and in the African-American instance, often fathered it, and, as often, without whatever benefit of patrimony” (Spillers 74). Nahum Welang introduction to Triple Consciousness, a byproduct of W.E.B DuBois theory on Double Consciousness, proposes that ‘black women view themselves through three lenses and not two: America, blackness, and womanhood’ (Welang 1). Intersecting Spillers to Welang, womanhood is a crucial part of the black woman’s identity, where the oppression not only lies within their race or nationality but also their gender. A link between the mother and child is further advocated for by Spiller’s as, “The destructive loss of the natural mother, whose biological / genetic relationship to the child remains unique and unambiguous, opens the enslaved young to social ambiguity and chaos” (Spillers 76). A cycle can be appointed directly from Bernice McFadden’s Fifteen, as generational cycles are outlined from mother to child through emotional absence from the parental figure. As the cycle continues, the removal of labels toward gender and bodily autonomy [reproduction, free will], will eventually eradicate a known conscious self that is inhibited by external forces i.e oppressors, creating a lack of value toward oneself. The slave mother cannot legally own property [her child] as she is property herself, entrenching the child into slavery further as there is no ownership from neither parent nor master, creating a constant loophole for 3 monetary gain from the mother as she is reaped of her child and of her humanity.
Brown University continues the argument toward the political and social gain the oppressors are given when ungendering the black body writing, “One way white supremacists and segregationists ungendered black women was desexualization; often the same women underwent this process in different contexts. One way black women were desexualized was through the 2commoditization of their reproductive capacity” (Brown University). Further removing black women from legal recognition, the inability to gain citizenship or to be married meant the black family could not hold any ground, legal or social, to protect or provide for their children as they have no viable standing, meaning no black family can exist within enslavement. Spillers speaks of the economic gain toward commodification, her shorts words expressing the unjustifiable system: “[…] bound and determined to destroy them, or to preserve them only in the service” (Spillers 75).
To end, Hortense Spiller, a black feminist scholar – an American literary critic, elucidation of the powerless black family during slavery, provides a liminal space to digest the ungendered black body and its effects on the black woman. The space contextualizes the lack of labels for an accepted perceived notion that devalues black women on the basis of their race and gender, renaming them as ‘property’ and ‘commodity.’ The space can be a state the black women will be trapped into for the utilization of their body, a crossroad that devalues the self, while also converging with a marked value in financial gain for the oppressor.
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2 The Virgina Law of 1819, “that which is brought forth follows the belly (womb)”
3 Brown University, The Ungendering of Black Women, Clara Pritchett
4 Jezebel, ‘Isn’t she pretty clip?’ Netflix
Lacan, DuBois, and Welang. Commodity reaches Consciousness: The Link between Fetus and Eventual Motherhood, A Racialized Liminality
Jacques Lacan, a practicing French physiatrist and psychoanalyst, became known for his influence on Freud’s work, bringing such influence to France in the 1930s. Lacan’s work is entrenched with the root being ‘the unconscious’ of the self, in which his theories start right at the development, or neo-natal. When discussing Lacan with liminal space and personal identity, his theory of recognition and misrecognition evolved. It is known as “a process of self-identification in which a subject assumes an identity they mistake for their own […] the young child sees itself in the mirror and mistakes that image for itself” (Oxford Reference). Known as the Mirror Stage by Lacan, the child’s three phases of identity formation are the Real, the Imaginary Order, and the Symbolic Order. The Real is identified as the helplessness the child experiences, a state centered around the needs of the child that when being satisfied hold no separations between themselves and the person attending to them [parent]. The Imaginary Order, 6 to 18 months, delivers the stage of recognition and misrecognition for the child once their ability to perceive themselves separates them from the caretaker. Lacan supplements, “This initial state of helpless “motor impotence and nursling dependence” entails the infant experiencing a swirl of negative affects: anxiety, distress, frustration, and so on. To the young child, motivated by these negative affects, a crucial component of the enthralling lure exerted by the fascinating image of his/her body is this image’s promise that he/she can overcome his/her Hilflosigkeit and be a unified, pulled-together whole, an integrated, coordinated totality like the bigger, more mature others he/she sees around him/her-self (Stanford Encyclopedia). The Symbolic Order, 18 months to 3 years, finishes the development as it incorporates languages, where the child can integrate others into personal identity after their grasp social rules and limitations. Returning to phase two, the eventual misrecognition solidifies not only the bond between mother and child as she becomes ‘5 an obscure omnipotent presence who is the source of all important love’ but also develops the first step toward consciousness within the child. Advancing on the latter point, the consciousness the child is to inherit revolves in this anthology on race, in specific black girls, that can develop Spiller’s perspective on the black subject being a ‘commodity’. As the young black female becomes conscious, her identity becomes aware of the label, ‘commodity’ where the intersection of recognition within herself and misrecognition toward social labels creates a moment of 6Nausea. Frantz Fanon, a psychologist and philosopher from Martinque, develops Nausea as a state of blackness that one is 7forced into by a preconstructed identity. Fanon elaborates, “I existed triply; I occupied space. I moved toward the other… and the evanescent other, hostile but not opaque, transparent, not there, disappeared. Nausea… I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. […] I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slave ships” (Fanon 84,85). The Nausea experienced within the black girl when she reaches consciousness toward the identifier of a ‘commodity’, presents a personal liminal space as the young girl develops what W.E.B DuBois coins Double Consciousness.
American sociologist, W.E.B DuBois’ novel, The Souls of Black Folks, develops the concept of an 8inward ‘twoness’ experienced by African Americans from racialized oppression and devaluation in a white-dominated society, leading to the term Double Consciousness. In the novel, he writes the concept to symbolize, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (Stanford Encyclopedia). A distinction is made between the personal self and the socially constructed version as the black girl and/or woman, that is not “inherent, accidental, nor benign: the condition is presented here as both imposed and fraught with psychic danger” (Stanford Encyclopedia). As it is not inherited, it is rather taught and given the position of the mother toward the child, as Lacan concludes the child to rely on and depend on the maternal figure, then double consciousness would be taught from mother to child, the passing of consciousness between generations. With an emphasis on a maternal figure toward the black child, Nuham Welang overrides DuBois in his theory of Double Consciousness stating, “The social identity of double consciousness attempts to find some semblance of power and equality within the framework of a political, linguistic and ideological American paradigm that dominates societies affected by Western Protestant civilization and refuses to take into consideration the multiplicity of fragmented cultures and identities catalyzed by this very domination” (Welang 297). Welang approach uses the fundamental concept of “twoness” of the black identity but adds on the inclusion of women that are instead seen from three lenses, instead of two: American, blackness, and womanhood. He advocates for black woman as they are not seen in DuBois concept for the lack of representation toward the varied and complex’s interest of black women. (Welang 298).
To conclude on the theorist mentioned above, the development of the black girl when reaching consciousness, creates a liminal space as her personal self becomes misaligned with the social ‘Other’, the label of ‘commodity’ becoming an interference between ‘girlhood’ to ‘womanhood.’ As personal identity is developed in the mirror stage, DuBois’ Double Consciousness reinforces a coming into age for the black female to past the transitional phase where the ‘self’’ becomes established for the black woman.
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5Stanford Encyclopedia, Jacques Lacan – Mirror Stage
6 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask, pages 84-85
7Fanon Class Notes, Dr. Sneharika Roy
8Stanford Encyclopedia, Double Consciousness
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley: Femmes Of Color; Queer Liminality, The Personal Transition Space
Omise’eke Tinsley, a professor in Black Studies at the University of California, is accredited in her work on African Diaspora. Publishing, Beyonce in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism and her latest, The Color Pink: Black Femme Art for Survival her sexuality becomes a forefront in her work. Dissecting her essay, Femmes of Color, “Femmes de Coleur”: Theorizing Black Quer Femininity Through Chauvet’s “La danse sur la volcan,” Tinsley develops her identity as a femme woman, a marginalized queer community, and incorporates her race as another level of oppression that is lacking from other women who identify as queer. Tinsley addresses in her essay, “When femme politics embraces pleasure and eroticism that fetishizes and normalizes white femininity, it risks liberating femininity for white woman and from women of color” (Tinsley 134). When addressing Queer Liminality, the intersection between race, sexuality, and gender causes a spectrum of marginalization from society as it does not fit the quota of a white, cis-het male. Due to this, Tinsley’s writes “I want to suggest that in order to speak with femmes of color, femme-inist theory needs to delve into complicated histories of race, gender, and desire rather than summarily liberating us from them” (Tinsley 135). Nuham Welang conceptualization of Triple Consciousness applies toward queer liminality in the transitional space it provides black women to accept and adjust to, but also provides allowance for more space, such as queer black women. When put in a position where acceptance toward open sexuality is not positively accepted by the majority, an internal self- reflection supplements 7self-actualization as the subject must then question their structural integrity of moral acceptance, internalising negative connotations from the other and therefore leaving them to regress into their personal identity, creating a liminal space of transition. Tinsley spins Queerness in her writing to hold positive experiences, her love for other black women opening her essay, “Black women learning to provide mirrors for each other… com[ing] face to face with the possible eroticization of such love” (Tinsley 131). Mentioned in Hortense Spillers, Harriet Jacob, and Claude McKay the sexualization of black women is prominent through media not only due to the commodification but the denomination of ‘property’ making black women out to hold value solely from their body. Tinsley depicts the love toward black women onto each other that is consensually and mutually understood by both women, whose past of being sexual providers and fantasies now exist between two women who choose how they wish to sexually interact. Tinsley dissection of, La danse sur la volcan, to provide a more overarching representation for black queer woman, her attention spans between the clothes, the houses, the jewelry the queer woman are adorning in the novel, leaning toward her label as ‘femme’ to celebrate a more feminine leaning style and energy not molded by patriarchy but rather themselves. Tinsley building a conversation on queering femininity is centered around clothing – madras wraps, a personal identifier and way to expresses themselves sexually. Tinsley response: “But the possibilities for what wrap could signify open many ways to think about what ‘queering’ femininity – that is, reformulating it outside of hegemonic norms – might mean for women of color in the Americas. […] It can also mean creolizing femininity, Africanizing European norms of dress and womanhood at its base and crown with well-adorned bare feet and high-flying headwraps that defiantly proclaim: talk about me all you like, I’ll do what I want. And certainly, it can mean resisting the way the racialized and gendered social restrictions attempt to limit women of color’s erotic possibilities to reducing sex to work” (Tinsley 139). Omise’eke Tinsley addressing sexuality to coincide with personal identity, the patriarchal history that interfered with black queerness, and developing oneself to explore femme culture past social constructs, allows for a liminal personal space to exist for black women when discovering sexuality.
The Combahee River Collective was a group of black feminist lesbian socialists that were active between the years 1974 to 1980. Their focus was on the lack of support during the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, leaving behind sexuality, specifically Black lesbians. They are most known for their documents, The Combahee River Collective Statement, that is summed up in their words, “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives” (Combahee River Statement). Their development of identity politics and the way in which they are harmfully used by organizations and theorists, introduced the concept of intersectionality toward gender, race, sexuality, etc. Interesting liminality with such concepts, the transitional space can then be mental and physical for the black person. A study on queer and trans identity with liminality writes, “Liminality as a concept brings together queer ways of thinking through unboundedness, spillage, fluidity, multiplicity, and processes of contingent, non-linear becoming, as well as the relations of power and regulation that seek their stability or closure” (Sage Journals). Fluidity and multiplicity can be adjacent to DuBois concept of Double Consciousness and Edouard Glissant opaqueness. To fully encompass queer black sexuality, the black female identity intersecting with queerness develops a personal liminality from social conceptions, allowing personal identity to develop the black girlhood to womanhood through reflection of the self.
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