USING THIS INFORMATION. INTERSECTIONALITY
Key Points
What is intersectionality?
What does capitalism have to do with intersectionality?
How to use intersectionality and ‘culture’ to analyse a cultural text
Intersectionality as an analytic tool to make sense of the complexity of culture
Power structures are intersectional as well as identity
The importance of history
Theoretical Guides
Gail Lewis, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis
What Is Intersectionality
Intersectional theory argues that you cannot make sense of social oppression through one vector of identity alone, For example, you focus on class, you miss dimensions linked to gender, sexuality and race
If you focus on gender, you miss the class, sexuality and racial dimensions
Intersectionality has been expanded in recent years to include other vectors of identity/oppression
Religion, generation, age, locality, education level, disability, citizenship, nation and so on
Gail Lewis, ‘Racializing culture is ordinary’ (Cultural Studies 2007)
•Raymond Williams’ bus journey as repetitive, mundane, as well as ‘expressive and productive of British culture.’ (Lewis, 2007, 875)
•Lewis expands Williams: ‘such cultural practices stand right at the heart of contemporary everyday life and mediate individual experiences and the social relations of ‘race’, gender, class, sexuality, and age.’(873)
‘Our imaginations, identities, and ways and visions of being in the world are structured through highly racialized and gendered identifications, discourses and positions.’ (875)
Patricia Hill Collins
•Black feminist thinker and writer from the US
•Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland
•‘Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves.’ (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016)
In relation
•‘Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.’ (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016)
Background To Intersectionality
A theory that emerges from Black Feminists e.g. Combahee River Collective (see VLE)
Has a long history across the world e.g . Savitribai Phule
Coined as a term by legal activist and academic(Professor at UCLA School of Law) Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s
Key debates in the UK and US emerge from social movements in the 1960s and 1970s – particularly where feminism and anti-racist movements met radical left-wing politics.
Using Intersectionality
Not just about individuals or characteristics of individuals in the first place – may be used to help understand the lives/experiences of individuals
‘There is no pure racism or sexism. Rather, power relations of racism and sexism gain meaning about each other’. (Collins and Bilge, 2016, p. 27)
About recognising social complexity and thinking about relationships between different kinds of oppression
Rejecting/challenging binary oppositions – not always either/or but also both/and (identity and alliances/coalitions)
About analysing social, cultural and political phenomena, representations and/or events to power as a historically determined process (people have power because of history)
Angela Davis
•High-profile intersectional Black feminist
•Women, Race, Class (1981)
•Active in the American Communist Party and the Black Panthers
•Professor at UC Santa Cruz
•How does Davis use identity in this speech? Women’s March 2016
What does capitalism have to do with intersectionality?
The means of production are privately owned and run for profit
A very simple illustration:
The owner of the factory gets the profits
workers in the factory exchange their time and physical/emotional labour for a wage
power relations are always unequal because the workers’ wages must be low enough for the profits to be considerable
Marx politicizes ‘the working class’
Exploitation and inequality are key to capitalism because this is how profits can be made
Capitalism Platforms
Platforms like Instagram, TikTok etc don’t create content
•But they make billions out of the content created by others and by the data that is shared, tracked, categorized and sold
How is a class working here?
Precarious Workers Inc. cleaners and caterers
Engineers, designers, marketing, lawyers etc
Content creators
Content moderators
Users and followers
Global factories and mines
Factory owner?
Capitalism Racilisation
Capitalism is racialized. Racial categories were constructed in order to justify slavery and empire – both key to understanding capitalism.
Racist ideologies persist because they continue to uphold systems of power e.g. Edward Colston statue and white supremacy.
Think back to how race, class and gender intersect in platform capitalism – and how they connect to power.
Colston Statue June 2020, Bristol UK
Capitalism Today
A set of social, cultural and political-economic forces that puts competition at the centre of social life.
The government’s charge is not the care and security of citizens but the promotion of market competition
Capitalism today is sometimes called ‘neoliberalism’ (discussed in today’s reading).
Neoliberalism
The marketisation of everyday life and culture
Marketisation of the self e.g. self-branding and all activities captured as data for platforms’ profit
We are consumers not citizens driven by competition
Break down of split between state and markets (e.g. health, education, social care)
Effects of neoliberalism: individualism (rather than collectives), withdrawal of state support, historical inequalities deepen
How Does Neoliberalism Feel
The key reading featured: Neoliberalism By Julie Wilson, 2016
Raymond Williams’ ‘structures of feeling’ (more on this next week)
‘If you are like most of my students, you’re anxious. This anxiety might be felt when you sit down to write a paper. You feel so much pressure, that words refuse to come, and when they do, they most always seem inadequate. Questions race through your mind: Will I perform well enough on this assignment? … How will I ever be able to repay my student loans? Am I good enough? Do I even belong here? You most likely experience these anxieties and uncertainties as yours and yours alone. They are deeply private thoughts and feelings that should not be shared, except perhaps with a therapist or a best friend.’
•BUT ‘these personal intimate anxieties do not belong to or emerge from you. They are not natural or inherent to you. They come from the world you inhabit. In other words, they are social and historical.’
How to analyse a cultural text using ‘intersectionality’ and ‘culture’
With Brands key things to consider when analysing:
Who and what is being represented?
What intersectional factors (e.g. race, gender, class) are at work?
Where is history?
How is power working here?
What is capitalism doing?
What are the structures of feeling?
Examples of these can be seen in Colin Kappernick for nike, sereena williams for nike, Nike and tu’shea documentary, Pretty Little Thing and sustainability
What Do Brands Do
Split between the product, the corporation and the brand
Brands and the appropriation of counter-culture and social justice
Brands as feelings (depoliticization)
Brands as solutions? Where is history?
Who works for brands?
Workers and Intersectionality
Capital ‘always intersects with the bodies that produce the labor’ (Eisenstein, 2014 in Collins and Bilge 2016, p. 16)
Combahee River Collective: ‘We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives’ (1977)
Françoise Vergès
‘Every day, in every urban center of the world, thousands of black and brown women, invisible, are ‘opening’ the city. They clean the spaces necessary for neo-patriarchy, and neoliberal and finance capitalism to function. They are doing dangerous work: they inhale toxic chemical products and push or carry heavy loads. They have usually travelled long hours in the early morning or late at night, and their work is underpaid and considered to be unskilled. They are usually in their forties or fifties. A second group, which shares with the first an intersection of class, race, and gender, go to middle class homes to cook, clean, and take care of children and the elderly, so that those who employ them can go to work in the places that the former group of women have cleaned. Meanwhile, in the same early hours of the morning, in the same big metropoles of the world, we can see women and men running through the streets, rushing to the nearest gym or yoga center. They follow the mandate to maintain healthy and clean bodies of late capitalism; they usually follow their run or workout with a shower, an avocado toast, and a detox drink before heading to their clean offices.’
Intersectionality explores complexity
Representation (for marketing)
Individuals v. Collectives
Image v. Systems (Francesca Sobande)
Diversity and History (Sara Ahmed)
The complexity of the image: the factory is still low-wages and bad conditions, the owners are making the profits, but consumers buy into the images of equality and liberation (brand)
Analysing A TikTok
What and who is being represented?
What intersectional factors (e.g. race, gender, class) are at work?
Where is history?
How is power working here?
What is capitalism doing?
What is the structure of feeling?
How can intersectionality and culture help us to analyse this tiktok?
Culture is ordinary
•dentity and history: working class, woman of colour, indigenous heritage including the histories of oppression and British/NewZealand white settler colonialism
What work is being done? Unpaid house work and childcare – reproducing the social, gendered work ….
Sponsorships and partnerships, brand of clothing, self-branding…
Neoliberalism: marketisation of the self and family
Hegemony of digital platforms, data collection, online advertising – who is working for whom?
How does TikTok feel?
LECTURE 2. MONDAY 15.01.2024: INTERSECTIONALITY
NOTES FROM LECTURE
Kimberly Crimshaw makes an intersect of gender and racism within legislation
capitalism politicised workers through intersectionality
Capitalism is also racialised, due to slave trade and is key to understand its function
Different forms of capitalism, it has to reproduce inequalities
Clearer distinction between market and product, the importance of profit
neoliberalism is a marketisation of every point of our lives
we are seen as consumers rather than people
Privatisation of healthcare and education and lack if funds in crucial sectors is an example of governmental neoliberalism
Raymond williams says theories have structures of feeling
Cultural studies has evolved into a multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating sociology, anthropology, and literature to analyse cultural texts and understand power dynamics, particularly related to capitalism.
Raymond Williams argues against the distinction between high culture and low culture, emphasising that all aspects of culture are significant and worthy of analysis, including working-class cultures.
Studying various cultural texts helps us comprehend power structures, capitalism, and intersections of race, class, and gender, leading to political interventions
Intersectionality, emerging from black feminist thought, asserts that social oppression cannot be understood through a single identity; it examines how various identities intersect and influence experiences of oppression.
Intersectionality considers factors beyond race and gender, including religion, age, education level, and more, in understanding social injustices.
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality highlights how overlapping oppressions, such as race and gender discrimination, create complex experiences of injustice.
Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework challenges binary opposition and emphasises the interconnectedness of different forms of oppression.
Intersectionality helps analyse cultural, social, and political phenomena in relation to historically determined power structures.
Angela Davis, a prominent black feminist, emphasises the importance of recognizing historical struggles and collective agency in combating racism, heteropatriarchy, and other forms of oppression.
Davis’s speech at the Women’s March underscores the ongoing fight against systemic injustices, particularly against marginalised communities like indigenous peoples and black individuals.
Victims of oppression are interconnected and mutually influence each other.
Understanding the relationship between capitalism and intersectionality.
Private ownership of means of production for profit.
Owners gain profits while workers exchange labour for wages.
Unequal power relations lead to exploitation and profit accumulation.
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok rely on user-generated content and data.
Data collection and selling drive profits in platform capitalism.
Various roles within platform capitalism: precarious workers, content creators, users, etc.
Different tiers of workers intersect with gender, race, and class.
Exploitation and inequality persist in platform capitalism
Historical constructs justify racial oppression in capitalism.
Examples include slavery, colonialism, and cultural appropriation.
Neoliberalism emphasises market competition in all aspects of life.
Privatisation leads to individualism and deepening historical inequalities.
Individualism increases, state support decreases, exacerbating inequalities.
Brands appropriate countercultural movements to maintain relevance.
Representation in brands reflects intersecting factors of race, gender, and class.
Brands often depoliticize movements for profit.
Analysing cultural texts like TikTok involves considering ordinariness and representation.
History and identity intersect with self-branding and exploitation in social media platforms.
Social media provides both relief from and contributes to anxiety and neoliberal pressures.
RECAP FROM LAST WEEK
Cultural Studies is an anti discipline
Rayomd Williams on the validation of working-class cultures
Culture is ordinary
What is the point of studying a cultural text ?
MAIN QUESTIONS
What is intersectionality ?
What does capitalism have to do with intersectionality ?
How to use intersectionality and ‘culture’ to analyse a media text
AIMS OF LECTURE
Understand that intersectionality is an analytic tool to help me make sense of the complexity of culture
Power structures are intersectionality as well as identity
The significance of history
MAIN THEORY FIGURES
Gail Lewis
Kimberle Crenshaw
Patricia Hill Collins
Angela Davis
Francoise Verges
WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY ?
Intersectional theory argues that you cannot make sense of social oppression through one vector of identity alone
For Instance, you focus on class, you miss dimensions linked to gender, sexuality and race
Gail Lewis, ‘Racialising Culture is Ordinary’ (Cultural Studies 2007)
If you focus on gender, you miss the class, sexuality and racial dimensions
Intersectionality has been expanded in recent years to include other vectors of identity/oppression
Generation, age, locality, education level, disability, citizenship and so on
PATRICIA HILL COLLINS
Black feminist thinker and writer from the US
Stated in her essay that ‘Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves.’ (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016)
‘Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organisation of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.’ (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016)
BACKGROUND TO INTERSECTIONALITY
A theory, which has emerged from Black Feminists e.g. Combahee River Collective
Intersectionality Has a long history across the world e.g . Savitribai Phule
First Coined as a term by legal activist and academic KimberléCrenshaw in the late 1980s
Key debates in the UK and US emerged from social movements in the 1960s and 1970s – particularly where feminism and anti-racist movements met radical left-wing politics.
KIMBERLE CRIMSHAW AND INTERSECTIONALITY
First began using the term intersectionality to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice.
An example which gave rise to Crimshaw of intersectionality was a case where a black woman (Emma DeGraffenreid.) where a judge had dismissed Emma’s claim of race and gender discrimination against a local car manufacturing plant, as she was not hired to which she believed was the case due to her race. The case was dismissed as the company did in fact hire WOC.
However the judge was not willing to acknowledge what Emma was actually trying to say, that the African-Americans that were hired, usually for industrial jobs,maintenance jobs, were all men. Whilst the women that were hired, usually for secretarial or front-office work, were all white.
The court refused to allow Emma to put two causes of action together to tell her story because he believed that, by allowing her to do that, she would be able to have preferential treatment.
“Heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, all of these social dynamics come together and create challenges that are sometimes quite unique”.
USING INTERSECTIONALITY
Not just about individuals or characteristics of individuals in the first place – may be used to help understand the lives/experiences of individuals
‘There is no pure racism or sexism. Rather, power relations of racism and sexism gain meaning in relation to each other’. (Collins and Bilge, 2016, p. 27)
About recognising social complexity and thinking about relationships between different kinds of oppression
Rejecting/challenging binary oppositions – not always either/or but also both/and (identity and alliances/coalitions)
About analysing social, cultural and political phenomena, representations and/or events in relation to power as a historically determined process (people have power because of history)
ANGELA DAVIS
High-profile intersectional Black feminist
Famously wrote Women, Race, Class in 1981
Active in the American Communist party and the Black Panthers
Latterly professor at UC Santa Cruz
WHAT DOES CAPITALISM RELATE TO INTERSECTIONALITY ?
The means of production are privately owned and run for profit
Very simple illustration:
owner of the factory gets the profits
workers in the factory exchange their time and physical/emotional labour for a wage
power relations always unequal because the workers’ wages must be low enough for the profits to be considerable
The working class
Exploitation and inequality are key to capitalism because this is how profits can be made
CAPITALISM: PLATFORMS
Platforms like Instagram, TikTok etc don’t create content But they make billions out of the content created by others and by the data that is shared, tracked, categorised and sold
The working class can be positioned through these platforms here:
Precarious workers
Engineers and designers
Content creators
Content moderators
Users and followers
Global factories and mines
Factory owner
CAPITALISM: RACIALISATION
Capitalism is racialized. Racial categories constructed in order to justify slavery and empire – both key to understanding capitalism.
Racialised ideologies persist because they continue to uphold systems of power e.g.Edward Colston statue and white supremacy.
‘The point is that we need to actively seek out how ‘whiteness’ is being produced, claimed and positioned in the social relations of particular places and times.’ (Lewis, 2007, ‘Racializing Culture is Ordinary’ 882)
CAPITALISM TODAY
A set of social, cultural and political-economic forces that puts competition at the centre of social life.
Government’s charge is not the care and security of citizens but the promotion of market competition
Capitalism today is sometimes called ‘neoliberalism’
NEOLIBERALISM
Marketisation of everyday life and culture
Marketisation of the self e.g. self-branding and all activities captured as data for platforms’ profit
We are consumers not citizens driven by competition
Break down of split between state and markets (e.g. health, education, social care)
Effects of neoliberalism: individualism (rather than collectives), withdrawal of state support, historical inequalities deepen
HOW TO ANALYSE A CULTURAL TEXT USING INTERSECTIONALITY AND CULTURE ?: BRANDS
When it comes to analysing brands utilising intersectionality alongside culture its important to think of these key objectives:
Who and what is being represented?
What intersectional factors (e.g. race, gender, class) are at work?
Where is history?
How is power working here?
What is capitalism doing?
WHAT DO BRANDS DO ?
Brands and the appropriation of counter culture and social justice
Brands as feelings
Brands as solutions? Where is history?
Who works for brands?
WORKERS AND INTERSECTIONALITY
Capital ‘always intersects with the bodies that produce the labour’ (Eisenstein, 2014 in Collins and Bilge 2016, p. 16)
Combahee River Collective: ‘We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives’ (1977)
INTERSECTIONALITY EXPLORES COMPLEXITY
Representation
Individuals v. Collectives
Image v. Systems
Diversity and History
The complexity of the image: the factory is still low-wages and bad conditions, the owners are making the profits, but consumers buy into the images of equality and liberation (brand)
HOW CAN INTERSECTIONALITY AND CULTURE HELP US TO ANAYLSE A TIK TOK ?
Culture is ordinary
Identity and history: working class, woman of colour, indigenous heritage including the histories of oppression and British/NewZealand white settler colonialism
What work is being done? Unpaid housework and childcare – reproducing the social, gendered work ….
Sponsorships and partnerships, brand of clothing, self-branding…
Neoliberalism: marketisation of the self and family
Hegemony of digital platforms, data collection, online advertising – who is working for whom?
ANALYSING A TIK TOK
When it comes to the first task of this module, is to analyse a tik tok. The critical analysis is 500 words, in which you must think about key points throughout your analysis:
What and who is being represented?
What intersectional factors (e.g. race, gender, class) are at work?
Where is history?
How is power working here?
What is capitalism doing?
SEMINAR 2. MONDAY 15.01.2024: INTERSECTIONALITY
Notes
-Reading highlights the structural domain of power so a consequence of oppression is the systematic disadvantages for those who dont fall under the domain of power within cultural privilege.
– Examples of this can be the United states acceptance system.
– We can analyse how different groups use tik tok whilst using intersectionality which can help explain why
– Think of how social media platforms serves as a platform for users from diverse backgrounds
– how do interactions among different users on these platforms manifest and reinforce social inequalities; such as those based on race, gender and class, Are there specific examples or trends that illustrate this.
LECTURE 3. MONDAY 22.01.2024: REPRESENTATION & IDEOLOGY
LECTURE NOTES
Culture is the lens through which we interpret everyday life.
Culture studies is an interdisciplinary field aimed at analysing culture as a political project, and understanding power structures.
Sarah’s work helps navigate the complexities within culture.
Stuart Hall emphasises understanding the cultural context we inhabit.
Intersectionality is a tool to examine how various factors like class, gender, race, age, and disability intersect within culture.
Capitalism’s influence on power structures, including intimate life, is significant.
Representation and ideology, as per Stuart Hall’s work, are pivotal topics.
Culture, representation, and ideology intersect in analysing race, culture, and media.
Postcolonial theory, influenced by thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, explores colonialism’s impact on culture and representation
Representation is not merely a reflection but also a constituent of meaning.
Intertextuality and semiotics help in understanding the complexities of representation.
The construction of racial and cultural hierarchies is evident in media and cultural representations.
Media, through representation, reinforces hegemonic ideologies, but they can also be contested and resisted.
Analysis of images involves understanding both denotation and connotation.
Ideologies embedded in representations contribute to the broader cultural discourse.
The study of representation requires examining its historical, social, and cultural contexts.
Stuart Hall emphasises the relationship between image and caption, highlighting how captions anchor the themes within images. The meaning of images can be ambiguous, and captions help clarify interpretations.
Hall discusses the myth or ideology surrounding images, questioning whether they depict disgrace or triumph, racism or anti-racism, indicating that meaning is fluid.
Marginalised groups often face extreme binary representations as both heroes and villains, which can perpetuate racism.
Stereotyping simplifies individuals to fixed characteristics, often to maintain power imbalances.
Stereotypes can lead to the exclusion of certain traits or attributes, reinforcing dominant narratives.
Racial and gender stereotypes often involve hypersexualization or infantilization, perpetuating narrow representations
Hamid Baba suggests stereotypes are false representations, fixating on certain traits and limiting nuanced understanding.
Commodification refers to turning aspects of life without inherent economic value into commodities, which can reinforce racial binaries and stereotypes.
Bell Hooks discusses the commodification of otherness, where marginalised cultures are exploited for mainstream consumption, perpetuating stereotypes.
Cultural representations can also be sites of resistance against dominant ideologies.
Postcolonialism explores the history and ongoing effects of colonialism, highlighting the incomplete process of decolonization.
Audiences’ diverse interpretations of media texts challenge the notion of absolute ideology.
Media production and creativity can contest dominant ideologies, especially in online cultures.
John Berger’s concept of the male gaze relates to the reproduction of femininity, highlighting the importance of appearance and self-awareness in societal perception.
Questions arise about how colonialist ideologies are reproduced in contemporary online cultures and where resistance against such reproduction exists.
Analysis of stereotypes circulating in media cultures and their resistance or reinforcement is essential.
Cultural studies, including postcolonial studies, reveal how racism and ideology are socially constructed and challenged within media spaces.
RECAP FROM LAST WEEK
Culture as a concept of how we as a society make sense of everyday life
Cultural Studies is an anti discipline, which analyses culture to make sense of how power structures in society in order to find ways to disrupt dominant power.
Theory and ideologies of theorists such as Stuart Hall allows us to make sense of the level of complexity and culture in society, i.e, gender and racial representation.
Intersectionality is an analytic tool which allows us to explore the complex levels of identity, culture and power.
Culture is made up of intersecting factors such as racialisation, class struggle, gender norms and nationality.
Neoliberalism centres, market forces in economical, social life and politics, the privatisation of many standard services we need as a society as humans are seen as consumers rather than as individuals.
RACE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
An example of this being discussed is in Empire Strikes back by Paul gilroy and students of CCCS (Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies)
It focuses on race and racism in 70s Britain.
It shows how the meaning of race as a social construct is curated and how stereotypes and reinforced behaviours effects individuals
It shows how racial identity can actually be used to show empowerment
POLICING THE CRISIS, MUGGING THE STATE, LAW AND ORDER
Follows the influence of race in the media
Focuses on the 70s and the panic of mugging, in which it explored the role of the media
Mainly explores the racialisation of black teenagers in the media, the stereotypes and how they were portrayed in media at the time
Created out of the crisis of hegemony
Led to a authoritarian state
The piece states that a public’s opinions and perspectives on a crime do not randomly form, but instead form as a result of a sequence which influences them, such as other people’s opinions and views (often a strong majority have the same opinion).
The more a crime is discussed among a public the more likely it is to be structured by dominant theories about the crime – race etc
COLONIALISM
Colonialism is the control of resources and direct settlement
It involves the economic exploitation and cultural domination of a land
Focusing on The contemporary world due to colonisation by the european imperial projects during the 18th and 19th centuries
This includes philosophies on race, – John Locke and David Hume
The rise of racialized capitalism is due to colonialism
Franz Fanon reading piece which is – Black skin, White masks
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
Focuses the impact of colonisation in economic, political and cultural sectors of societies
explores how the west is made to be perceived vs the rest of the world, often countries which the west has colonised.
The West
The Rest
Modern
Backward
Industrialised
Underdeveloped
Urbanised
Closer to nature
Rational
Irrational
Secular
Superstitious
Civilised
Primitive
BINARIES AND REPRESENTATIONS IN THE MEDIA
Made purely for marketing purposes
Orientalist legacies
Commissioning
Examples of this can be seen on the channel 4 network, shows including, make me a muslim, bradford riots, britz – all focus on british asian , specifically muslim individuals
STUART HALL: CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION
Stuart Hall states that culture is actually the way people make sense of the world and its meaning.
Cultures mainly exist in shared meanings along society and concepts
Hall calls us Cultured Subjects
These shared meaning and concepts are connected to systems of power
Culture is a system factoring to representation
The medium of power in line with representation is significant as it cannot be existent without it.
Representation is constructive, TV creates representations of muslims, through programs (can be aligned with an agenda in a negative light)
Representations do not have a fixed meaning as it can constantly change and it does not have on true meaning
Based on what individuals make and interpret of a representation (stereotyping for this example, muslims through this representation in these programmes) therefore ties in with culture
The process of representation is: the representation is presented to an individual, then the individual processes this and interprets this in their own way, this then turns into the how of representation
STUART HALL: IDEOLOGY AS MAPS OF MEANING
Argues that we all share ‘maps of meaning’ which are culturally created ( we share the same interpretations of a meaning which are made due to culture)
Cultures are made through theories which are the maps of meaning we share which are related to hegemonic power ( dominant power in social and political, the stronger one – i.e white vs black)
Ideologies are contradictory as the ideology of class hierarchies. That there are class systems and people who are at the middle or upper classes are superior is an ideology, this is then shared as a map of meaning- Or that women are sexually available and exist for the pleasure and care of men.
IDEOLOGY
Theories or ideologies are maps of meaning which we share as individuals
These maps are seen as factual universal, however the argument is that these ideas are curated purely to maintain social hierarchies, as Marx would put it, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class
Society is based of the creation of politics, economics and ideology
Culture which is shaped by ideology is the foundation of what keeps society in order,
An example of this is neoliberalism as an ideology which in turn plays into society
RACE, CULTURE AND MEDIA
Postcolonial theory shows representation matters for power
Media in the West tends to treat racial and ethnic groups badly
The media in the west therefore reproduces hegemonic representations of race (the west has more power and influence in comparison to the east so media in the west will have influence of colonialism in which racist sterotypes are reinforced or portraying countries in negative light)
Readings are Race, culture and media, race and the cultural studies both by anamik saha,
POLITICS OF STEROTYPING
Stereotypes are a form of representation, which is made to Partly explained by a cognitive urge to simplify the world
Stereotypes are a product of power which are created based off of fear and fantasy
Stereotypes are a form of hegemony
Homi bahbha states in the location of culture, that stereotyping is not simple as its an inaccurate view of actual reality but its a simple fact as its a fixated form of representation.
COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURE
Commodification is the process of turning something or a part of life that has no real worth into an asset
It’s seen as a negative process as it is how capitalism spreads
Its Based on exploitation of the worker
Turns culture into private property
Propagates capitalist ideology
Racial difference is often exaggerated which is stereotyped, sexualised and reified.
The theory of making the difference between white identity and black culture, keeps and reinforces racial hierarchies and position of the status quo.
BELL HOOKS
Explores the US as structured through the hegemonic powers of ‘white-supremacist capitalist hetero-patriarchy’
Context for today’s lecture is that we will be thinking through ‘ ‘ideology’’ and ‘representation’ and how they are connected to these systems of power.
Bell Hook states in 1991 that “The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.”
POSTCOLONIALISM; RACE AND CULTURE, THREE PRINCIPLES
Decolonisation an incomplete process
Representation is key to cultural power
Power can be contested through cultural forms of resistance
CONTEMPORY REPRESENTATIONS OF RACE
Beyond good or bad representations are beyond invisibility and visibility in media.
Sara Ahmed states that: ‘What makes diversity useful also makes it limited: it can become detached from histories of struggle for equality’
Practitioners have to re-attach the word diversity to other words (such as equality and justice) to bring histories back (Sara Ahmed, 2007)
Francesca Sobande: Where is the solution beyond the brand?
Algorithms in turn boost what is popular so limited representations of race and sex.
CONCLUSION
Culture is the sphere where social understandings of race are formed
Cultural studies – including postcolonial studies – exposes the cultural forms of racism
Ideology is one way we might think of the ‘negative’ treatment of racial groups
The commodification of race argument shows us how under capitalism race becomes a cultural commodity that reinforces power structures
The politics of representation helps us understand how racist ideologies/discourses can be challenged in the media.
Media is the space where racist ideology both spreads but can be challenged
LECTURE 5. MONDAY 3.02.2024: IDENTITY
NOTES FROM LECTURE
Prisons and police are examples of hegemony
We should care about theory and identity how it makes sense of the complexity of the culture within society
Think of theory as a purpose
A common sense example is when politicians win consent for their policies they appeal through the public commonsense, linked to someone’s identity
This also shapes what common sense is as the british government often tries to appeal to the working class more so then the upper class
Stuart Hall emphasises the importance of theory in understanding the complexity of culture.
Theory allows us to navigate the chaotic appearances of the world and uncover underlying structures.
Concepts and ideas are tools for understanding and changing culture and power dynamics.
The lecture begins with exercises prompting introspection about personal identity.
Common sense identity is shaped by societal norms and ideologies.
Common sense often frames certain beliefs as natural or normal.
Politicians appeal to common sense to gain public consent for policies, shaping national identity.
Common sense perpetuates ideologies and creates binaries, excluding certain groups.
– Identity is also recorded in data, such as identity cards, algorithms, and databases.
Data collection shapes demographic categorizations and can lead to algorithmic targeting.
Algorithms make predictions about consumer behaviour based on data points, influencing choices.
Surveillance capitalism uses data to manipulate consumer behaviour without their awareness
Data collection is not neutral; it reflects cultural and ideological biases.
Identity is fluid and constructed through social, cultural, and ideological processes.
Identity as becoming acknowledges the ongoing evolution of identity and its complexity.
Individualism is an ideology that ignores collective and relational aspects of identity.
Recent popular culture explores complex identities and challenges binaries.
Examples include TV shows like Morning Show and Small Axe, and books like Naomi Klein’s “Doppelganger.”
Clip from the movie “Bobby” illustrates the reversal of gender norms and confronting societal expectations.
Pop as an Advert for Poppy, Pop is analysed as an advertisement for Poppy, co-opting and commercialising aspects of feminism.
Identity shifts are highlighted as significant moments in the narrative.
Dave’s music videos are discussed, focusing on themes of identity, culture, and shifts in both.
The significance of culture in shaping identity and the emotions tied to it are emphasised.
Stuart Hall’s biography and writings are referenced for understanding identity as a political and historical construct.
Identity is seen as a process influenced by societal conditions and personal experiences.
Identity is portrayed as fluid and constantly evolving, influenced by historical, social, and personal factors.
Examples of individuals experiencing shifts in identity are presented, highlighting the complexity of the concept.
Sophie Herxheimer’s Poem “London”, The poem reflects on the experience of a refugee entering London, showcasing a shift in both personal identity and cultural dynamics.
Carrington’s personal reflections on identity, influenced by Stuart Hall’s theories, illustrate the interplay between the psychological and political aspects of identity.
The transformative impact of encountering Hall’s work on Carrington’s academic and personal journey is discussed.
Suggestions are provided for analysing cultural texts through the lens of identity, considering factors such as national belonging, forced displacement, and ideological contradictions.
Identity is acknowledged as complex yet meaningful for academic analysis, offering insights into individual experiences and broader societal dynamics.
RECAP FROM LAST WEEK
Hegemony is how dominant groups maintain their power through culture, rather than through violence.
The way these groups apply hegemony to maintain this dominance is through ideology.
Ideology is the maps of meaning and cultural stories which we all share a common meaning of in society
Ideology is made as a result of representations. For instance, representations breeding stereotypes
Representations are in fact not accurate reflections of society in terms of reality. However, it curates a meaning.
Hegemony maintains these intersecting forms of oppression to reorder itself. An example is the patriarchy, white supremacy and the order of caste systems in our society
IDENTITY: A COMMON SENSE/ESSENTIALIST/ ‘NATURAL’
This means that for instance responding to the question. ‘Who are you”?
This is to have the consciousness of our own identity
This can be influences with encounters with other people as well as popular shared discourse of what other perceive you
Relates to law and policy discourse
Attributes which are held by other people
This question is used to group them into sections, i.e race and sex
This can function actively through stereotypes, this leads to assumptions from individuals who in fact do not know you but only these quantities which they based a picture of how you are as a person based on the stereotypes they subconsciously have
Quantities which are considered include:Gender, Ethnicity/Race, Sexuality, Profession, Interests, Location of origin (+nationality), Class, Caste, (dis)Ability, Personality, Clothes and appearance, Opinions/political views, Religious beliefs/background
Commonsense question asked: what is the sex of the baby? First question and defining moment in identity.
Asking this question reproduces the binary, but also sets into motion all the cultural (and intersectional) ideologies including representations around what gender is and does
IDENTITY: DATA AND STATISTICS
These are quantities which are made on an individual which are separate from what self qualities and identities but rather factors which are based on demographics and documents so census, passport, bank accounts, databases.
More related to the world as a whole as it focuses on an individual as a number and statistic rather than a unique self.
Factors which are considered is someone’s name, immigration status, income, marital status, educational history and BMI/weight
This relies heavily on the data based of an individual
Increasingly anything else that can be measured and benchmarked – e.g. quantified
Algorithmically generated categories
Adtech: collects and categorises data points. For instance, if someone is a a slow typer, you like looking at flat-heeled shoes online, and like sourdough bread TikToks – the algorithms link this ‘data-you’ to other ‘data bodies’ who have the same 3 data points and looks at what else they buy (eg. skin serums), and advertises skin serum to you (perhaps through an influencer you follow)
It makes predictions but it also pushes you in a direction
IDENTITY: CULTURAL THEORY AND ANTI ESSENTIALIST
This is based on theories and how the person is becoming as an individual.
This can included a number of theories which impact how a person adapts their personality and therefore an identity to which an ideology can be applied to
Theories which factor and impact an individual can be from feminism which impacts women and how their self is changed and impacted.
Another instance is the post colonial theory which examines individuals self identity and the impacts of colonialism
Identity is a process which is constructed both through cultural and society
A person can perform and represent an identity in which other can also see themselves
Relevant to socio-cultural power relations
STUART HALL AND IDENTITY AS POSITIONING
In the reading “the familiar stranger, stuart hall” by Bill Schwarz discuss that Hall believed that ‘the transformations of self-identity are not just a personal matter. Historical shifts out there provide the social conditions of existence of personal and psychic change in here.’
Cultural studies can help make sense of an individual’s self and therefore the relationship with the “out there”
In key reading in week one for this module, Stuart Hall expresses ‘identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time.
In fact identity is always a never-completed process of becoming – a process of shifting identities, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being.’
UNDERSTANDING STUART HALLS TAKE ON IDENTITY AS POSITIONING
To understand what Hall means by this we need to look at the Colonial subjugation in Jamaica: ‘My first sense of the world derived from my location as a colonised subject and much of my life can be understood as unlearning the norms in which I had been born and brought up. This long, continuing process of disidentification has shaped my life.’
Disidentification / unlearning of norms
Growing awareness of colourism in Jamaica
Growing awareness of race, ethnicity, colourism and their relation to class in Jamaica
Migration to London: postcolonial world, not a different time and space, but the reverse: ‘central contradiction of my life’
IDENTITY AS COMPLEX, CONTEXTUAL, CHANGING
The director at the centre of contemporary cultural studies in birmingham states that ‘•‘I shall be Jamaican all my life, no matter where I am living. Though what that actually meant for me, in terms both of the practicalities of my life and of where my sense of belonging was located, was much more problematic.’ (10)
’In this bid to free myself from living the life of the colonised, I never had any aspiration to be English, nor have I ever become English.’ (14)
POWER: IDENTITY IS CULTURALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSTRUCTED
There’s a number of issues with the fact that people’s identity is made through how historically and culturally society has been impacted, i.e race and stereotypes
For example, using the case of brexit in the uk is that the politics of identity is created at the front of the line of global shifts of which we understand ourselves in relation to one another. So the anti immigrant ideology in terms of brexit and the impact of people’s perception of just people of colour but its branded under the immigrant umbrella
Representations in mainstream media are more various and production is informed by liberal conceptions of identity (e.g. a greater variety of people need representation)
This can lead to backlash against “woke” identity politics, i.e. so called “free speech” or “gender critical” movements
However, the white supremacist, heteronormative patriarchy is more so in the past, usually representing the norm in which most media tend to default to.
Same time digital technologies also encourage a fixity of identity (‘real’ user profiles on facebook etc) and simply do not register people who cannot be recorded.
In the guardian pankaj mistra states how •‘The emphasis today on cultural identity and difference is unquestionably a response to the painful and bewildering experience of globalisation. Those vowing to “take back control” from unaccountable technocracies and opaque financial markets hope to reconstruct a political space by forging afresh the sovereign “people” – a political project that is most quickly achieved by identifying the “enemies” of the people.’
STUART HALL
Says that someone’s identity is always the product of identification.
It is the product of taking a position– of staking a place in a certain discourse or practice. Of saying, this is for the moment who I am and where I stand. And that positional notion of identity enables one then to speak from that place, to act from that place. Although some time later, in another set of conditions, one may want to modify one’s sense of who it is that is speaking. So in that sense, identity is not a closed book, any more than history is a closed book, any more than subjectivity is a closed book, any more than culture is a closed book.
It is always, as they say, in process. It is in the making. It’s moving from a determinate past towards the horizon of a possible future which is not yet known.
BEN CARRIGNTON LIVING THROUGH CRISIS OF IDENTITY AND UNDERSTANDING
1. 1977 Jubilee celebrations aged 5: ‘He belongs. Along with everyone else.’
2. National Front march: ‘The ground beneath his feet no longer feels solid. Something in his world has ruptured.’
3. Aged 8: Brixton riots on the news being discussed by white experts: ‘He is angry at his white mother for meeting his Nigerian father. He is so close to being white.’
4. Aged 10: racist verbal assault ‘Hyper-aware of his own body, from now on he will move through the spaces of Kentish London differently, cautiously, self-consciously. No public place feels safe; he feels out of place.’
5. Aged 18: ‘You guys are good at winning football matches. We’re good at running governments.’
6. Aged 20: Reads Stuart Hall ‘And he understood’
7. Studying for a PhD. Sees Stuart Hall but doesn’t introduce himself.
8. 1999: Confronts leader of the National Front who is heckling Stuart Hall
9. ‘But for Hall I wouldn’t have become an academic. There was no space for someone life me before Hall. Discovering the field of Cultural Studies as an undergraduate I found validation and recognition. Suddenly my background and way of life as a working class black kid matter and was important beyond the confines of south London.’
10. Stuart Hall dies and Carrington considers ‘the constant dialectical struggle between the psychological and the politic, the autobiographical and the historical.’
ANALYSING IDENTITY IN AN ASSESSMENT
A cultural text or yourself as cultural text (autoethnography)
dentifications might come from ‘out there’ e.g. commonsense understanding of who belongs to a nation – think here of government policies around the hostile environment/Brexit/Windrush scandal or ‘sissy capital’ Or: forced displacements / economic changes
Identifications might come from ‘in here’ e.g. who/which groups you identify with or against… where/with whom you take a position
This can hold contradictions and / or be temporary / never resolved
Both are connected to larger social forces e.g. hegemony, ideology, intersectional systems which themselves are in flux
THEORISING BINARIES
Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida (1967) argue that social values attached to meaning are not fixed BUT reflect power dynamics in culture.
A dominant term requires a subordinate term to have meaning.
Remember: ‘hardworking families’ implies its opposite ‘lazy
THE WEST VS THE EAST
How the west often showcases the east in media especially in terms of the people and the country itself can significantly impact individuals.
The west is often shown as progressive and modern whilst the east is backward, the west is also often shown as civilised and the east is primitive.
These representations impact how we see the east and more importantly individuals from these areas of the world
BINARY TERMS AND IDENTITY
The two sides of this are the dominant group and the subordinate group in which the dominant often suppresses and over rules.
Examples include: white and black, male and female, Cis and trans, heterosexual and gay.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: ANALYSING A TIK TOK
the key principle here is to utilise the idea of intersectionality and applying this to a tik tok video or trend
Culture is ordinary
Identity and history: working class, woman of colour, indigenous heritage including the histories of oppression and British/NewZealand white settler colonialism
What work is being done? Unpaid housework and childcare which is reproducing the social, gendered work
Sponsorships and partnerships, brand of clothing, self-branding
Neoliberalism which is the marketisation of the self and family
Hegemony of digital platforms, data collection, online advertising – who is working for whom?How does TikTok feel?
MEETING LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR THIS ASSESSMENT
‘Culture’ as constructed, as a site of struggle, as where power is reproduced and contested as something to be analysed
Refer to a Cultural Studies theorist or Cultural Studies as a discipline e.g. mention Stuart Hall
Use any of the concepts or ideas or reading on the module to analyse any media text
Go beyond ‘commonsense’ understandings to show complexity around terms such as ‘race’ or ‘gender’ or ‘culture
ANALYSING REPRESENTATION
Semiotics (Roland Barthes) is a good starting point.
Barthes utilises the practice of Denotation of an image or peice of media
Connotation and Ideology
Intertextuality
Image plus caption
Define how you will use ‘ideology’ using e.g. Stuart Hall (slides / videos/ reading)
Define which ideology or ideologies are being reproduced OR resisted in the tiktok
Analyse HOW it is reproducing or resisting these ideologies
Representation (drawing on stereotypes? Commodification of race? Male gaze? Intertextuality? Semiotics?) The recommended and key reading for this week is really useful!)
Does it fit your argument to say anything about the comments? Brand partnerships? Product lines? Algorithms? Comment on contradictions?
You might want to contextualise this video in larger power structures of big tech if it fits with your argument/interests you.
COMPLEXITY OF AN IMAGE
The example above shows the cover of the sundays times magazine in which the story is about 5 black athletes.
Semiotics: denotation (5 Black athletes), connotation (drug story), myth or ideology: disgrace or triumph – meaning ‘floats’
The question raised here is: ‘Which is the preferred meaning?’ (caption plus image anchors the meaning)
Marginalised people often exposed to extreme – binaries and required to be both at the same time
MAKEOVER CULTURE AS CONSERVATIVE CULTURE
Become authentic self – commonsense version of e.g. femininity: thin, without glasses, marriage-able
The gaze’ – woman as surveyed and surveyor within herself
Before / After: commercialization of gender
When… then…
Achieving gender – remember reading from Week 3
LECTURE 7. MONDAY 19.02.2024: PAUL GILROY, DIASPORA CULTURES AND THE BLACK ATLANTIC
LECTURE NOTES
Paul Gilroy – diaspora cultures and the black atlantic
Helps us to understand how culture empowers
How artistic expression such as music can translate culture
Culture can be seen as resistance
Gilroy uses vernacular to discuss in terms of a common language, in particular with countries
Gilroy states the cultures emerged from fighting for rights is modernity has been conceptualised
White western as the dominant culture
Gilroy aims is to recenter people from the African diaspora to this
The effects into the rapture of transatlantic slavery
Gilroy combined the studies of Thompson, Williams and haggart with bois,james and wright
Gilroy coins the term ethnic absolutism
Gilroy’s notion of identity is much closer to Stuart hall’s identification
Racism produces race is a social construct is what Gilroy is trying to push
The empire strikes back is a correctness for the English
Black forms of culture are shut out of the English society
We pit European culture to “underdeveloped” black culture
Gilroy expanded the terms and concepts of cultural studies so that black culture can be analysed
Expanded so culture which is eurocentric and white will only be analysed
English culture needs to open its knowledge to its people who are not born in England
Piracy as an anti capitalist movement
Gilroy wanted to see outside of the nation to see what cultures intel
the culture of diaspora is the result of involuntary movement as a result of transatlantic slavery
Du Bois context of double consciousness states that people of colour are seen as second class citizens
Cultures emerging from slavery, fighting for emancipation and citizenship.
Modernity is historically Western-centric, dominated by white capitalists, patriarchy.
Gilroy’s aim: recenter African diaspora within modernity.
Focus on the rupture experienced by these cultures: Middle Passage, slavery, loss of literacy.
Interested in the journey from slave ship to citizenship, emphasising inventiveness, defiance, rationality, humanity, creativity.
Influenced by Stuart Hall, E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams but dissatisfied with British cultural studies.
Expanded British cultural studies to include African diaspora’s contributions.
Criticised Thompson and Williams for overlooking ethnic particularity in English culture.
Coined term “ethnic absolutism” to critique the idea of fixed ethnic identity.
Identity seen as a dynamic process, closer to Stuart Hall’s concept of identification.
Race as a social construct, produced by racism.
Gilroy’s work anti-racist and anti-essentialist.
Involved in writing seminal works of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.
Emphasised the need to acknowledge contributions of non-British activists, writers, philosophers.
Advocated for expanding cultural studies to analyse black vernacular culture.
Wanted to bring excluded thinkers into discourse, develop theories from neglected philosophies of the African diaspora.
Concept of diaspora as a relational network resulting from forced dispersal.
Diaspora often result from war, famine, enslavement, and political repression.
Gilroy’s concept focuses on forced displacement due to transatlantic slavery.
Diaspora represents unique positioning in the modern world, critical of modernity’s promises.
Black Atlantic cultures constitute a counterculture of modernity, questioning its ideals.
Gilroy argues African diaspora embodies first truly modern people, with experiences predating European philosophers’ speculations.
Black vernacular culture serves as a vehicle for political sensibility transcending nationality.
Radical politics of African diaspora’s music characterised by three features: extending communication beyond words, solidifying community, opposing dominant public spheres.
Black vernacular culture embodies critique of capitalism.
Gilroy highlights two types of politics in Atlantic music: transfiguration and fulfilment.
Popular music serves as a vehicle for political sensibility, refusing separation of ethics and aesthetics.
Gilroy’s work reflects commitment to envisioning a better future.
LECTURE FOCUS POINTS
The lecture discusses how Gilroy traces the cultures which originated from transatlantic slavery
We draw attention to how culture can challenge power
Specifically drawing attention to how music in particular can challenge power as a cultural formality.
PAUL GILROY’S INFLUENCE ON BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES
Diaspora is the relational network which is characteristically created by forced dispersal and reluctant scattering. I.e forced movement due to colonisation or slavery etc
Modernity which focuses on the 18th – 20th century as it draws into the industrialisation in Britain as well as democratisation in western europe and North America. This is exported through patterns of imperialism and colonialism
Vernacular is the language or dialect (Slang) spoken by people in a particular country or region.
One of the main themes in Gilroy’s work is tracing and searching for the origins of cultural politics as well as the political cultures of the black atlantic
As Gilroy states, “the critical political project forged in the journey from slave ship to citizenship” (SA 122)
Main White figures of british cultural studies from which Gilroy takes theories are E.P Thompson, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart
Main black theorists to which Gilroy also critiques are W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R James and Richard Wright
Gilroy’s Criticism of Williams’s and Thompson’s concept of English culture is that its ethnic absolutism which gilroy coined as it means a reductive, essentialist understanding of ethnic and national
difference
Gilroy’s perspective: Anti-essentialist and Anti-racist as he states that racism creates race.
In terms of Gilroy’s overall critique on British culture and cultural studies is that it lacks the terms and concepts so that they can be fit for the purpose of analysing black vernacular culture which he aims to expand.
Gilory pushes his notion to understand
Britain’s radical history in context with colonial and imperial history
THE BLACK ATLANTIC AS ‘COUNTERCULTURE’
Diaspora is the relational network which is as a result of forced and involuntary dispersal, movement and reluctant scattering i.e immigration
Not territory but social dynamics of remembrance
and commemoration
It is made up of transnational cultures and processes
It challenges idea of nation-state or ethnic/‘racial’
boundaries
The transatlantic slave trade is a key example of this as over 12 million people were forced to move out of africa to the americas and europe during the 16th and 19th century. This is also where the slave trade also began which is the reason of the reluctant scattering
The Caribbean is another example of cultural identity in the ‘difference’ mode.
Stuart hall states that it is an identity which cannot
return to ‘before’ the colonial encounter but which nonetheless examines the colonial experience and creates an ‘identity’ in relation to it.
The black atlantic is related to the african diaspora which is and has a unique position in creating the modern world through their culture.
It is At the centre of the international capitalist economy. However it is violently excluded from modernity’s official public spheres
It is a clear and distinctive perspective on modernity as well as a counterculture of it
THEORETICAL TOOLS AND CONCEPTS
Modernity is the way in which the modern world’s current condition is described
In relation to the African diaspora, Gilroy negotiates the current situation of being simultaneously outside and inside the modern Western world (BA 29).
Being outside of modernity means that they are denied freedom and full citizenship as they were. They are also subjected to various racializing regimes implemented by the west
However, they are inside of modernity because because they contributed to the scientific, literary, political and social making of the modern world, even if those contributions have not always been acknowledged
W.E.B. Du Bois states that in terms of the Black Atlantic cultures that, Being both inside and outside modernity left black writers, thinkers and performers well placed to question the liberty and enlightened rationality offered to white North Americans and Europeans.
Vernacular (Slang, language) as ‘ordinary’ culture the common tongue spoken by regular people
Gilroy rejects the essentialist view (ethnic absolutism) which understands black cultural
production as the outpouring of an innate ‘race’ spirit into art.
He also argues that the endurance of racial oppression means that the signifier ‘black’ as a political identity remains important.
The Key argument in which he highlights that while the black vernacular tradition undoubtedly drew upon performances, texts and styles from Africa, as a result of enslavement, these were reshaped into new forms.
Gilroy provides a theoretical perspective on the cultural (and political) work that music can accomplish
Its a Shared affinity felt between black Atlantic peoples is not shared African-ness, but a common experience of powerlessness experienced in racial categories
Emphasis on the cultural/diaspora relations between Britain, the USA and the Caribbean.
Demonstrates how culture is able to ‘travel’ – that it is not a static object.
Popular music constitutes a vehicle for political sensibility that transcends nationality (struggle, emancipation, liberation and affirmation/pleasure)
The radical politics of the music of the African diaspora has three distinctive
Features. The first in which it constitutes a medium which is capable of extending communication beyond words. It indicates an awareness of the inadequacy of language for expressing certain truths.
The second is that It solidifies a sense of community and constitutes an alternative public sphere (the dynamic relationship between performer and audience is central to this).
The third states that this is an alternative public sphere that stands in opposition to the dominant public sphere and the world of paid labour from which the African diaspora has been historically excluded.
MUSICAL EXAMPLES OF CULTURE AS RESISTANCE TO RACIAL SUBORDINATION
Sound system culture, originating in Kingston, Jamaica circumvented the ‘official’ spaces of Clubs.
This was through Mobile units could be set up anywhere
Dubplates are an ‘unfinished commodity’ that could be endlessly reworked and recycled. So this could result in the creation of music sampling as the cd had two sides, one provided vocals as the other was only the instrumental version
Dj’s then could play the instrumental version and put their own spin to it or play it in clubs
This resulted in consumption turned outwards being no longer a private, passive or individual process but a procedure of collective affirmation and protest in which a new authentic public sphere is brought into being
Dubplates and ‘versions’ are a reconstruction of their own histories “folding back on themselves time and again to celebrate and validate the simple unassailable fact of their survival.” (in Small Acts, 1993:37)
In music there are two types of politics, politics of transfiguration and politics of fulfilment
Politics of transfiguration is the The emergence of qualitatively new desires, social relations and modes of association within the racial community and between that group and its erstwhile oppressors.
Politics of fulfilment, However, is the Belief that a future society will fulfil the social and political promises unrealised in the present. As it critiques the conditions of oppression in the present
Key codes in black vernacular culture is citizenship, racial justice and equality and the understanding that work and leisure as oppositional spheres
The recovery of the history of the people ‘who have been expelled from the official dramas of
civilisation’
As well as references to perpetual movement – not exile and homelessness but advantages and opportunities in new destinations
In terms of a political context, black vernacular culture deploys ‘black’ as political signifier of anti-essentialism and rejection of ‘racial essence’ speaks to inherent mixture of forms and white and other collaborators and allies
Examples of these are seen through Arethera Franklin and Motown’s Funk Brothers
Based on the information provided, write how and why intersectionality is important and provide contextual information about what is intersectionality and historically how it came to be. Discuss the limitations of single-axis analyses (e.g., focusing solely on race, gender, or class). Explain how intersectionality recognizes the interconnected and overlapping nature of identities and systems of oppression. Provide examples of how intersectionality can reveal unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals with multiple marginalised identities through case studies
Include Harvard references from these sources:
•Hill Collins, Patricia and Sirma Bilge, 2016. ‘Chapter 1: What is Intersectionality?’ in Intersectionality Cambridge, Polity
Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender, Article by Françoise Vergès
Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society by Raymond Williams
Split by Ben Tippet
The forces that shape us: The entangled vine of gender, race and class by Beverly Skeggs
The Combahee River Collective Statement
Feminism, interrupted: disrupting power by Lola Olufemi; JSTOR (Organization)
The intersectional Internet: race, sex, class and culture online, edited by Safiya Umoja Noble; Brendesha M. Tynes
Feminism and the politics of “resilience”: essays on gender, media and the end of welfare by Angela McRobbie
Women, race & class, by Angela Y. Davis
Living a Feminist life by Sarah Ahmed
Neoliberal Feminism in Africa in Soundings by Yemisi Akinbobola
