The Weight of RBG's Crown: Jewish Feminism and Its Appropriations

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article takes a critical look at the "Notorious RBG" iconography that has proliferated since the 2010s, when shifts in the ideological makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court caused Ginsburg to find herself more frequently in dissent. Attending to the trope's origins in the "King of New York" photo shoot featuring Christopher George Latore Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, it situates Notorious RBG rhetoric in the long history of Jewish racial ventriloquism in the United States. Through close readings of children's literature, memes, film, pop biography, and merchandise, I consider what the racial codings of RBG's crown tell us about Jewish feminisms in contemporary pop culture. The identification of Ginsburg with Wallace registers tensions between assimilationist and de-assimilationist Jewish identities, liberal and intersectional feminisms, and the affective politics of stoicism and rage. I argue that Notorious iconography problematically works to install Ginsburg as the standard-bearer of both the white Jewish Second Wave and its Black feminist critique.