{"title":"Diary of a Mad Black (Wo)Man","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 examines Tyler Perry’s classic Madea character in his breakout movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman. A dominant figure in black Hollywood, Perry’s success depends on the melodramatic story lines he constructs promoting heterosexual coupledom as the optimal state for black female self-actualization. Not only does Perry present marriage as an ideal state, he figures narratives of return and self-governance as solutions for black social ills. In this way his movie fits neatly into the neoliberal emphasis on micro-level scales of assessment and action, often found in post-feminist movies and images. Moreover, the chapter draws on psychoanalytic concepts, such as Freud’s ideas of condensation and displacement in dreams, as well as multivocality, and applies them to Diary. It demonstrates how Perry’s racialized cross-dressing via Madea parallels blackface minstrelsy and, moreover, is tied to his own ambivalent connection to his mother, serving as a mechanism for him to symbolically eliminate black women, and occupy the plenitude and authority associated with the mammy/matriarch. Finally, the chapter suggests various levels of connection through which black audiences identify with Perry’s Madea figure and the fantasies relayed in his signature, paradigmatic movie.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115585167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The Conclusion offers a metaphor from the physics of flow for understanding the methodology and substance in this book. As opposed to laminar flow, which has a linear or unidirectional force, turbulent flow exemplifies dynamic, sometimes explosive, variation. The turbulent flow of politics needs an approach that can match its character. It notes that interdisciplinarity was necessary to capture the full measure of what is at stake and what has transpired in the development of post-politics. After discussing turbulence, the Conclusion recaps key insights from the book. And, in the hopes of provoking additional work on post-politics, the Conclusion discusses recent examples, namely Barack Obama’s continued support for My Brother’s Keeper; Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming; 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Kamala Harris; and the reaction to the documentary Surviving R. Kelly. The Conclusion pays special attention to the way in which post-politics explains the surprise some experienced at the ascension of Donald Trump, arguing that post-politics is best seen as range of competing fantasies that still vie for public attention and action, all designed to undermine collective efforts at progressive social change. Post-politics is an analytic we need to understand turbulent futures.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127671504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coda","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"A Coda speaks to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis. The Coda discusses how the response to COVID-19 led to a systemic political crisis symptomatic of capitalism under neoliberalism, the same neoliberalism that uses the production of liminal subjects and melodrama as its handmaidens to give it life. It speaks to the need for revolt to secure a future beyond the deadly character of late capitalism.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122257201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MeToo?","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 addresses the MeToo movement, examining liminality along two fronts. First, it shows how liminality positions black women as abject figures unworthy of concern in terms of sexual harassment or rape, a bitter irony given their role in resistance to rape and harassment, in the context of enslavement to the present day. Second, it assess two important case studies. The first case study centers on the explosive international drama involving accusations of rape by Nafissatou Diallo, a black female immigrant housekeeper, against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the once politically powerful head of the International Monetary Fund. The second case examines melodrama and splitting in the life of Bill Cosby. Cosby, as Dr. Huxtable on The Cosby Show, was a super minority who presented a model of middle-class patriarchal respectability. Off screen, he railed against the abject black poor whom he saw as in need of tutelage and rehabilitation to deserve public embrace. Furthermore, this chapter also explores how black cultural pathology melodrama explains Cosby’s rapaciousness as a destructive attempt at self-fathering or “père version” (Wright 2013). Finally, the chapter argues for the importance of sadomasochism as an analytic in assessing sexual harassment and demonstrates parallels between victims of harassment and rape and whistle-blowers.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124903927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Reality of the White Male Rapist","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 examines melodrama in terms of the history of white male rape of black women with two objectives in mind. First, it considers the relevance of black women and families to US-based American political development by pointing to their importance to social contract theory. Second, it investigates the psychological defenses used to ignore or rewrite this US record. Although this reality is well established by historians and treated extensively in black women’s literature, social and political discourses deny, repress, or disavow it. This chapter delineates how this denial, repression, and disavowal occurs and how the history of white male rape of black women nevertheless “haunts” US culture and politics. It traces these psychological responses in three sites regarding The Help, namely: Telling Memories, the book of oral histories Kathryn Stockett uses in writing her narrative, as well as the book and movie versions of The Help. Although some recent work by women’s and gender studies scholars posits that too much of black feminism focuses on black women’s experiences as an archive of pain, this treatment suggests the need for mourning black women’s sexual violation in order to heal.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124022093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unpacking President Barack Obama’s “Improbable Story”","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of viewing President Barack Obama through the lens of deracialization as a political strategy, this chapter offers an intersectional approach that focuses on Obama as a post-racial, post-feminist politician. Examining the Moynihan Report as an urtext for black cultural pathology melodrama—that is, a neoliberal frame that anticipated much of what we associate with post-feminism, particularly in terms of self-regulation—the chapter assesses black cultural pathology melodrama as it relates to Obama both in terms of his historic 2008 election and his governance. It focuses on the historic 2008 presidential campaign and the cultural milieu in which it occurred by examining Crash and Grey’s Anatomy, popular cultural sites at the time. Obama is variously figured as a “magical Negro,” or prototypical inversion of black stereotypes; an example of a new generation of leadership that nevertheless affirms patriarchal modes of black leadership; and a symbolic father (especially in terms of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative) that serves as an exemplar of middle-class respectability that can rehabilitate the black underclass.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":"1018 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123119283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Splitting Condi(licious)","authors":"Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd","doi":"10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479855858.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores conservatism as a repressed element in the study of black politics through an analysis of former national security advisor and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice as a liminal subject. It explores the primary narrative or urtext Rice represents—namely, the fantasy of colorblind national community formation. Although she presents herself and is lauded by others as an example of the United States’ progress in terms of race and gender equality, the fantasy of difference-blind inclusion is persistently challenged when it comes to Rice. Indeed Rice is a melodramatic figure represented as both victor and villain, a form of splitting. Competing dominant story line of closeness—“condi” versus “condilicous”—paradoxically work both to create and undermine the US national narrative of color(difference)-blind integration. The chapter’s central argument is that Rice signifies the liminality of blacks in general and black women in particular and that this liminality is contrary to the triumph of integration she is said to represent. Attention is also given to how Rice’s identity as a black woman of note or her experience of racism and sexism (or both) cause some to ignore or downplay her class status and ideological commitments and actions.","PeriodicalId":215362,"journal":{"name":"Re-Imagining Black Women","volume":" 24","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131977716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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