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Articles Conference Reviews |
F.3 Contesting BodiesF.3 Contesting Bodies: Visual Rhetoric In The Struggle Over White Identity And The Black Male Body A good panel is one that gathers presenters who share a common spirit, a similar message and set of concerns, or, as my friend Ira Allen says, a gestalt. This panel was no exception, and if I were to render this gestalt, I would say that the three presenters of this session, as well as the respondent, tried to analyze and unpack the historical struggle over black and white male identities as pictured in postcards, exhibits, and ads. I call this review an attempt because, as with any attempt to capture a gestalt, I can only try to reconstruct for you the powerful arguments proposed by these speakers. The first presentation, “Black Beast, White Hero: Lynching Postcards and the Visual Discursive Construction of White Masculinity,” offered an in-depth analysis of the “spectacle of lynching” at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott Gage first introduced the socio-discursive climate that made possible the circulation and production of lynching postcards. The white supremacist rhetoric at the time imagined white men as hypermasculine, heroic, and entitled to acts of violence in their attempt to defend white women from black men, and ultimately to guard “the stability of social order.” This discourse, Gage argued, was possible only in the context where the African American was understood as a “rapist beast,” animalistic, subhuman, driven by excessive sexual desire. To illustrate this dialectic “white hero/black beast,” Gage offered the example of a 1915 postcard depicting William Stanley, lynched in Temple, Texas. Such a portrayal reinforced notions of white hypermasculinity, and it implicitly proved the demise of the “unruly” African American male body, thus creating a tragic visual identity which had a great impact in the next decades. In “Creating the New Negro: W.E.B. DuBois’s Visual Work at the 1900 Paris Exposition,” Kristie Fleckenstein turned to W.E.B. DuBois’s visual project which attempted to prove to a white “universal” audience that African Americans made social progress and did not match the “beast” and the “buffoon” images that were often associated with black men. Instead, Fleckenstein argued, DuBois used three major strategies to build toward a new visual epistemology of African American masculinity and citizenship. In the 1900 American Negro Exhibit, DuBois displayed himself as an embodied image as a way of giving “presence” to a rational and enlightened man. In the exhibit, he also incorporated images of prominent African Americans that functioned as visual “facts,” indicating the potential of African American men in general. Finally, DuBois showcased 363 photographs designed to convey a single “truth”: the African American man contributed to social progress. However, as Fleckenstein contended, this truth came into light as a response to an ideal white male audience, and it was bound to a primarily white regime of power that remained for the most part unchallenged. Although Rachael B. Zeleny could not be present at the session, her argument entitled “In Vogue? Visual Archaeology in the Composition Classroom” and delivered by her colleague, Michael McCamley, was a great example of contemporary racial struggles. Zeleny presented her journey as she transformed a regular visual analysis assignment into a complex research project. In her 2009 writing class, Rachel was trying to prepare her students to construct elaborate visual analyses, and she decided to show them the 1998 Vogue cover featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen, an image which resembled the WWI poster of a fierce King Kong and a blonde white woman. To her dismay, the students had a hard time grasping the overt racial message, and their analyses ended up exploring symbols more than the cultural work that such images were performing. Drawing on LeDoeuff’s concept of “visual archeology” from The Philosophical Imaginary, Zeleny redesigned the assignment to help students identify and investigate the historical and cultural contexts of racially complicated images. Zeleny concluded her presentation arguing for the importance of classroom debates and assignments that bring together race and visual rhetoric. At the same time, she also admitted that these are highly challenging tasks, especially when the instructor must act as the negotiator of complex and sensitive issues. The respondent, Rhea E. Lathan, focused on this very issue – the sensibilities that get troubled when discussions of race, gender, and visual depictions open up. In “Unsettling Boundaries: Critical Consequences,” Lathan announced that her intervention will not be comfortable, nor will it settle questions. She reminded us of the responsibility we have when we chart the history of Others or when we try to make knowledge by digging through images of Others. From an Afrafeminist perspective, Lathan suggested that we need to consider our sense of accountability every time we strive to reconstruct or confront a history of racial oppression. In other words, she demanded both from the audience in the room, as well as from the presenters themselves, to think of the voices we leave behind or may misrepresent whenever we try to do any kind of recovery or critical work. Indeed, the three presenters uncovered the pain brought on to the black man’s body by a white male supremacist discourse, but, as Lathan asked, where did the black women go? What are the limits of our own intellectual positions? What is our sense of responsibility towards the subjects we want to represent and the audience that entrust us with credibility? Maybe what we also need to pay attention to is the dangerous racial inertia that keeps white discourses of power in place. All three presenters demonstrated that the persistence of oppressive images trigger grave and longlasting social and moral consequences. Fleckenstein also showed that visuality is a kind of epistemology and that with images we can attempt social change, as in DuBois’s project. However, to dismantle hegemonic discourses, we need to further consider the limits of our visions, the complex and slow processes necessary to refocus what and how we see. If the image becomes our battlefield for social transformation, then we may have to start working toward more systematic visual theories, resources, and practices that would do such critical work. Reference Note: Kristie Fleckenstein explained the three strategies DuBois used in his exhibit via rhetorical concepts (“universal audience,” “presence,” “truth,” and “fact”) drawn from Perelman, Chaďm and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971. |