80 research outputs found
Nation Drag: Uses of the Exotic
No full text<p>In <em>Uneven Encounters</em>, the forthcoming book from which this article is excerpted, Micol Seigel chronicles the exchange of popular culture between Brazil and the United States in the years between the World Wars, and she demonstrates how that exchange affected ideas of race and nation in both countries. From Americans interpreting advertisements for Brazilian coffee or dancing the Brazilian <em>maxixe</em>, to Rio musicians embracing the “foreign” qualities of jazz, Seigel traces a lively, cultural back-and-forth. Along the way, she shows how race and nation are constructed together, by both non-elites and elites, and gleaned from global cultural and intellectual currents as well as local, regional, and national ones. Seigel explores the circulation of images of Brazilian coffee and of maxixe in the United States during the period just after the imperial expansions of the early twentieth century. Exoticist interpretations structured North Americans’ paradoxical sense of self as productive “consumer citizens.” Some people, however, could not simply assume the privileges of citizenship. In their struggles against racism, Afro-descended citizens living in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, New York, and Chicago encountered images and notions of each other, and found them useful. Seigel introduces readers to cosmopolitan Afro-Brazilians and African Americans who rarely traveled far but who absorbed ideas from abroad nonetheless. African American vaudeville artists saw the utility of pretending to “be” Brazilian to cross the color line on stage. Putting on “nation drag,” they passed not from one race to another but out of familiar racial categories entirely. Afro-Brazilian journalists reported intensively on foreign, particularly North American, news and eventually entered into conversation with the U.S. black press in a collaborative but still conflictual dialogue. Seigel suggests that projects comparing U.S. and Brazilian racial identities as two distinct constructions are misconceived. Racial formations transcend national borders; attempts to understand them must do the same.</p>
The Spatial Politics of Radical Change, an Introduction
No full textIntroduction to the JTAS Special Forum entitled "Revolutions and Heterotopias," edited by Micol Seigel, Lessie Jo Frazier, and David Sartorius<br /
Uneven Encounters
No full textIn Uneven Encounters, Micol Seigel chronicles the exchange of popular culture between Brazil and the United States in the years between the World Wars, and demonstrates how that exchange affected ideas of race and nation in both countries. From Americans interpreting advertisements for Brazilian coffee or dancing the Brazilian maxixe, to Rio musicians embracing the “foreign” qualities of jazz, Seigel traces a lively, cultural back and forth. Along the way, she shows how race and nation for both elites and non-elites are constructed together, and driven by global cultural and intellectual currents as well as local, regional, and national ones.
Seigel explores the circulation of images of Brazilian coffee and of maxixe in the United States during the period just after the imperial expansions of the early twentieth century. Exoticist interpretations structured North Americans’ paradoxical sense of themselves as productive “consumer citizens.” Some people, however, could not simply assume the privileges of citizenship. In their struggles against racism, Afro-descended citizens living in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, New York, and Chicago encountered images and notions of each other, and found them useful. Seigel introduces readers to cosmopolitan Afro-Brazilians and African Americans who rarely traveled far from home but who nonetheless absorbed ideas from abroad. She suggests that studies comparing U.S. and Brazilian racial identities as two distinct constructions are misconceived. Racial formation transcends national borders; attempts to understand it must do the same
Uneven Encounters : Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States
No full textIn Uneven Encounters, Micol Seigel chronicles the exchange of popular culture between Brazil and the United States in the years between the World Wars, and demonstrates how that exchange affected ideas of race and nation in both countries. From Americans interpreting advertisements for Brazilian coffee or dancing the Brazilian maxixe, to Rio musicians embracing the “foreign” qualities of jazz, Seigel traces a lively, cultural back and forth. Along the way, she shows how race and nation for both elites and non-elites are constructed together, and driven by global cultural and intellectual currents as well as local, regional, and national ones.
Seigel explores the circulation of images of Brazilian coffee and of maxixe in the United States during the period just after the imperial expansions of the early twentieth century. Exoticist interpretations structured North Americans’ paradoxical sense of themselves as productive “consumer citizens.” Some people, however, could not simply assume the privileges of citizenship. In their struggles against racism, Afro-descended citizens living in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, New York, and Chicago encountered images and notions of each other, and found them useful. Seigel introduces readers to cosmopolitan Afro-Brazilians and African Americans who rarely traveled far from home but who nonetheless absorbed ideas from abroad. She suggests that studies comparing U.S. and Brazilian racial identities as two distinct constructions are misconceived. Racial formation transcends national borders; attempts to understand it must do the same
Violence work: policing and power
No full textPresent ad hoc outcries about police excesses such as shootings of young black men on the streets and mass incarceration miss the point about the nature and role of the police, argues the author. Coining her own counter-category, ‘violence work’, she shows how the police carry out violence work for the state; policing being the quintessential translation of state power. In a considered argument taking in the history of colonial policing, the development of racial capitalism and US foreign intervention, the article discusses a number of fallacies about policing: that it is civilian and distinguishable from the military; that it is a public service rather than a private endeavour; and that it is locally based and municipally controlled. Policing is in fact the human-scale expression of the state. She discusses a number of state theorists from Adam Smith, to Poulantzas, Foucault, Agamben and Hall and contemplates the role of the state to the market. The piece lifts the assumptions about public safety, state/private sector, place and scale to reveal the ideological landscape that legitimates state-market violence.</jats:p
“But the skin of the earth is seamless”: Liberating Symbols of Nature in "Borderlands/The New Mestiza" by Gloria Anzaldúa
No full text“Build bridges, not walls!” Recently, this old slogan has boldly resounded in the streets of America. One of the greatest advocates of that belief was certainly Gloria Anzaldúa, author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and co-author of This Bridge We Call Home (2002), among others. In Borderlands she offered a dramatic and revolutionary view on the life in the borderlands, nourishing with new life-blood the Latino, Feminist e Post-colonial studies. Being herself a Chicana grown up in the Texas-Mexico border area, Anzaldúa denounces the “terrorism” practiced by the U.S. government but also shows a possible path to follow in order to positively re-think the complex border identity: “I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet” (81). Anzaldúa goes beyond the rationally cold, artificially created citizenship identity, towards a conception of the self more linked to the truth of being simply humans living on a planet whose surface is “seamless”. Nature is indeed central in her “new value system” and an endless source of symbols for her discourse. The aim of this article is to bring out the meanings attributed to Nature by Anzaldúa, proposing a close-reading of three poems included in Borderlands, where Nature (concreted in both natural space and animal life), becomes a symbol of the fight for liberation. “Horse”, “Wind tugging at my sleeve”, and “Dead”, are representative of the three main meanings we believe Anzaldúa ascribed to Nature: Nature as the strength we should – but frequently don’t - find in ourselves to fight oppression; Nature as the rebellion to the untruthful duality imposed by the border; Nature as the possibility of rebirth in a new identity
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