Shadow Bodies: Black Women, Ideology, Representation, and Politics

215 Pages·2017·3.662 MB·English

by  Julia S. Jordan-Zachery

Shadow BodieS

Sh a d ow B o d i eS
Black women, ideology,
Representation, and Politics
Julia S . Jo rdan- Zachery
Rutgers U niversity Pre ss
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jordan-Zachery, Julia Sheron, author.
Title: Shadow bodies : black women, ideology, representation, and politics / Julia S.
Jordan-Zachery.
Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014955 (print) | LCCN 2017027077 (ebook) | ISBN
9780813593418 (E-pub) | ISBN 9780813593432 (Web PDF) | ISBN 9780813593401
(cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813593395 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: African American women—Social conditions. | Feminism.
Classification: LCC E185.86 (ebook) | LCC E185.86 .J6733 2017 (print) |
DDC 305.48/896073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014955
A British Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Copyright © 2017 by Julia S. Jordan- Zachery
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106
Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is
“fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
c The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48– 1992.
www .rutgersuniversitypress .org
Manufactured in the United States of America
CoNteNtS
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Different Streams of Knowledge: Theoretically Situating
This Study 19
2 Inscribing and the Black (Female) Body Politic 30
3 Uncovering Talk across Time and Space:
Black Women Elected Officials, Essence and Ebony,
and Black Female Bloggers 52
4 “Safe, Soulful Sex”: HIV/AIDS Talk 76
5 Killing Me Softly: Narratives on Domestic Violence
and Black Womanhood 101
6 “Why So Many Sisters Are Mad and Sad”:
Talking about Black Women with Mental Illnesses 124
7 Sister Speak: Using Intersectionality in Our Political
and Policy Strategizing 140
Appendix 157
Acknowledgments 163
Notes 165
References 169
Index 195
v

PRefaCe
It is an interesting time for me to be writing this book— both politically and per-
sonally (I recognize that this divide is not rigid). I start with the political side
of this story. I am an immigrant Black woman living in the United States at the
transition of the Barack Obama administration. As was the case when he was
first elected, and emphatically more so today, I find myself pondering the ques-
tion: What does the election of the U.S. president, regardless of social location
and political affiliation, mean for Black women within and outside of the United
States? Will any of these administrations, particularly the 2017 one, substantively
respond to Black women? Additionally, I find myself pondering: What do Black
women want? Who speaks for Black women— is it people like me who walk the
halls of the academy or is it service providers like my mother? Why does it feel
like these two groups of Black women seemingly do not talk, or maybe they do
and could it be that some of us are simply unaware?
Simultaneously, I am raising a young Black woman. This is a young woman
who is active on Twitter and who considers herself an “intersectional feminist”
(I’m like: Why not just say Black feminist? But that intergenerational conversa-
tion of Black gender consciousness is another book) and who swears by Beyon-
cé’s visual album, Lemonade. My daughter thinks that Twitter is a great platform
for activism— hashtag activism— and that Beyoncé embodies what it means to
be Black and female in the twenty- first century. Needless to say she is ready to
get in “formation.” As I watch her political identity develop and blossom, I am
fascinated by how the emergence of her political consciousness is heavily influ-
enced by cultural representations in the era of social media, and in the context of
the presidency of Barack Obama. But I wonder.
What does it mean for Black women to get in formation in a political context
that has generally ignored them or that has been unresponsive although Black
women have shown themselves as a primary voting bloc? How for example, does
#sayhername translate into a political agenda that manifest itself in specific poli-
cies? Shadow Bodies does not address these questions directly, but by centering
the positionality of the Black women’s body it serves as a springboard for helping
us think through this intersection of political and cultural representation. It does
so by asking: How do discursive practices, both speech and silences, support
and maintain hegemonic understandings of Black womanhood, thereby render-
ing some Black women as shadow bodies? This is a historical study spanning the
time frame 1997–2 007. It looks at different platforms of Black women’s speech
in hopes of understanding how Black gendered corporeal inscriptions, such as
displayed in Beyoncé’s Lemonade and that embody #sayhername, influence who
vii
viii Preface
speaks for Black women, who gets included in such speech, and the responses
advanced in response to the Black female body.
This analysis helps us to better understand Black female bodies’ materiality as
a site for the intersection between the political and cultural realms. In this sense,
Shadow Bodies, via an analysis of the scripting of the Black female body, affords
us a theoretical framework that stretches beyond the time frame of the study
and beyond the modes of talk included in the analysis. The theoretical frame-
work permits an analysis of places of dissent and convergence, for analysis of the
space between Beyoncé’s formation and the political treatment of Black women
because it is an analysis of race– gender boundaries. By considering discursive
structures and rhetorical devices I offer insights into structures of ideology and
power that might simultaneously converge and diverge in the political and cul-
tural spheres. This then allows for a deeper understanding of what it means when
Black women get in formation— both culturally and politically—a nd how said
formation is responded to by political elites across a wide spectrum of identities.
This is a book about what often goes unsaid, silences. I attempt to show how
the silences can be more revealing than what is often vocalized. In exploring
these silences, I often found myself growing increasingly frustrated. I was frus-
trated because “normal” social science did not afford me with an approach for
understanding silence, yet the strength of the analysis was judged by these meth-
ods. I often heard that you have to show it, not simply tell it. But how do you
show silence, the absence of something? So I had to fight against a type of silenc-
ing that exists in academia—t he unwritten rule of reproducing what is already
in existence. As I wrote, I was simultaneously analyzing the politics of silenc-
ing while experiencing it on a very personal level. For example, an editor told
me that I did not include sufficient materials from Black feminist politics. This
dumbfounded me, as I offer a historical evolution of Black feminist works on
representation and public policy and voice within the field of political science
by Black critical (female) scholars. After pushing back on this claim, I later learn
that the editor felt that I had failed because I needed to do more with one “cel-
ebrated” and popularly known Black female author. My response was: How do
you dismiss the critical work done by the other scholars to privilege the work of
one more popularly recognized individual? I mention this experience because I
want us to think of the types of scholarship that are allowed to be published and
how this process can be a form of silencing, thereby curtailing how we under-
stand the Black political woman. As you read this analysis, I encourage you to
think of the various manifestations of silence, the moments where shadows are
produced. Hopefully, you will use this analysis to continue to explore the various
manifestations of silence and how we can collectively resist such. It is this collec-
tive effort that will bring us closer to the liberation of Black women and others
who find themselves oppressed. It is because of my commitment to freedom that
I persevered and wrote this book.
Shadow BodieS