Blackface

This article reviews part of the stage history of Shakespeare’s Othello in Chile and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play: the first, in 1818, and the last one in 2012-2020. By comparing both productions, I aim to establish the exact date and theatrical context of the first Chilean staging of the Shakespearean tragedy using historical sources and English travellers’ records, as well as to explore how the representation of a Moor and of blackness onstage evolved both in its visual dimension — the choice of costumes and the use of blackface—, and in its racial connotations alongside deep social changes. During the nineteenth century Othello became one of the most popular plays in Chile, being performed eleven times in the period of 31 years, a success that also occurred in Spain between 1802 and 1833. The early development of Chilean theatre was very much influenced not only by the ideas of the Spaniards who arrived in the country, but also by the available Spanish translations of Shakespeare; therefore, I argue that the first performances of Othello as Other — different in origin and in skin colour — were characterised by an imitative style, since actors repeated onstage the biased image of Moors that Spaniards had brought to Chile. While the assessment of Othello and race is not new, this article contrasts in its scope, as I do not discuss the protagonist’s actual origin, but how the changes in Chilean social and cultural contexts can reshape and reconfigure the performance of blackness and turn it into a meaningful translation of the Shakespearean Moor that activates audiences’ awareness of racism and fears of miscegenation.

Retour sur les conditions d'émergence de la lutte contre le blackface dans le contexte belge. Archéologie coloniale du personnage du "Sauvage" présent lors de la Ducasse de Ath. Généalogie du folklore raciste et coloniale en Belgique à partir de la négrophobie contemporaine. A l’ombre du classement de l’UNESCO, la perpétuation d’un folklore raciste et colonialiste. Formuler politiquement la fin du blackface en Belgique.

Este trabajo busca brindar claridad con respecto a la historia y escritura del ritmo de Caporal, que es prácticamente el mismo de la Tuntuna, el Tundique y la Saya Urbana. Danzas hoy conocidas y bailadas en Bolivia, Perú, Argentina y Chile. 

Con el cuidado de explicar la escritura en entornos digitales y descomponer con un análisis comparativo las duraciones exactas de los golpes de estos ritmos, para tener los puntos con proporciones más exactas. Para al final poder pasar un archivo en MIDI a cualquier Software y tener dichos valores matemáticamente exactos.

This essay examines the ideological power of Carnival and the carnivalesque on the Colombian Caribbean Coast by circumnavigating the dominant narrative about these events as primarily stages to transgress social norms and resist authority. Instead, it explores whether blackface and other forms of racial impersonation performed during these festivities are globally migrating manifestations of anti-Blackness. It argues that in order to achieve visual resonance, performers rely on taken-for-granted propositions about how Blackness works in Colombian society and that in the absence of such objectivated social knowledge, as Stuart Hall describes it, the racialized characters Las Negritas Puloy, Las Palenqueras/Las Negras Bollongas, and El Son de Negro would be illegible to audiences. These three popular representations of Blackness ascribe particular behaviors and ways of being to phenotypic variations associated with Blackness (skin complexion, hair texture, body type, etc.). This essay demonstrates the racial subordination that can develop, fester, and be reproduced through debasing cultural productions in an environment where anti-Black racism is typically invisibilized and trivialized.

The Latin@ media continues to exclude black bodies from television in order to perpetuate systemic white privilege. Although racism within the Latino community has not been part of a mainstream conversation, the presence of color-blind or post-racial structures may mask white supremacy within the community itself.

The call to clean museums of faulty works of art, to purge films of patriarchal stereotypes, is based on a collective ignorance of the difference between fiction and reality and is related to the rise of gender and cultural studies which - through reference to work by Laura Mulvey [1975] and John Berger [1972] - propagate this one-dimensional worldview. The result is polarization and the destruction of culture.

El presente trabajo propone informar y posteriormente persuadir de manera hipotética,  la existencia de una nueva práctica o un nuevo modelo que Kim Kardashian representa y que, sutilmente induce al racismo. De esta forma, demostraremos que la “necesidad” de clasificar y jerarquizar los distintos fenotipos y culturas humanas, tal como en la época colonial, se mantiene en esencia y sigue presente en la actualidad.

Resumen
Este artículo analiza la aparición de los bailes en los villancicos “de negro” para indagar sobre la contribución de los iberoafricanos en la cultura musical y coreográfica de la España del siglo XVII. Concretamente, a partir de un corpus de cincuenta textos, se toman en cuenta los bailes y danzas que aparecen descritos en ellos, especialmente los guineos, los zarambeques y cumbés, aunque también otros no directamente relacionados con los bailes considerados “de negros”, como la chacona, la zarabanda o el canario, así como otros bailes citados. Después de enumerarlos, clasificarlos y contextualizarlos, se interrelacionan estos bailes con los que aparecen en las procesiones de Corpus, para finalmente ofrecer una mirada intertextual sobre los filtros que actuaban delante de la realidad esclava, para dilucidar la participación africana y distinguirla de los casos de blackface y otras hibridaciones culturales a lo largo del siglo.

Prominent Irish philosopher Richard Kearney’s notion of ‘carnal hermeneutics’ is introduced by applying it to a case study of a recent event that took place at one of South Africa’s university
campuses. The narrative assists in illuminating some of the core principles of carnal hermeneutics and illustrates the applicability of carnal hermeneutics as a ‘diagnostic caring for
lived existence’. In the process, an analysis is also given of the event in question, which is connected to what has widely been labelled as ‘blackface’. In conclusion, the contextual, philosophical, ethical, and theological implications of carnal hermeneutics are explored with an eye on theological praxes in South Africa today.

Il saggio offre un percorso nelle teorie del comico, con un focus sulle "teorie della superiorità" per introdurre a una lettura trans/culturale del blackface nel cinema italiano. Riferimenti a due commedie di produzione recente.
Nota: In download è disponibile una versione estesa, contenente alcune parti ridotte e altre soppresse in quella compresa nel volume "Presente imperfetto".

En s’intéressant aux discours des personnes défendant le blackface contemporain durant les controverses québécoises sur ce sujet entre 2013 et 2016, l’auteure montre comment ceux-ci ont été teintés par la fragilité blanche, concept de Robin DiAngelo, et par une hypervalorisation humoristique. La fermeture à la critique politique de contenus humoristiques n'est pas particulière au Québec et on retrouve des réactions similaires dans bien des controverses entourant l'humour. Toutefois, il a été constaté que ce qui est particulier au Québec, c'est le récit d'une nation qui n'aurait pas d'historique de racisme « comme aux États-Unis ».

This essay compares Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness, commissioned by Queen Anna of Denmark in 1605, and Love’s Mistress by Thomas Heywood, contracted by Queen Henrietta Maria in 1634. I reveal that Heywood’s Love’s Mistress—featuring a blackened and heavily pregnant Psyche—evokes Anna’s performance in The Masque of Blackness, wherein England’s first childbearing Queen in two generations danced in blackface while six months pregnant. In so doing, I explore how Anna wielded her reproductive body as a weapon in Stuart court politics, while recovering the Queen’s influence on early modern dramaturgy and performances of pregnancy in early seventeenth-century London.

To cite:
Sara B. T. Thiel, "Performing Blackface Pregnancy at the Stuart Court: The Masque of Blackness and Love’s Mistress, or the Queen’s Masque," Renaissance Drama 45, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 211-236.

https://doi.org/10.1086/694326

This dissertation examines the life and times of the Canadian pianistcomposer Calixa Lavallee (1842-1891). Hailed as the 'national musician' in his twenties, he subsequently gained wide recognition as Canada's first pianist of international stature and its first truly original composer; his song, o Canada, became the country's official national anthem in 1980. This study focuses on the events of Lavallee's life and the musical world in which he lived. This study contends that Lavallee was much more active in minstrelsy and the popular music of his time than has previously been acknowledged. In assessing the claims of Eugene Lapierre and others who have described Lavallee as a French-Canadian nationalist, I conclude that his sense of nationalism was highly ambivalent. The events of Lavallee's life are traced primarily through advertisements, reviews, and news stories published in newspapers and music journals. City directories, histories, biographies, and a small number of archival sources provide additional information. Together with copies of Lavallee's published compositions, these sources provide the basis of a thorough chronology of Lavallee's life. The discussio;n of Lavallee's life is organised chronologically into three sections that reflect the changing directions of his career. The opening part examines his childhood, and the early years of career. It traces the events of his year in the army, his return to Montreal, and his numerous tours with minstrel troupes. The second part focuses mostly on his sojourn in C.anada in the 1870s. Its chapters examine his studies in Paris, his subsequent work in Montreal and Quebec City, and the music he composed during this period. The four chapters of the third section investigate his life in Boston in 2 the 1880s. They focus on the musical life of the city, pianists and piano makers, Lavallee's work with the Music Teachers' National Association, and his compositions. Each of the three parts of this study ends with an epilogue in which the events of the years under discussion are examined within the broader context of Lavallee's life and work. The appendices comprise a calendar of the major events of his life, a chronology of the many tours he participated in during the 1860s and early 1870s, a catalogue of compositions, and a listing of his concert appearances and repertoire.

Retour sur les conditions d'émergence de la lutte contre le blackface dans le contexte belge. Archéologie coloniale du personnage du "Sauvage" présent lors de la Ducasse de Ath. Généalogie du folklore raciste et coloniale en Belgique à partir de la négrophobie contemporaine. A l’ombre du classement de l’UNESCO, la perpétuation d’un folklore raciste et colonialiste. Formuler politiquement la fin du blackface en Belgique.

La pratique du blackface (une personne blanche se maquille la peau pour caricaturer une personne noire) est un phénomène ancien, qui se popularise aux Etats-Unis au milieu du XVIIIe s. avec le genre du minstrel show et existe également sous d’autres formes en Europe. Dans les années 1960, le phénomène disparaît largement des scènes et des écrans …mais certaines affaires de blackface surgissent encore régulièrement, faisant plus ou moins scandale et provoquant un nouveau type de réactions.

This article will point to distinctive features of racism in the Netherlands, which will support the analysis of the 2013 events. 2013 deserves attention for it marks the moment when the discussion of Zwarte Piet broke into the mainstream public sphere, turning effectively into the most important and mediatized topic of debate, which involved the Dutch political (and legal) authorities. This analysis will reveal the mechanisms through which the political and media establishment racially framed the controversy around Zwarte Piet. My aim is to identify the continuous operation of the racial grammar inherited from the empire, through which the white Dutch established order contains Black people and voices.
The article delineates the workings of racism within the very racism debate. Its focus is in the Netherlands, but it is grounded in the broader context of contemporary neo-liberal racisms in Europe harboured in denial, titled by David Goldberg as European postraciality. This concept articulates with Fatima El-Tayeb’s characterization of European racelessness, as a forceful disavowal of racism in a continent haunted by the ghost of race. This article will trace this haunting, in word and space.
This article will be out in the special issue of the journal Darkmatter about blackface and anti-Black racism in the fall of 2020.

A brief talk presented as part of a series of "Courageous Conversations" at the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University on 17 March 2016. The idea behind the series, jointly hosted by the Beyers Naude Centre for Public Theology and the Theological Student Committee, is to stimulate conversation on pressing issues on campus and society.

Robert Gooding-Williams, in his essay “Aesthetics and Receptivity: Kant, Nietzsche, Cavell, and Astaire,” takes issue very strongly with Stanley Cavell’s readings of scenes from the 1953 Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon. Where Cavell sees a general human difficulty, Gooding-Williams sees problems that come from privilege; where Cavell sees an acknowledgment of and tribute to black American culture, Gooding-Williams sees appropriation and exploitation.  This paper tries to defend Cavell’s reading, not by trying to prove Gooding-Williams wrong but by augmenting Cavell’s interpretation and expanding the scope of the tribute or homage Cavell finds in these dance numbers. It seems to me that under Minnelli’s direction, Astaire’s dancing becomes an acknowledgment of more than one kind of oppressed American group. This dance, this movie, and Hollywood movies like it illustrate a special kind of hope, goal, or ideal for America, and even for humanity beyond America.

Lettre ouverte à agir par la culture à propos procès intenté par le bourgmestre de Lessines, Pascal De Handschutter (PS), contre Nordine Saidi et Bruxelles Panthères dans le cadre de la lutte contre le blackface en Belgique (Sauvage d'Ath et Nègres de Deux-Acren).

Early January, French internet users vehemently denounced a video posted on social networks that showed an African-themed party with a host in blackface and a guest dressed as a monkey, that involved employees of the French company Le Slip Francais. An analysis of the French media reaction to the multiplication of these digital controversies shows that journalists fail to understand and address the racist nature of these "performances" and always re-orientate the debate toward freedom of expression, responsibility of the companies, or the alleged ignorance of the protagonists. This lack of proper understanding often associated with a limited dialogue with communities of color prevents from going further the emotional response and resolve the issue on a long term perspective.

RESUMEN Este artículo explora cómo la fealdad es producida como una forma de afecto y una categoría biopolítica dentro del contexto brasileño. Basado en tres años de investigación de archivo y trabajo de campo etnográfico en el sudeste del Brasil, argumento que la estética corporal es una arena donde el conflicto racial se combate en el Brasil. Mis dos objetos de análisis son el uso del blackface en la cultura popular brasileña, y la construcción del cuerpo negro como antiestético dentro de las escuelas de medicina que enseñan cirugía plástica en el Brasil. La desvalorización de la negritud a través de estas tecnologías de racialización es una forma crucial mediante la cual la blanquitud (whiteness) se produce a sí misma como distinta y superior a la negritud en el Brasil, pero también demuestra su inestabilidad y las ansiedades en la cual está fundada.
ABSTRACT This article explores how ugliness is produced as a form of affect and a biopolitical category within the Brazilian context. Based on three years of archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in southeastern Brazil, I make the case that bodily aesthetics is an arena where racial conflict plays out in Brazil. My two main objects of analysis are the use of blackface within Brazilian popular culture, and the construction of the black body as unattractive within medical schools that teach plastic surgery in Brazil. The devaluation of blackness through these technologies of racialization is a crucial way in which whiteness produces itself as distinct and superior to blackness in Brazil, but it also demonstrates its instability and the anxieties on which it is founded.