Last Supper (after Leonardo), 2013
13 life-size fibreglass mannequins including a hybrid figure with fur legs and hooves, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, reproduction wooden table and chairs, silver cutlery and vases, antique and reproduction glassware and tableware, fibreglass and resin
158 × 742 × 260cm, (62 ¼ × 292 1/8 × 102 1/2in)
Why?
Just as women have been excluded from history, many races and nationalities have either been excluded, or only viewed through white, Western lenses. Post-colonialism is a relatively new approach practiced in many disciplines that examines the legacy and impact of colonialism and imperialism on colonized people and their lands. As colonialism has been practiced for centuries, the effects have a long reach. You can see its impact in economic disparity, educational opportunities, geographic segregation, political representation, cultural visibility, and historical records, to name a few. Stemming partly from Marxist and post-Marxist theory, post-colonialism is just another lens through which the world may be viewed. The readings below introduce post-colonialist viewpoints and how issues of race have edited historical and contemporary voices. You may also run into the following ideas:
- decolonization—the dismantling of colonial structures and gains;
- decentering—refocusing histories away from mypoic colonial perspectives;
- decanonizing—rethinking heirarchies built upon western standards of “quality”;
- cultural appropriation—utilizing aspects of another’s culture and insensitivity;
- systemic racism—how racism is baked into education, politics, aesthetics, economies, and so on.
As Judith Butler stated in Gender Trouble:
If one “is” a woman, that is surely not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered “person” transcends the specific paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities. As a result, it becomes impossible to separate out “gender” from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained.
What we are is not just one thing, but a myriad of influences that overlap and intersect. This is the heart of intersectionality. The intersectionality readings below will walk you though the utility of intersectionality as a cultural lens.
Required
Stealing The Canons, Ministry of Ideas, Ministry of Ideas
Note: To be clear, I am in no way promoting Hamilton, the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda, or the world of musical theater.
Supplementary Readings
- Race and the Church
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Race and the Priesthood, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Words: 2,002 / Time: ~14 minutes “The justifications for this restriction echoed the widespread ideas about racial inferiority that had been used to argue for the legalization of black ‘servitude’ in the Territory of Utah. According to one view, which had been promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s, blacks descended from the same lineage as the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Abel. Those who accepted this view believed that God’s 'curse’ on Cain was the mark of a dark skin. Black servitude was sometimes viewed as a second curse placed upon Noah’s grandson Canaan as a result of Ham’s indiscretion toward his father. Although slavery was not a significant factor in Utah’s economy and was soon abolished, the restriction on priesthood ordinations remained.” - Postcolonialism
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Key Issues in Postcolonial Feminism: A Western Perspective, Gender Forum
“Post-colonial feminists are still in the process of contesting the Eurocentric gaze that privileges Western notions of liberation and progress and portrays Third World women primarily as victims of ignorance and restrictive cultures and religions.”Latin American Postcolonial Studies and Global Decolonization, Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise
“Given the curiously rapid rise to prominence of "postcolonial studies" as an academic field in Western metropolitan centers since the late 198os, it is to be expected that its further development would involve efforts, like this one, to take stock of its regional expressions. Yet, while the rubric ‘Latin American postcolonial studies’ suggests the existence of a regional body of knowledge under that name, in reality it points to a problem: there is no corpus of work on Latin America commonly recognized as ‘postcolonial.’ This problem is magnified by the multiple and often diverging meanings attributed to the signifier ‘postcolonial,’ by the heterogeneity of nations and peoples encompassed by the problematical term ‘Latin America,’ by the thoughtful critiques that have questioned the relevance of postcolonial studies for Latin America, and by the diversity and richness of reflections on Latin America's colonial and postcolonial history, many of which, like most nations in this region, long predate the field of postcolonial studies as it was developed in the 198os.”ENGL 300: Introduction to Theory of Literature: Lecture 22 – Post-Colonial Criticism, Yale University: Open Yale Courses
“In this lecture on post-colonial theory, Professor Paul Fry explores the work of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha. The complicated origins, definitions, and limitations of the term “post-colonial” are outlined. Elaine Showalter’s theory of the phasic development of female literary identity is applied to the expression of post-colonial identities. Crucial terms such as ambivalence, hybridity, and double consciousness are explained. The relationship between Bhabha’s concept of sly civility and Gates’s “signifyin’ ” is discussed, along with the reliance of both on semiotics.”Do Not ‘Decolonize’ . . . If You Are Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond a Hollow Academic Rebranding, Critical Ethnic Studies
“ I have started to see the complexity inherent in how decolonizing has been co-opted from a vibrant and critical engagement to an academic buzzword. This was recently bought home to me when I saw a student wearing a rather colourful t-shirt with a ‘Decolonize the …” typed in boldface in the front. While it was unclear to me what they wanted to decolonize, I was troubled by the text on the shirt, not because of my dislike of buzzwords (I’ve used them before) or because of the student wearing it, but rather it was just at the end of a long line of hollow ‘decolonizing’ moves I had witnessed—online and offline. Within the academy, I have seen the sloppy attempts to ‘decolonize’ a syllabus or a programme without any real structural changes—in the programme, the class, the faculty, or the university. This is NOT decolonizing the syllabus, or the programme, or the university. To take on decolonizing work without having ever engaged with the long tradition of scholars who have written on decolonizing—is sloppy and opportunistic. Especially sloppy if you have not read the seminal Tuck and Yang article which asks you to not use decolonizing as a metaphor.”Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society
“Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to ‘decolonize our schools,’ or use ‘decolonizing methods,’ or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, nonwhite, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism.”Frantz Fanon, His Life, His Struggle, His Work
“Frantz Fanon, was a psychiatrist, originally from Martinique, who became a spokesman for the Algerian revolution against French colonialism. Embittered by his experience with racism in the French Army, he gravitated to radical politics, Sartrean existentialism and the philosophy of black consciousness known as negritude. The film traces the short and intense life of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.”Black Skin, White Masks
“A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.”Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask: The Life and Work of Philosopher Frantz Fanon
“This documentary was the first film to explore Frantz Fanon, the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity. Director Isaac Julien integrates the facts of Fanon's brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon's life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Francoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own. Winner of the Certificate of Merit at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Official Selection at the Berlin International Film Festival.”An Introduction to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks
“Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, is a sociological study of the psychology of the racism and dehumanisation inherent in situations of colonial domination.”Why Sci-Fi Keeps Imagining the Subjugation of White People, The Atlantic
“The link between colonialism and science-fiction is every bit as old as the link between science-fiction and the future. John Rieder in his eye-opening book Colonialism and the Emergence of Science-Fiction notes that most scholars believe that science fiction coalesced ‘in the period of the most fervid imperialist expansion in the late nineteenth century.’ Sci-fi ‘comes into visibility,’ he argues, ‘first in those countries most heavily involved in imperialist projects—France and England’ and then gradually gains a foothold in Germany and the U.S. as those countries too move to obtain colonies and gain imperial conquests. He adds, ‘Most important, no informed reader can doubt that allusions to colonial history and situations are ubiquitous features of early science fiction motifs and plots.’”Edward Said On Orientalism: “The Orient” Represented in Mass Media
“Edward Said’s book Orientalism has been profoundly influential in a diverse range of disciplines since its publication in 1978. In this engaging and lavishly illustrated interview he talks about the context within which the book was conceived, its main themes, and how its original thesis relates to the contemporary understanding of ‘the Orient’ as represented in the mass media.“Edward Said: a Critical Introduction
“Edward Said is one of the foremost thinkers writing today. His work as a literary and cultural critic, a political commentator, and the champion of the cause of Palestinian rights has given him a unique position in western intellectual life. This new book is a major exploration and assessment of his writings in all these main areas.”Of Mimicry and Man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse, The Location of Culture
“Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is the say, that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference. The Authority of that mode of colonial discourse that I have called mimicry is therefore stricken by an indeterminacy: mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal. Mimicry is, this the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes power.”Can the Subaltern Speak?, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
“It is well known that the notion of the feminine (rather than the subaltern of imperialism) has been used in a similar way within deconstructive criticism and within certain varieties of feminist criticism. In the former case, a figure of ‘woman’ is at issue, one whose minimal predication as indeterminate is already available to the phallocentric tradition. Subaltern historiography raises questions of method that would prevent it from using such a ruse. For the ‘figure’ of woman, the relationship between woman and silence can be plotted by women themselves; race and class differences are subsumed under that charge. Subaltern historiography must confront the impossibility of such gestures. The narrow epistemic violence of imperialism gives us an imperfect allegory of the general violence that is the possibility of an episteme.”An Introduction to Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak?
“An extraordinary criticism of the dangers of trying to talk for those who have no voice in society. Why? Because it is extremely hard to truly understand what you have only heard about, and not experienced.” - Race Issues and Racism
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Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure, Journal of Modern Literature
“Contemporary American poetry by black women writers challenges a theory of metamodernism that would identify the acceptance of “failure” as a central attitude of metamodern art and literature. Metadmodernist poetry by Harryette Mullen and Evie Shockley explicitly engages the politics of form that characterizes avant-garde modernism; rather than figure political and aesthetic failure as inevitable or even desirable, these writers revitalize formal techniques of modernism (often modernism's avant-garde strands in particular) in order to offer critiques of state-sanctioned racism and heterosexism. These critiques do not redeem failure by aestheticizing it but rather lay bare the ways in which American society has failed people of color. The varying degrees of attention afforded to such contemporary political concerns by theories of metamodernism prompts the question ‘Whose metamodernism are we theorizing?’”
A Toolkit for Breaking Down Racialized Design in the Classroom, Racism Untaught, AIGA
“Constructing necessary conversations in the classroom about issues of race in design isn’t an easy or comfortable task to take on. Our lack of information, limited personal experiences, or the fact that the conversation has been absent from design classrooms during our own education, make many design educators reluctant to integrate the concept of race into their classrooms. Many institutions offer resources and methods on how to initiate the conversation and create awareness in the classroom in order to support greater diversity and inclusion efforts, but little hone in on the forms of racialized design that surround us everyday. Two design educators, Terresa Moses and Lisa Mercer, are passionate about creating a design approach for other educators that provide an informed and intentional process to analyzing racialized design, understanding how it is systemically perpetuated, and then working to unteach it. The following Q+A with Lisa and Terresa share their project titled ‘Racism Untaught’.”How Do Tech’s Biggest Companies Compare on Diversity?, The Verge
The Verge created a set of interactive charts that break down diversity at some of the biggest tech comapnies: Apple, Google, Twitter, Intel, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.We Are in the Future, This American Life
“One of our producers, Neil Drumming, has recently become fascinated with Afrofuturism. It's more than sci-fi. It’s a way of looking at black culture that’s fantastic, creative, and oddly hopeful—which feels especially urgent during a time without a lot of optimism.”How to be an Antiracist
“Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.”Between the World and Me
“For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he’s sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him — most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of? In Tremble for My Country, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America’s history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings — moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago’s South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America’s ‘long war on black people,’ or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style—a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage—Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here.”‘Not Racist’ Is Not Enough: Putting In The Work To Be Anti-Racist, NPR
“For people dedicated to fighting racism, simply saying you're ‘not racist’ doesn't feel like quite enough. To effectively defeat systemic racism — racism embedded as normal practice in institutions like education and law enforcement—you've got to be continually working towards equality for all races, striving to undo racism in your mind, your personal environment and the wider world. In other words, you've got to be anti-racist.”Black Panthers
“Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive short is also a powerful political statement.”1- "Agnès Varda: Black Panthers," The Criterion Collection, accessed August 23, 2020, https://www.criterion.com/films/28627-black-panthers.
The Black Power Playlist, NOWNESS
“Activists and public figures speak truth to power in a fight for racial equality and justice.” This includes speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and others. - Intersectionality
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Introduction, Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality
“In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory. Charting the institutional history and contemporary uses of intersectionality in the academy, Nash outlines how women's studies has both elevated intersectionality to the discipline's primary program-building initiative and cast intersectionality as a threat to feminism's coherence. As intersectionality has become a central feminist preoccupation, Nash argues that black feminism has been marked by a single affect—defensiveness—manifested by efforts to police intersectionality's usages and circulations. Nash contends that only by letting go of this deeply alluring protectionist stance, the desire to make property of knowledge, can black feminists reimagine intellectual production in ways that unleash black feminist theory's visionary world-making possibilities”Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, Stanford Law Review
“The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite—that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or ‘person of color’ as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling.”Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, The University of Chicago Legal Forum
“One way to approach the problem of intersectionality is to examine how courts frame and interpret the stories of Black women plaintiffs. While I cannot claim to know the circumstances underlying the cases that I will discuss, I nevertheless believe that the way courts interpret claims made by Black women is itself part of Black women's experience and, consequently, a cursory review of cases involving Black female plaintiffs is quite revealing. To illustrate the difficulties inherent in judicial treatment of intersectionality, I will consider three Title VIP cases: DeGraffenreid v General Motors,5 Moore v Hughes Helicopter6 and Payne v Travenol.”The Urgency of Intersectionality, TED
“Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice.”Age Against the Machine: The Fatal Intersection of Racism & Ageism In the Time of Coronavirus, Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw
“On this episode of Intersectionality Matters, Kimberle Crenshaw is joined by two timely voices—Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, and Willie ‘J.R.’ Fleming, Executive Director of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign—to discuss how ageism, and its varying intersections with race, class, ability, and gender, is materializing in the fight against COVID-19.”What Slavery Engendered: An Intersectional Look at 1619, Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw
“In this episode, Kimberlé chops it up with Dorothy Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar in race, gender, bioethics, and the law. In a conversation that merges intersectional inquiry with The 1619 Project, which interrogates America’s history of slavery in order to understand racial disparities in 2019, Crenshaw and Roberts shed light on the lasting consequences of slavery, segregation, and White Supremacy, and their impact on Black women specifically. Their timely conversation highlights the relationship between the legacy of slavery and instances of modern oppression against Black women, such as the curbing of welfare, forced sterilization, and mass incarceration.”The Combahee River Collective Statement
“One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.”Why I’m Giving up on Intersectional Feminism, Quartz
“As the honeymoon wore off, I began to notice some things I hadn’t before. For starters, many white women announced themselves as intersectional feminists, yet, were still completely detached from the lives and issues of cis and trans black women and women of color. I also noticed that black women and women of color weren’t too quick to join the intersectional movement either. Instincts and too many bad experiences in white-centered environments made them very distrustful of intersectional feminism.”
Response Questions
Remember to cite specific instances from the text to support your views.
- How do race and nationality shape culture? Is it better to ask how race and nationality are shaped by culture?
- Is taking part in Western frameworks like our education system and museums/galleries a form of colonialism? Why or why not?
- Identify at least two examples where utilizing a post-colonial lens yields new understandings of a piece of art or design. What new things have you learned about the work? What are the particular aspects of the work that lend themselves to post-colonialist interpretation?
- What might it look like to decenter art history—to move the central focus from Western art and perhaps have multiple foci? What kinds of ripples might that have—for example, the number of required art history courses, the types of art being produced, or the types of art that might fall by the wayside.