Revalorized Black Embodiment

Abstract

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance for Black persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience.

Psychic geographies of queer multiculturalism: Reading Fanon, settler colonialism and race in queer space

“…According to Fanon, there is minimal potential for political subversion in acts of performance, as it is easily co-opted by white colonizers and relies on tropes of Blackness and Indigeneity dictated by colonial culture (Coulthard, 2014; Hall, 2012). Other scholars, however, read Fanon for moments of liberation that can manifest in performance, including staged acts, as well as impromptu, individual actions (Bhabha, 2004; Davis, 2018; Hall, 2012).…”

“…According to Fanon, there is minimal potential for political subversion in acts of performance, as it is easily co-opted by white colonizers and relies on tropes of Blackness and Indigeneity dictated by colonial culture (Coulthard, 2014; Hall, 2012). Other scholars, however, read Fanon for moments of liberation that can manifest in performance, including staged acts, as well as impromptu, individual actions (Bhabha, 2004; Davis, 2018; Hall, 2012). Bhabha (2004: 85, original emphasis) interprets that within the racialized figure ‘is a strategy of ambivalence in the structure of identification that occurs … where the shadow of the other falls upon the self.…”

Judith Butler and a Pedagogy of Dancing Resilience

“…Adding this to the conceptual analyses of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and combining both with etymological analyses of Frantz Fanon (that I have pursued elsewhere), I now offer the full definition of the fourth and final move of figuration: "aesthetically militant, madness-impersonating, flourishing recirculation." 24 In brief, resilience is aesthetically militant because it is a constant combat against violent and oppressive forces (Fanon); it is madness-impersonating in that it taps into a relentless, schizophrenic energy directed against late capitalist norms (Deleuze and Guattari); and it is a flourishing recirculation in that it finds well-being in accepting, while constantly modifying, the circular nature of both itself and reality (Butler).…”

La construction identitaire dans le cinéma de Ngozi Onwurah : (re-)stylisation du corps et stratégies de subversion

“…20 La thématique de la danse constitue par ailleurs un choix intéressant pour montrer ce processus d'imitation : en effet, pour le philosophe Joshua Hall, « la danse […] possède d'importantes ressemblances phénoménologiques avec la description que Fanon fait du corps Noir dans les cultures racistes et coloniales » (Hall, 2011). Dans Les Damnés de la Terre, Fanon décrit la danse comme un processus de libération durant lequel le colonisé peut « s'exorciser, s'affranchir, se dire » (Fanon, 2002, 59) et contrer la conscience de son corps en « triple personne » (Fanon, 1952, 155).…”

“…Peut-être la prise de conscience acquise par les personnes Noires dans leur expérience de l'oppression Blanche a-t-elle augmenté leur capacité à percevoir les mouvements humains depuis différentes perspectives, leur permettant alors d'acquérir des informations potentiellement précieuses dans la société, et largement invisibles aux personnes Blanches qui les oppressent (Hall, 2011)…”