The "Blackness of Blackness": A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey

From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation

“…Twitter's discourse conventions, ubiquity, and social features encouraged increased Black participation; Black Twitter is Twitter's mediation of Black cultural discourse, or ''signifyin'' (Gates, 1983). In particular, Black hashtag signifying revealed alternate Twitter discourses to the mainstream and encourages a formulation of Black Twitter as a ''social public''; a community constructed through their use of social media by outsiders and insiders alike.…”

“…This article's analytical framework relies heavily upon signification's discursive constitution of Black identity (Gates, 1983;Mitchell-Kernan, [1972Smitherman, 1977). Signifyin' draws upon Saussure's ([1916Saussure's ([ ], 1974) sign/signifier/ signified, but purposefully reformulates that definition to draw attention to the signifier as the playfully multi-valent interlocutor while the signified evolves from form to object.…”

“…Thus, signifyin' becomes a practice where the interlocutor inventively redefines an object using Black cultural commonplaces and philosophy. For example, Gates (1983) …”

Africans as Objects: Hogarth’s Complex Portrayal of Exploitation

“…I believe that the African child who points to the horns of Actaeon resembles the stereotype of "the Signifying Monkey." Henry Louis Gates (1983) has defined this term as "the ironic reversal of a received racist image of the African as simian-like, the Signifying Monkey-he who dwells at the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying the ambiguities of language" (p. 686). As a literary figure, the signifying monkey is a trickster who can talk with great innuendo, make fun of a person or situation, and speak with hands and eyes (p. 688).…”

Third space sites, subjectivities and discourses: reimagining the representational potentials of (b)orderlands' rhetorics

“…The doubleness born of third-space subjectivity is not constrained by the binary that has proven so restrictive and reductive in its (re)presentational capacity. For further discussion on notions and experiences of doubleness, and multiplevoiced discourses and subjectivities see Anzuldua 1987, Gates 1998, DuBois 1998, Bakhtin 1998and Herndl and Licona, forthcoming, 2005 Throughout my work I reference the notion of the imaginary, the imaginative, and the imagination. I use these terms somewhat interchangeably, however, my own play with the notion of the imaginary can be traced (at least academically) to the symbolic interactionists and to the works of Lacan.…”