Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity

by E. Patrick Johnson

Performance artist and scholar E. Patrick Johnson’s provocative study examines how blackness is appropriated and performed—toward widely divergent ends—both within and outside African American culture. Appropriating Blackness develops from the contention that blackness in the United States is necessarily a politicized identity—avowed and disavowed, attractive and repellent, fixed and malleable. Drawing on performance theory, queer studies, literary analysis, film criticism, and ethnographic fieldwork, Johnson describes how diverse constituencies persistently try to prescribe the boundaries of "authentic" blackness and how performance highlights the futility of such enterprises.Johnson looks at various sites of performed blackness, including Marlon Riggs’s influential documentary Black Is . . . Black Ain’t and comedic routines by Eddie Murphy, David Alan Grier, and Damon Wayans. He analyzes nationalist writings by Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver, the vernacular of black gay culture, an oral history of his grandmother’s experience as a domestic worker in the South, gospel music as performed by a white Australian choir, and pedagogy in a performance studies classroom. By exploring the divergent aims and effects of these performances—ranging from resisting racism, sexism, and homophobia to excluding sexual dissidents from the black community—Johnson deftly analyzes the multiple significations of blackness and their myriad political implications. His reflexive account considers his own complicity, as ethnographer and teacher, in authenticating narratives of blackness.

Genres: Race, Nonfiction, Academic, Theory, Politics, Social Justice, Cultural Studies

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

E. Patrick Johnson (Ph.D.) is an African-American performance artist, ethnographer, and scholar.

Reviews

[Boka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m conflicted about giving this book only four stars. It contains some wonderful insights on authenticity and authorisation that I think many, if not all, readers would benefit from. At the same time, it‘s sometimes a bit slow to come to a point - and it covers such widely different subjects from such widely different (methodological) angles that some are almost bound to be less interesting than others do different readers.

[Chloë Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

like 4.75 stars. an incredibly astute and critical consideration of the functional consumption of blackness by both black bodies and non black people and how that blacnkess is performed and reperformed and unperformed by both black bodies and non black individuals cross contextually. the consideration of the function of the body, not just performatively but literarily, is one i will certainly be taking away with me. while i agree with accounts that the case studies were a bit disparate, that disparate nature (woven together by their common ethnographic methodological grounding) felt like it expanded the text for me -- i was able to get so many examples of blackness being appropriated across different field examples. my only wish for this text (that is keeping me from giving fully five stars) is a yearn for more traditional performance texts to be included. i had hopes for a traditional play text or musical to be featured as one of the main case studies which was not the case. i understand why that was not done (it may have been difficult ethnographcially or just didn't fit into the body of the work) but it is a wish that i had hoped to see. overall, i so enjoyed this book. and would highly recommend it to those interested in queer theory, black studies, performance studies, and the body as knowledge source.

[Justin Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was quite an arduous, yet accessible read. Overall, I appreciate the threading of the slippage between race, class, sexuality, and gender throughout the book and how these social positionings are not static. This book is a living archive and still unveils truths about the contemporary moment.

[Chris brown]

A good friend of mine sent me this book and I cant wait to read it, the back cover has the same theme and tone of a mid-term and subsequent final for the same class i just finished writing. I am looking forward to this read.

[Dinahw · Rating 3 out of 5]

E. Patrick Johnson really engages the reader on questioning authenticity and race. Helped me better understand race, performance and gospel music on a globalized level.