Skin Acts

Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer

Michelle Ann Stephens author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Duke University Press

Published:24th Aug '14

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Skin Acts cover

In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens explores the work of four iconic twentieth-century black male performers—Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, and Bob Marley—to reveal how racial and sexual difference is both marked by and experienced in the skin. She situates each figure within his cultural moment, examining his performance in the context of contemporary race relations and visual regimes. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and performance theory, Stephens contends that while black skin is subject to what Frantz Fanon called the epidermalizing and hardening effects of the gaze, it is in the flesh that other—intersubjective, pre-discursive, and sensuous—forms of knowing take place between artist and audience. Analyzing a wide range of visual, musical, and textual sources, Stephens shows that black subjectivity and performativity are structured by the tension between skin and flesh, sight and touch, difference and sameness.

“In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens provides a valuable contribution to the study of race and representation by offering a thorough account of the relationship between black skin and white gaze and the production of difference in twentieth-century US popular culture.” -- Brandi T. Summers * Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies *
"Skin Acts provides highly productive discourses for anyone interested in black cultural studies, performance theory, and/or racialization." -- Lia T. Bascomb * Contemporary Theatre Review *
"The book is well written and rich with analytic detail regarding each of the four case studies, particularly through the use of visual materials. Skin Acts is a valuable contribution to the literatures of race, psychoanalytic theory, masculinity, and performance." -- Devon R. Goss * Men and Masculinities *
"Skin Acts is an ambitious and well-researched study that anyone interested in the intersections of psychoanalysis and critical race theory should read." -- Rocío Pichon-Rivière * e-misférica *
"By pushing the reader to think about how multiple sites of self-definition and societal gaze create the racial, bodily landscape of the black masculine performer, Stephens makes an important contribution to black masculinity studies and performance studies, and articulates the importance for the field of skin studies. Stephens’s interdisciplinary project effortlessly blends performance theory, psychoanalysis, and historical theories of race, corporeality, and physiognomy to produce an accessible framework for understanding black masculine performers in the twentieth century." -- Brandon J. Manning * Callaloo *

ISBN: 9780822356684

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 544g

296 pages