The Will to Adorn: Beyond Self-Surveillance, Toward a Womanist Ethic of Redemptive Self-Love
In Characteristics of Negro Expression folklorist Zora Neale Hurston posits the second most notable characteristic of Black expression is the will to adorn. Historical accounts of the Great Migration in the United States reveal Black communities sought to navigate the problem of visibility throu...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
[2018]
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| In: |
Black theology
Year: 2018, Volume: 16, Issue: 3, Pages: 218-230 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KBQ North America KDG Free church NBE Anthropology NCF Sexual ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
Dress
B Black Church B Womanism B Black women B Policing B body and religion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | In Characteristics of Negro Expression folklorist Zora Neale Hurston posits the second most notable characteristic of Black expression is the will to adorn. Historical accounts of the Great Migration in the United States reveal Black communities sought to navigate the problem of visibility through respectability politics that appealed to the moral agency and goodness of Black people through self-censure and dress. By critically engaging French philosopher Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism, this article argues today's visible Black Church perpetuates not a free will to adorn as a result of moral agency but rather a self-surveilling culture that polices the Black female body through the establishment and enforcement of rigid codes of holy dress, as evidenced in Juanita Bynum's No More Sheets II. Au contraire, contemporary Black churchwomen indulging stylistic pleasures of the self through adornment, reclaim not only will but somebodiness, thus realizing a womanist ethic of redemptive self-love. |
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| ISSN: | 1743-1670 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Black theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2018.1492303 |