Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
English
First Advisor's Name
Heather Russell
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Chair
Second Advisor's Name
Ana Luszczynska
Third Advisor's Name
Steven Blevins
Keywords
English, Cultural Studies, Skin Bleaching, Jamaica, Reggae Studies, Reggae, Dancehall, Colorism, Queer, Postcolonial, Colonial, Performance Culture
Date of Defense
1-14-2014
Abstract
This thesis examines how skin bleaching can be understood within the cultural context of Jamaican dancehall. I argue that as a cultural practice, skin bleaching can be viewed as a critique of the concomitant structural inequalities precipitated by colorism, which is a by-product of racism. In proposing skin bleaching as a queer performance of color, I attempt to illustrate the manner in which the lightening of the skin exposes the instability of racism and colorism as socially constructed, discursive regimes. If race and skin color are biological and embodied facts dictated by social reality, then bodies, which are racially marked and colored subjects, can be used to project counter discourses that challenge these specific regimes. The space of discursive limit imposed on the racialized or colored body-subject is a space from which critiques of dominant discourses can be projected, and bleaching does precisely that. I conclude therefore, that skin bleaching is performed resistance which challenges the dominating discourses on race by first destabilizing the notion that skin color is an immutable biological fact, and second by contesting subsequent discourses that are contingent on the “facts” of color and race.
Identifier
FI14040829
Recommended Citation
Harris, Treviene A., "Bleaching To Reach: Skin Bleaching as a Performance of Embodied Resistance in Jamaican Dancehall Culture" (2014). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1129.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1129
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Dance Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons, Other International and Area Studies Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
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