Josephine Baker's Colonial Pastiche

Guterl, Matthew Pratt

doi:10.2979/blc.2010.1.2.25

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…"He Scarcely Resembles the Real Man": images of the Indian in popular culture, accessed on 14 March 2021. http://digital.scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/exhibit_ popularculture Bergère, she appeared on stage naked, save perhaps for a feather, or the (in)famous skirt of artificial bananas used in her danse sauvage routine. 11 She created a craze for the black body among white male bourgeois audiences, subjecting her nakedness to their gaze while at the same time entrancing and manipulating her audience and their expectations of 'savage' sexuality. As Anne Anlin Cheng points out, it is impossible to untangle where the appropriation of racial stereotypes stops and the artist's subversion of these begins, since Baker's dance, involving the focus on the surface (skin), the fascination with the primitive and the penchant for provocation actually exemplified modern notions of race, style, and artistic agency (Chang, 2013).…”

Section: Zenitism and Orientalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zenitism and orientalism

Glisic¹,

Vujošević²

2021

Zb Akad umetnosti

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reflecting on the centenary of the birth of Zenitism, this essay examines how the movement engaged with stereotypes about the Slavic Orient, and in particular the discourse on Balkanism. The European orientalist reading of the Balkans became especially profound in years surrounding the World War I. Seeking to invert derogatory characterisations of the Balkan Peninsula, Zenitists would embark on a mission to "Balkanise Europe" by presenting the artist from the East as a rejuvenating, revolutionary force emerging from a cultural tabula rasa. Zenitism sought to destabilise the dominant Orient-Occident discourse by establishing parallels between existing negative stereotypes of the Balkans and the aesthetic tropes of the European avantgarde. Specifically, Zenitists established the Balkan "Barbarogenius" as the archetypal modernist primitive - precisely the figure conjured by the European intelligentsia as the saviour for its listless modern condition. In addition, the Zenitist movement established an analogy between the hallmark fragmentation of the Balkans and the cultural cacophony of the avant-garde. The political and aesthetic strategies of the movement, the authors assert, bear a striking similarity with those of the Black Atlantic, and its 'in-betweenness'-its ambition to straddle two opposing worlds. Organised around its eponymous journal Zenit, which was conceptualised as "the first Balkan journal in Europe and the first European journal in the Balkans," Zenitism employed European avant-garde aesthetic strategies while simultaneously rejecting European claims to cultural supremacy. For Yugoslav, Soviet, and Western European audiences, the journal had two parallel goals: the creative "Balkanisation" of Europe, and a commitment to dismantling Yugoslav "nesting orientalisms" by fighting against the reproduction of negative stereotypes among the region's own inhabitants. Against a backdrop of European crisis and a global demand for a renewed emancipatory struggle, the ambition of Zenitism holds strong appeal today.

show abstract

Section: Zenitism and Orientalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zenitism and orientalism

Glisic¹,

Vujošević²

2021

Zb Akad umetnosti

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 17. Current research on Josephine Baker argues that she intentionally overemphasized, superimposed, and ultimately subverted a variety of racist stereotypes. See for instance Guterl (2010, 26): “Colonial pastiche, in this context, refers to several features of Baker's performance, including her well-known propensity to appropriate or mimic the prevailing representations of colonial people. It extends, as well, to an over-the-top assemblage of a diversity of representations, parts, styles, and genres, a technique of performance that is implicitly parodic, if not deeply subversive in unsettling ways.” …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Afro-Futurism or Lament? Staging Africa(s) in Dance Today and in the 1920s

Haitzinger¹

2017

Dance Res. J.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyzes two contemporary pieces, Faustin Linyekula'sLa Création du Monde 1923–2012and Vera Mantero'sA mysterious thing said e. e. Cummings, which respond to dance productions presented in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century by criticizing their “negrophilic” attitude. The article juxtaposes the analysis of these two contemporary pieces with rereadings of the historical choreographies/events of the 1920s to which they refer, namely, Les Ballets Suédois'sLa Création du Monde(1923) and Josephine Baker's performances. Theoretically revisiting historical works that developed within such a “negrophilic” framework alongside contemporary pieces relating to them can be taken as attacking this very framework, trying to “undo” the Eurocentrism inherent in its cannibalistic processes. Such a perspective may allow for the acknowledgement of plural, multiple views of Africanistic presences in an otherwise “negrophilic” context.

show abstract

François (Féral) Benga as Le Mercure Noire

Haitzinger

2020

Geschlecht_transkulturell

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Josephine Baker's Colonial Pastiche

Cited by 9 publications

References 11 publications

Zenitism and orientalism

Zenitism and orientalism

Afro-Futurism or Lament? Staging Africa(s) in Dance Today and in the 1920s

François (Féral) Benga as Le Mercure Noire

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About