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dc.contributor.authorSyska, A
dc.contributor.editorPfeffer CA
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-21T20:00:19Z
dc.date.available2020-02-21T20:00:19Z
dc.date.issued2006
dc.identifier.issn1055-856X
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/15393
dc.description.abstract

The archive of Josephine Baker’s images is staggering. Hundreds of her photographs—dancing or frozen as in a reverie, with melancholic or comically crossed eyes, naked or glamorously clad—illustrate numerous books and writings, which portray, and attempt to explain, the celebrated African American expatriate in Paris. These photographs, paintings, and memorabilia are stored in museums and private collections; they are read and reread by performance and film scholars and those who are simply fascinated or intrigued by her countless personae. Multiple binaries have been used to explain her, but I argue that Baker invites us to see her as positioned within the boundary line that separates these binaries. I further ask what it means to be in-between, and how we are to make sense of a body that carries its spatiality marked on its body. In this paper, I offer a reading of Baker that concentrates on her infamous banana skirt as an important element of her dialectics, which brilliantly captures the contradictions and ambiguities of Josephine Baker’s self-representations.

dc.format.extent51-72
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoEnglish
dc.publisherUniversity of Michigan
dc.subjectfeminist
dc.subjectJosephine Baker
dc.subjectself-repesentation
dc.subjectvisual culture
dc.subjectwomen
dc.titleDialectics of the Banana Skirt: The Ambiguities of Josephine Baker's Self-Representation
dc.typejournal-article
dc.typeArticle
plymouth.author-urlhttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfsfront/ark5583.0019.003/--dialectics-of-the-banana-skirt-the-ambiguities-of-josephine?c=mfs;c=mfsfront;g=mfsg;rgn=main;view=fulltext;xc=1
plymouth.editionBodies: Physical and Abstract
plymouth.issue19
plymouth.volume(Fall 2005-Spring 2006)
plymouth.publisher-urlhttp://www.umich.edu/~mfsed
plymouth.publication-statusPublished
plymouth.journalMichigan Feminist Studies
plymouth.organisational-group/Plymouth
plymouth.organisational-group/Plymouth/Users by role
plymouth.organisational-group/Plymouth/Users by role/Academics
dc.publisher.placeUnited States
dcterms.dateAccepted2005-11-30
dc.rights.embargoperiodNot known
rioxxterms.licenseref.urihttp://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate2006
rioxxterms.typeJournal Article/Review


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