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The Governmentality of Black Beauty Shame pp 65–84Cite as

White Iconicity: Necropolitics, Disalienation and Black Beauty Shame Scripts

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Abstract

White beauty iconicity is necropolitical because Black and Black-white ‘mixed race’ women live within shaming events produced by their aesthetic hierarchy positioning as ugly. Whiteness continues as the beauty ideal in the Global North/South-west and is a necessary defining context for aesthetic life. The promise of white ideal beauty continues to resonate negatively in Black and Black-white ‘mixed race’ women’s lives as it makes their beauties un-narratable by erasing their possibility for representation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I draw this from Judith Butler (2004a, 218), ‘If gender is performative, then it follows that the reality of gender is itself produced as an effect of the performance’. Also see Tate (2005, 2009) on race performativity.

  2. 2.

    Kiss teet is the primarily Jamaican name for an embodied oral gesture, which is more broadly known throughout the Caribbean and African Diaspora as suck-teeth, and also known as hiss-teeth, chups (with many variant spellings) and related to cho, chaw and chut. Kiss Teeth is performed by an ingressive airstream captured in an air and saliva pocket created in the mouth through varying configurations of velar, dental and lip closures and dental configurations such as pouting or protruding lips, lip slightly opened to one side, lips flat or compressed against upper teeth. Duration, pitch, continuity (steady versus staccato, for example) and intensity vary based on tongue position, lip tension, ability to hold one’s breath and so forth. Kiss Teeth has been typically understood as expressing negative affect, but can also express positive affect and is performed to indicate moral positioning (Figueroa 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Shirley Anne Tate

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  1. Shirley Anne Tate
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Tate, S.A. (2018). White Iconicity: Necropolitics, Disalienation and Black Beauty Shame Scripts. In: The Governmentality of Black Beauty Shame. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52258-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52258-0_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-52257-3

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