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Duke University Press Books

Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer

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Title: Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer
Author: Michelle Ann Stephens
ISBN: 9780822356776
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Published: 2014
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Condition: Used: Near Fine
Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.

A 1673605

Publisher Description:
In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens explores the work of four iconic twentieth-century black male performers--Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, and Bob Marley--to reveal how racial and sexual difference is both marked by and experienced in the skin. She situates each figure within his cultural moment, examining his performance in the context of contemporary race relations and visual regimes. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and performance theory, Stephens contends that while black skin is subject to what Frantz Fanon called the epidermalizing and hardening effects of the gaze, it is in the flesh that other--intersubjective, pre-discursive, and sensuous--forms of knowing take place between artist and audience. Analyzing a wide range of visual, musical, and textual sources, Stephens shows that black subjectivity and performativity are structured by the tension between skin and flesh, sight and touch, difference and sameness.