Suchergebnisse

Capitol reinvestment : riot, renewal, and the rise of the black ghetto -- Washington's "Atlas District" and the new regime of diversity -- The changing face of a black space : cultural tourism and the spatialization of nostalgia -- Consuming culture : authenticity, cuisine, and H Street's quality-of-life aesthetics -- The corner : spatial aesthetics and black bodies in place.

Reflecting on Bloch and Meyer's exploration of displacement-by-gentrification and their use of "aversive racism" to address a lack of serious engagement with race and racism in gentrification studies, I offer a conceptual tour of both gentrification and displacement, specifically how some scholars have defined both terms and used them to explore various dimensions of socio-spatial shifts. Then, I clarify the incompatibility of aversive racism and a Black geographic framework, since Black geographies place Black agency at the center of spatial production and emphasizes Black spatial experiences in the expression of Black spatial imaginaries and geographic visions of society.

Abstract This essay highlights the construction of black bodies as valuable in the fashion system as a mark of difference and evidence of diversity. Here, I also render the high fashion industry as a site of conflicting elements concerning the deployment and meaning of the black female body. To do so, I use a combined analysis of activism in the fashion industry, which calls for the representation of black models through the visible inclusion of more black bodies on the runway and in magazines, and a textual/image analysis of the July 2008 issue of Vogue Italia, "A Black Issue." I argue that representations of the black models in the Vogue Italia Black Issue present the "glamorous" black model's body as unthreatening, alluring, and integrated into dominant discourses of feminine attractiveness. I draw from the presentation of images in the high fashion industry to highlight instances when blackness is asked to prove a post-race and post-racist reality. In an industry in which models are celebrated for being "blank palettes" for designers and fashion editors to mold into a stunning work of art, I ask, what might black do here? Through the aesthetic transformation of race, the neoliberal dimension of race is being played out in the name of art and taste, making race visible even as it elides racism and locating (racial) difference under the rubric of cultural diversity. Therefore, the presentation of black bodies becomes less about their blackness, and more about their ability to sell a marketable black aesthetic.

La Douleur Exquise: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Un/Making of Blackness in the 21st Century, examines how neoliberalism operates as a cultural discourse and the distinctive ways that race is deployed through the constitution of bodies and spaces. My data for the project draws on the cultural politics of aesthetics and political economies of redevelopment. Using a mixed methodology of visual, textual, and ethnographic analysis, I examine two different sites of the discursive production of blackness and contemporary politics: high fashion and urban development. I develop an argument about the interrelatedness of neoliberalism, race, and aesthetics and maintain that neoliberalism embeds a particular logic about blackness that ought to be understood as an aesthetic politics or racial aesthetics. While scholarship on race and neoliberalism observe that neoliberalism dissociates race and racism from social actors and social formations, my project highlights aesthetics as a social formation, which is in turn an articulation of blackness specifically, and race, generally. By considering aesthetics, this project expands claims about neoliberalism and race that tend to highlight the political economic logics of how neoliberalism ideologically deploys race in service of capitalism. The study has two components: first, I explore how blackness is deployed on bodies by explicitly focusing on editorial images in the high fashion industry, and by developing an archive of industry publications, fashion blogs, interviews with designers, stylists, magazine editors, photographers, models, and fashion writers that feature descriptions, responses, and conversations in the fashion world about the role of race in high fashion. Secondly, I use ethnography to explore the discursive meanings and expressions of blackness produced within physical spaces of everyday life as they develop alongside urban renewal efforts along the H Street, NE corridor in Washington, D.C. I draw on African American Studies, Urban Sociology, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, and Visual Studies to guide my interdisciplinary exploration of fashion and urban renewal and their engagement with identity, visuality, and oppositional politics within the context of neoliberalism. Within each site, I empirically describe how blackness operates and identify the mechanics of how neoliberalism works as a system. To capture the importance of the everyday, I look to these innocuous spaces to concretely illustrate how neoliberalism appears visually and through discourses of racial authenticity, identity, and excess.

AbstractOur article explores the cultural politics of public space and the placemaking politics of urban redevelopment in the Atlas District of Washington, DC, a popular commercial district undergoing rapid gentrification. The major questions we address are, how do race and class impact the ways public space is controlled and/or managed in the context of rapid changes in the built, economic and social environments of the neighborhood? What role do those narratives play in justifying changes in and management of public space? We focus on uses of public space and describe how various forms of power are linked to the control of space in the context of gentrification. Our analysis focuses on designated public space in the Atlas District—the Starburst Plaza. By analyzing everyday practices around community control at the Starburst Plaza, this case study focuses on the discrete methods by which the symbolic and material inequities promulgated by the neoliberal state are reconfigured through struggles to define and manage contested public spaces.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction: Aesthetics of Gentrification -- Part 1 Spaces of Global Consumption -- 2. The Forces of Decline and Regeneration : A Discussion of Jane Jacobs and Gentrification -- 3. Silicon Wafers and Office Park Dreams : Cross-Cultural Designs, Aesthetics, and Art in and around California's Santa Clara Valley -- 4. Selling Authenticity: The Aesthetics of Design Boutiques in Montreal -- 5. The Import of a Narrative : The Role of Aesthetics and Discursive Elements in Fabricating Change in the Centre of São Paulo -- Part 2 Anxiety and Visibility -- 6. Race, Authenticity, and the Gentrified Aesthetics of Belonging in Washington, D.C. -- 7. Art and the Aesthetics of Cultural Gentrification : The Cases of Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo in Los Angeles -- 8. In Residence: Witnessing and Gentrification in Susan Silton's Los Angeles -- 9. Satellite Dishes, a Creative Incubator, and the Displacement of Aesthetics in Amsterdam -- Part 3 Agency, Voices, and Activism -- 10. Boulevard Transition, Hipster Aesthetics, and Anti- Gentrification Struggles in Los Angeles -- 11. Speculative Spaces in Grand Paris : Reading JR in Clichy-sous- Bois and Montfermeil -- 12. On Empty Spaces, Silence, and the Pause -- 13. The "Smart Safe City" : Gendered Time, Violence, and Displacement in India's Digital Urban Age -- Index