Shadow Bodies

Black Women, Ideology, Representation, and Politics

By Julia S. Jordan-Zachery

Rutgers University Press

What does it mean for Black women to organize in a political context that has generally ignored them or been unresponsive although Black women have shown themselves an important voting bloc? How for example, does #sayhername translate into a political agenda that manifests itself in specific policies? Shadow Bodies focuses on the positionality of the Black woman’s body, which serves as a springboard for helping us think through political and cultural representations. It does so by asking: How do discursive practices, both speech and silences, support and maintain hegemonic understandings of Black womanhood thereby rendering some Black women as shadow bodies, unseen and unremarked upon?

Grounded in Black feminist thought, Julia S. Jordan-Zachery looks at the functioning of scripts ascribed to Black women’s bodies in the framing of HIV/AIDS, domestic abuse, and mental illness and how such functioning renders some bodies invisible in Black politics in general and Black women’s politics specifically.

Shadow Bodies engages the work of Hurston and Morrison, Beyonce and Rihanna, in a theoretically nuanced examination of the scripts of Black Women’s bodies in popular and political culture. It highlights the material consequences of silence and rhetoric, and is an extraordinarily good example of interdisciplinary, intersectional, engaged political science.'
Renee Ann Cramer, author of Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump

‘Shadow Bodies takes the reader on a sobering journey through aspects of black womanhood that are usually divorced from social scientific inquiry: how personal experiences with and public discourses about domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness shape black women’s political socialization. Embracing classic formulations in black feminist thought, the author bravely exposes and deconstructs the forced silences that black women must break as we move ever more fully into American public life.’
Zenzele Isoke, author of Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance

Shadow Bodies engages the work of Hurston and Morrison, Beyonce and Rihanna, in a theoretically nuanced examination of the scripts of Black Women’s bodies in popular and political culture. It highlights the material consequences of silence and rhetoric, and is an extraordinarily good example of interdisciplinary, intersectional, engaged political science.'
Renee Ann Cramer, author of Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump

‘Shadow Bodies takes the reader on a sobering journey through aspects of black womanhood that are usually divorced from social scientific inquiry: how personal experiences with and public discourses about domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness shape black women’s political socialization. Embracing classic formulations in black feminist thought, the author bravely exposes and deconstructs the forced silences that black women must break as we move ever more fully into American public life.’
Zenzele Isoke, author of Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance

JULIA S. JORDAN-ZACHERY is a professor of public and community service and director of the Black Studies Program at Providence College in Rhode Island. She is the author of the award-winning book Black Women, Cultural Images, and Social Policy.

Preface vii
Introduction 1

1 Different Streams of Knowledge: Theoretically Situating This Study 19

2 Inscribing and the Black (Female) Body Politic 30

3 Uncovering Talk across Time and Space: Black Women Elected Officials, Essence and Ebony, and Black Female Bloggers 52

4 “Safe, Soulful Sex”: HIV/AIDS Talk 76

5 Killing Me Softly: Narratives on Domestic Violence and Black Womanhood 101

6 “Why So Many Sisters Are Mad and Sad”: Talking about Black Women with Mental Illnesses 124

7 Sister Speak: Using Intersectionality in Our Political and Policy Strategizing 140

Appendix 157
Acknowledgments 163
Notes 165
References 169
Index 195

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