Black Femme Rising: Cosplay and Playing Mas as New Narratives of Transgression

Autor/in	Thomas, Cathy
Titel	Black Femme Rising: Cosplay and Playing Mas as New Narratives of Transgression
Quelle	In: American Journal of Play, 13 (2021) 2-3, S.320-355 (36 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1938-0399
Schlagwörter	African Americans; Females; Masculinity; Role Playing; Sexual Identity; Sense of Community; Clothing + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Afroamerikaner; Weibliches Geschlecht; Männlichkeit; Rollenspiel; Geschlechtsidentität; Sexuelle Identität; Kleidung
Abstract	The author argues that Black female figures disrupt the normative constructions of genre and gender in narrative-based costumed pretend play and turns body spectatorship into new narratives of speculation. For Black women at play, she asserts, cosplay (i.e., comic book and pop culture costume play) and masquerade (i.e., as during Caribbean Carnival) are rhetorical and performative cognates. She suggests that Black women at play highlight the paradoxical dilemma of their visibility and invisibility so that, in public (whether virtual or actual), their presence becomes a phenomenological experience and political expression of their capacity as world builders. She finds that, because the category of "Black women" in this research includes people who use an array of binary, nonbinary, and contested gender categories, Black femme praxis addresses the complex relations of the real and fictive worlds their play inhabits. To demonstrate the overlap between cosplay and playing mas (masquerade), she includes excerpts from interviews with science-fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson, cultural theorist Emily Zobel Marshall, and content from various Black female cosplayers on social media. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	The Strong. One Manhattan Square, Rochester, NY 14607. Tel: 585-263-2700; e-mail: info@thestrong.org; Web site: https://www.museumofplay.org/journalofplay/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01