Appositional Black Aesthetics: Theorizing Black Religion in the Visual Art of Carrie Mae Weems

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dc.contributor.advisorPinn, Anthony Ben_US
dc.creatorDavenport, Jessica Bobetteen_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-05-16T18:56:36Zen_US
dc.date.available2019-05-16T18:56:36Zen_US
dc.date.created2019-05en_US
dc.date.issued2019-04-19en_US
dc.date.submittedMay 2019en_US
dc.date.updated2019-05-16T18:56:37Zen_US
dc.description.abstractScholars of religion have long looked to forms of cultural production as source material from which to proffer claims concerning the nature and meaning of black religion. And yet, while robust attention has been given to mining literary and musical forms for religious significance, few scholars in the field of black religion have rigorously engaged visual and aesthetic methods and theories. This project contributes to efforts to fill this void by examining visual artist Carrie Mae Weems’s conceptual photography as a case study. In particular, I posit that Weems’s images are reflective of what I conceive as an appositional black aesthetic. Drawn from Fred Moten’s notion of appositionality, this aesthetic refers to art and images that depict black life with complexity and a type of multidimensional openness that extends beyond categorical frames of “positive” and “negative” images. This aesthetic is also an approach to analyzing images that emphasizes expansive explorations into the complicated nuances, creative improvisations and alternative social logics that attend black life. In identifying and delineating appositional black aesthetics in works from Weems’s oeuvre, I further contend that her images provide a visual rendering of what Anthony Pinn argues is at the core of black religion: a fundamental impulse or yearning for more life meaning that involves a push for expansive ways of being and fuller life options. But whereas Pinn frames the black religious endeavor as a “quest for complex subjectivity,” Weems’s renderings demonstrate ways of being and engaging with the world that exceed the fraught racialized classificatory paradigm of subjectivity. Rather than a quest for inclusion within subjectivity’s categorical schema, this project reframes the black religion as a generative enactment of the flesh. Informed by the work of Moten as well as Hortense Spillers and Nicole Fleetwood, this theoretical conceptualization situates black religion as the locus point of possibility for complex, open, ever-shifting ways of being that always already exceed the regulating social logics of dominant society and its prescribed ontologies.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationDavenport, Jessica Bobette. "Appositional Black Aesthetics: Theorizing Black Religion in the Visual Art of Carrie Mae Weems." (2019) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105389">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105389</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/105389en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectblack religionen_US
dc.subjectsubjectivityen_US
dc.subjectblack critical theoryen_US
dc.subjectCarrie Mae Weemsen_US
dc.subjectblack visual arten_US
dc.titleAppositional Black Aesthetics: Theorizing Black Religion in the Visual Art of Carrie Mae Weemsen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentReligious Studiesen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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