{"id":18402,"date":"2011-11-24T03:52:35","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T03:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=18402"},"modified":"2012-03-24T18:49:09","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T18:49:09","slug":"critical-legal-theorizing-rhetorical-intersectionalities-and-the-multiple-transgressions-of-the-%e2%80%9ctragic-mulatta%e2%80%9d-anastasie-desarzant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=18402","title":{"rendered":"Critical Legal Theorizing, Rhetorical Intersectionalities, and the Multiple Transgressions of the \u201cTragic Mulatta,\u201d Anastasie Desarzant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Critical Legal Theorizing, Rhetorical Intersectionalities, and the Multiple Transgressions of the \u201cTragic Mulatta,\u201d Anastasie Desarzant<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Women’s Studies in Communication<\/a>
\nVolume 27, Issue 2<\/a>, 2004
\npages 119-148
\nDOI: 10.1080\/07491409.2004.10162470<\/a><\/p>\n

Marouf Hasian Jr.<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Communation
\nUniversity of Utah<\/em><\/p>\n

This essay provides a critical legal analysis of Anastasie Desarzant’s defamation case. The author argues that the use of an intersectional approach to legal discourse allows scholars to see how race, class, and gender issues influenced the social construction of the \u201ctragic mulatta<\/a>\u201d in key Louisiana<\/a> judicial contests. While the essay acknowledges that many contemporary and historical audiences have remembered \u201cToucoutou’s\u201d (Desarzant’s) racial transgressions, they have forgotten about how some of her neighbors rallied to her cause in the late 1850s.<\/p>\n

In recent years, a number of communication scholars have been interested in explicating some of the rhetorical strategies that have been used by feminists and other social agents who have resisted multiple forms of societal oppression (Demo, 2000; Dow, 1997; Shome, 2000; Squires & Brouwer, 2002). I would like to extend these insights by looking at how some women of color and their allies dealt with complexities of Louisiana slavery laws in the antebellum<\/a> South. By looking at some of the textual arguments and public performances that appeared in Desarzant cases of the late 1850s, I hope to show how racialized subjects dealt with some of the regulatory powers of a judiciary that was dedicated to the preservation of the powers of whiteness. At the same time,\u00a0I want to illustrate some of the rhetorical strategies that were used in these legal contests, so that we can see how “racial passing<\/a>” was “both a social enterprise and a subject of cultural representation” (Wald, 2000, p. II).<\/p>\n

Today we are used to thinking of racial identities in homogenous terms such as whiteness or blackness (Bonnett, 1999), but there have been times when racial identities had more fluidity and heterogeneity. For many years, scholars (Blassingame, 1973; Dominguez. 1986; Foner, 1970; Lachance, 1994; Omi & Winant, 1994) have been intrigued by the particularities of…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Critical Legal Theorizing, Rhetorical Intersectionalities, and the Multiple Transgressions of the \u201cTragic Mulatta,\u201d Anastasie Desarzant Women’s Studies in Communication Volume 27, Issue 2, 2004 pages 119-148 DOI: 10.1080\/07491409.2004.10162470 Marouf Hasian Jr., Professor of Communation University of Utah This essay provides a critical legal analysis of Anastasie Desarzant’s defamation case. The author argues that the use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,369,8,20,25],"tags":[7324,20754,7323,7322,8374],"class_list":["post-18402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-anastasie-desarzant","tag-louisiana","tag-marouf-hasian","tag-marouf-hasian-jr","tag-womens-studies-in-communication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}