{"id":3144,"date":"2009-11-14T02:25:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T02:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=3144"},"modified":"2016-01-28T20:31:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T20:31:03","slug":"demystifying-the-%e2%80%9ctragic-mulatta%e2%80%9d-the-biracial-woman-as-spectacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=3144","title":{"rendered":"Demystifying the \u201cTragic Mulatta\u201d: the Biracial Woman as Spectacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Demystifying the \u201cTragic Mulatta\u201d: the Biracial Woman as Spectacle<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stanford Black Arts Quarterly<\/a>
\nStanford University
\n2.3 (Summer\/Spring 1997)
\nPages 12-14<\/p>\n

Stafanie Dunning<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor and Director of Literature Program
\nMiami University, Ohio<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know redbone girls got a problem.\u201d \u2014Cassandra Wilson, Blue Light \u2018Til Dawn<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cIndigenous like corn, like corn the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions. Like an ear of corn, a female seed-bearing organ\u2014the mestiza is tenacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of her culture.\u00a0 Like kernels she clings to the cob; with thick stalks and strong brace roots, she holds tight to the earth\u2014she will survive the crossroads.\u201d — Anzaldua, Gloria. “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” in Making Face, Making Soul, Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color<\/em>. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThey had splendid eyes, dark, luminous and languishing; lovely complexions and magnificent hair. — Harper, Francis. Iola Leroy<\/em>. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988) p. 48.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To talk about the complexities of subjectivity is to enter into a discussion which necessarily locates itself at the intersection of race, clans, gender and sexuality. When thinking about my own subjective position, I am confronted by constructions that simultaneously identify, name, abridge and abstract me. Sometimes they help guide my thoughts about myself; at other times, they limit my thinking, reducing me to general categories of color, class, and desire. My present task, interrogation of a biracial subject position, is as much a gender discussion as it is a racial one. My investments in this discussion are deep; I am writing theoretically and distantly about myself\u2014 looking for truths about biraciality that I recognize in the words of other theorists, hoping to trace for myself and my audience one thread within a complex, unraveling cultural text. I am not interested here with how biracial subjects manage their subjectivites; such an approach inherently positions biraciality as problematic, the historical consideration of which falls beyond the scope of this project. Instead I will explore the way biracial subjectivity is gendered through its construction.<\/p>\n

Women are the primary signifiers of miscegenation in literature and film.<\/strong> Likewise, the critical discourse on biraciality foregrounds the \u201ctragic mulatta.\u201d Yet, theorists regularly circumvent the issue of gender and theories lack interrogation of the point at which race and gender meet to sign biraciality. Visibility, i.e. what biracial people \u201clook\u201d like, makes up a significant part of biracial women\u2019s experiences with uniracial onlookers. Moreover, visibility informs biracial women\u2019s response to the uniracial \u201cgaze.\u201d\u00a0 This paper posits that biraciality is read differently \u201calong gender lines.\u201d While discourses about \u201cmulattos\u201d efface biracial men, biracial women are discursively foregrounded as \u201cexotic.\u201d Effectively, biraciality is inscribed with a specifically female status: the desire of \u2018uniracial\u2019 onlookers to exoticize biracial women inform the \u201cgaze\u201d which casts biracial women, \u201cspectacle.\u201d…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Demystifying the \u201cTragic Mulatta\u201d: the Biracial Woman as Spectacle Stanford Black Arts Quarterly Stanford University 2.3 (Summer\/Spring 1997) Pages 12-14 Stafanie Dunning, Associate Professor and Director of Literature Program Miami University, Ohio \u201cYou know redbone girls got a problem.\u201d \u2014Cassandra Wilson, Blue Light \u2018Til Dawn \u201cIndigenous like corn, like corn the mestiza is a product […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,1196,8,25],"tags":[1161,652,79],"class_list":["post-3144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-stafanie-dunning","tag-stanford-black-arts-quarterly","tag-tragic-mulatto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3144","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=3144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45449,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3144\/revisions\/45449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}