looking at and speaking for
Oct. 27th, 2007 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm reading that 'meaning of style' book.
some of the phrasing just bothers me.
The use of Negro as the polite word for Afro-Carribean (or Afro-American or apparently African) people seems odd from here. I wouldn't have noticed the word miscegenation (or known what it meant) if it weren't for LJ, but now I do and it's like tripping over a stone or something. But it's more generally the way it is talking about black culture from a white point of view that just seems sort of upside down.
Like there was a bit where it says "he reassessed the stigmata and turned Caribbean flashiness into a declaration of alien intent, a sign of his Otherness."
He's talking about people in the Caribbean, the "deviant margins of West Indian society". Now I have no factual knowledge to play with here, only the stuff it said earlier in the book. It says "The aspirations of early immigrants had been mirrored in the rainbow mohair suits and picture ties, the neatly printed frocks and patent-leather shoes which they had worn on their arrival in Great Britain. Each snowy cuff had reflected a desire to succeed, to 'make the grade' in the terms traditionally laid down by white society, just as, with tragic irony, all hopes of ever really fitting in were inadvertently belied by every garish jacket sleeve - too loud and jazzy for contemporary British tastes."
So he's reading the clothes as a failed attempt to fit in with British tastes. Even when they're worn in the Caribbean! Surely there they're just fashionable?
Then in this chapter it just said a "white audience began to see itself reflected darkly" in black culture. Which... doesn't seem to me to be what he goes on to talk about. I mean, if they're reflecting, that would suggest imitating white culture, yesno? But as far as I can tell what he's talking of is white people imitating black culture, which is the other way around. I guess the white people could see it the other way, but they're the ones who do the reflecting, yes?
Or something.
It's bothering me, like that word Otherness is bothering me. I don't know the subculture he's talking about, and some subcultures seem happy to be the Other - punk seemed to go out of its way to piss off everyone and be not-them, for instance. But mostly style seems to be about being Us, and all the rest of them are Other. So it's symbols of their subcultural identity showing what community they belong with, not what community they don't. So they're not signifying Other - unless some white guy is looking at them that way.
I know the book is ancient, it's just hard to read something that seems to be using words upside down or something.
Lots of it is interesting, I just wonder where he's getting his data from. Talking to people? Watching? Reading books? There's lots of books in the back. It just seems to me that, especially with subcultures, talking about them from the outside necessarily involves signal loss. Especially on account of ideological blind spots.
... poking the textbooks to see where their problematic is at gets a bit brain breaky.
some of the phrasing just bothers me.
The use of Negro as the polite word for Afro-Carribean (or Afro-American or apparently African) people seems odd from here. I wouldn't have noticed the word miscegenation (or known what it meant) if it weren't for LJ, but now I do and it's like tripping over a stone or something. But it's more generally the way it is talking about black culture from a white point of view that just seems sort of upside down.
Like there was a bit where it says "he reassessed the stigmata and turned Caribbean flashiness into a declaration of alien intent, a sign of his Otherness."
He's talking about people in the Caribbean, the "deviant margins of West Indian society". Now I have no factual knowledge to play with here, only the stuff it said earlier in the book. It says "The aspirations of early immigrants had been mirrored in the rainbow mohair suits and picture ties, the neatly printed frocks and patent-leather shoes which they had worn on their arrival in Great Britain. Each snowy cuff had reflected a desire to succeed, to 'make the grade' in the terms traditionally laid down by white society, just as, with tragic irony, all hopes of ever really fitting in were inadvertently belied by every garish jacket sleeve - too loud and jazzy for contemporary British tastes."
So he's reading the clothes as a failed attempt to fit in with British tastes. Even when they're worn in the Caribbean! Surely there they're just fashionable?
Then in this chapter it just said a "white audience began to see itself reflected darkly" in black culture. Which... doesn't seem to me to be what he goes on to talk about. I mean, if they're reflecting, that would suggest imitating white culture, yesno? But as far as I can tell what he's talking of is white people imitating black culture, which is the other way around. I guess the white people could see it the other way, but they're the ones who do the reflecting, yes?
Or something.
It's bothering me, like that word Otherness is bothering me. I don't know the subculture he's talking about, and some subcultures seem happy to be the Other - punk seemed to go out of its way to piss off everyone and be not-them, for instance. But mostly style seems to be about being Us, and all the rest of them are Other. So it's symbols of their subcultural identity showing what community they belong with, not what community they don't. So they're not signifying Other - unless some white guy is looking at them that way.
I know the book is ancient, it's just hard to read something that seems to be using words upside down or something.
Lots of it is interesting, I just wonder where he's getting his data from. Talking to people? Watching? Reading books? There's lots of books in the back. It just seems to me that, especially with subcultures, talking about them from the outside necessarily involves signal loss. Especially on account of ideological blind spots.
... poking the textbooks to see where their problematic is at gets a bit brain breaky.