This article was downloaded by: [Akdeniz Universitesi]On: 15 October 2014, At: 20:48Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKWomen & Performance: a journal of feminist theoryPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwap20Passing as politics: Framing black political performanceTavia Nyong'o aa Assistant Professor of Performance Studies , NYUPublished online: 03 Jun 2008.To cite this article: Tavia Nyong'o (2005) Passing as politics: Framing black political performance, Women & Performance: ajournal of feminist theory, 15:1, 53-78, DOI: 10.1080/07407700508571488To link to this article:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07407700508571488PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLETaylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained in thepublications on our platform. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionsP A S S I N G A S P O L I T I C S :F R A M I N G B L A C K P O L I T I C A L P E R F O R M A N C ET a v i a N y o n g ' oDo youmean,citizens,to mock me, byaskingme to speaktoday?-FrederickDouglassIn the short essay "Posing as politics," political scientist AdolphReed Jr. criticizes what he terms "progressives' current romancewithyouthculture andculturalpolitics ingeneral." Arguingthat because youth culture and cultural politics are compatible with"any kind of policy orientation," they "can never generate or substi-tute" butonly"reflect andperhaps support a politicalmovement"(Reed 2000 167,170) (my emphasis). Taking a firm position on thedebate between the so-called 'social' and 'cultural' left, Reed accusesmuch cultural politics of being mere "posing."In order to contrast politics and posing, Reed uses a telling anec-dote. In it, he recalls an"insomniac night"in1995 spentchannelsurfingbetweenC-SPANandRapCity,a show onBlackEnter-tainmentTelevision(BET).OnlyonC-SPANdoesheseeanexample of politicswhich he defines as "work to shape theofficialinstitutions of public authority." On C-SPAN he watches afilibusteragainst the Republican budget bill by two progressive DemocraticSenators, the late Paul Wellstone and Carol Moseley Braun (2000,170).What Reedsees on RapCity is leftunspecified,butwe canWomen5" Performance:AJournalofFeministTheory,Issue29,15:12005 Women & PerformanceProject, Inc.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 5 4 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Einferthat whatever televised performances aired that night, they didnot challenge "officialinstitutions of public authority"in the waythe filibuster did.The distinction Reed draws between generating or substituting, onthe one hand, and reflecting or supporting on the other, is a nuancedone.It plays off an internal contrast within each set of terms, whichare then in turn contrastedto each other. Performance(and I trustI will not greatly distort Reed's meaning if, for purposes of my argu-ments here, I treat what he calls "culturalpolitics" andwhat I willcall "performance"as broadly relatedideas) cannot generate poli-tics, we are told. Norcan performance,by contrast, substitute forthem. Performancecan, however, reflect politics and, contrastingly,it can also support them. The nuance of this position allows Reed tostrike a balance between performanceand politics, critiquing whathe sees as the exaggeratedclaims madeforculture'spoliticaleffi-cacy, while eschewing the moralizing tone of many critics of youthculture. He is, afterall, watching both C-SPANand BET.Suspicious of culturalpolitics, Reedis nottotally dismissive ofperformance. His anecdote indeed highlights the mediated and per-formative character o both politics and performance. What is moreperformance-likethan a Senatorial filibuster (remember Mr. Smithgoes to Washington)} Or more mediated than a television broadcast?Whateverdistinctioncan be drawnbetweenSenators BraunandWellstone'stelevisedeloquence andwhichevervideo was playingthat night in1995, it is surely not that only one of them was a per-formance. Rather, it seems that according to Reed's argument, oneperformanceis intrinsically political, while the other is only extrin-sicallyso. Yetthisapparentsolutiononlyopensupyetanotherproblem.However plausible or appealing Reed's argument (who wouldn'twant to believe that the first African American woman senator wasdoing more"to shape the officialinstitutionsof publicauthority"thanthe latest bootyshaking video?) there nonetheless seems to bean arbitrariness to it. Culture and performanceare suspect becausethey can support "any kind of policy orientation." In the essay, Reedgives theexample of a vociferousdefenderof hiphop whoturnsaround and parrots dated arguments about the "culture of poverty,"andhispointis taken.Butisn'tit alsothecasethatpolitics canpossess "any kind of policy orientation"? Republicans filibuster too.Inattemptingto articulatethereasonablegroundsforourcom-monsense perceptionthat there is such a thing as politics as distinctDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V 1 A N Y O N G ' O 5 5frompolitical posturing, Reed's essay actually raises doubts aboutwhere or how to draw the line. Nevermind how or why exactly, weare leftto infer, it is prettyclear thatthere is a differencebetweenpolitics and performance, and furthermore,it is pretty clear that thelatter oftenmisleadingly"poses" as theformer.Although Reed presents himselfas drawing a sharpdichtomybetween culture and politics, Iwant to insteadargue that what hisessay does is locate a problematic,the problematic of black politicalperformance. In this essay, I do not defendcultural politics per se.NordoIargueforthepoliticalefficacyoftoday'sblackyouthculture. While both might be arguments worth making, it is not myintention to make either here. Instead, what I want to do is to invertReed's gaze, and insteadof viewing performancethroughthe lensof politics, to view politics throughthelens of performance.I donot do so with the aim of rebutting Reed. Yet it will become clearthat I want to trouble the dichotomy he sets up between politics andposing. To pose, in the sense withwhich Reed uses the word, is topass yourself off as something you are not. Inthis sense, it is likepassing. While from the perspective of political science there mightbe an isolable activity called 'politics' which is intrinsicallydistinctfromother activities, performancestudieswouldargue that'poli-tics,' no less than other activities, is performedandperformative.Ratherthan cordonoff performanceas the inessential, thereflec-tive, or the supportive, performancestudies would argue thatper-formance generates and, as I shall explain furtherin my conclusion,substitutesforpolitics. To ignore this imbricationofperformanceand politics, I will argue, is to ignore a significantdimension of theproblematic of black politicalperformance.Rather than always seeing a dichotomy between posing and pol-itics, wemightalso see thewayinwhich,sometimes,politics isposing. Such a perspective need not lead to the depoliticizationofpolitics, althoughthat is certainlyone risk. Andwhile notlosingsight of the political in politics, we might also explore the ambigu-ity between posing andpassing. I justpointedouttheirsimilarity,but there are of course differences.Unlike passing, to pose is oftentocallattentionto oneself,eventodemandattention.Iwanttoexplore in this essay some implications of this relation of similarityand differencebetween posing and passingbetween'calling atten-tion to' and 'disattending'inrelation to political performance.Inaddition,Iwantto suggestthatthereare somespecificwaysinDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 5 6 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Ewhich 'race' matters in the framingof politics that furthercompli-cate its relationship toperformance.By focusing, as Reeddoes, ontelevised performance,I consideronly one of the influentialframesfor both black performanceandblack politics. Withinthisframe,I will suggestthatperformancestudies can contribute to the study and perhaps practice of politicsby highlighting the generative role of what is often taken to be merelysupportor reflection. Employing and critiquing ErvingGoffman'sinfluentialmodel of frameanalysis, I will show how black politicalperformanceisframed,anddiscussthevariousstrategiesthatrespond to that frame of blackness: among them passing, posing, cov-ering, and surpassing. Focusing on two instances of politicalperfor-mancethe televised debates between candidates for the Democra-tic Party nomination for president, and the HBO television show KStreet which blended actors into the flow of political eventsI willendbysuggestingthatourscreensarenowpopulatedwithnewfigures of politicized blackness whose theorization we must attempt.T h e F r a m e o f B l a c k n e s sIn Erving Goffman's1974 treatise Frame Analysis: AnEssay onthe Organization of Experience, a telling example opens the chapteron"out-of-frameactivity."Goffmanhas spentthe preceding twohundredor so pages of this work explaining how everyday experi-enceis"framed"adramaturgicalmetaphorand"keyed"aroughly musicologicalone. Humans experience their social world,he argues, throughtwinorganizing principles. The first is scopic:the framethroughwhich we "see" behavior. Thesecondis aural:the key in which we "hear" behavior (Goffman1974).1 Having illus-trated these (somewhat interchangeable) metaphors, Goffmanturnsto"out-of-frameactivity,"thesocialequivalentoftheflubbedentrance andthe discordantnote. Following his establishedprac-tice, he begins by excerpting a story fromthe news.Inthestory,filedfromPeking,China,PresidentKwameNkrumahof Ghanaaddresses a "state banquet"on the subjectof"Afro-Asiansolidarity." Thatthe first postcolonial Africanpresi-dent should be addressing a gathering of Chinese communist leaderson sucha topic seems a plausiblenews itemto have attractedtheattentionofasocialsciencescholarinColdWarAmerica.2Goffman'sinterestwas not drawn, however, to the contentof thespeech, butto its context. Nkrumah'sspeechcame shortly afteraDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 5 7-coup at home in Ghana had deposed him fromoffice, an event thathe "publicly ignored" during his state visit to China. As the news-paper reportgoes on to add,Appearingtenseandgrim,Nkrumah[acted] as ifnothinghadhappenedinhis homecountry,wherethe armyhas seizedpower. HisChinesehostsalsopolitely refrainedfrommaking any public commentonthecoup,whichtookplaceasNkrumahwas.flyingherefromBurma...Thewholeatmospherewas pervadedwith a strained,abnormalandalmostunrealatmospherecausedbya situationunprece-dented in the normally rigid protocol of officialvisitsto Peking.(1974,202)Goffmanoffersthis storyas an exampleofwhathe calls"disat-tending a significantdistalevent"(1974, 202). Oneconditionedresponse to "out-of-frame"activities, according toGoffman,is tosimplyignore or "disattend"them. Inorder to preserve the senseof reality surrounding a state visit, Nkrumah and the Chinese com-munists are placedin the paradoxicalpositionof having to behave"as if nothing hadhappened." Thisillustratedan"extreme case"( 1974, 202) of disattentionin whichthe effortto maintainthe realmeaningfulnessof social experience produced an abnormal, strainedand"almost unreal" result.TheNkrumahincidentthus made.manifesta performanceofeveryday life that would ordinarilygo unnoticed. Quiteexplicitly,Goffmanimplies that politics, andin this case, postcolonialblackpolitics, can be understoodas behavior, as more or less like otheractivities. The tools of sociology, his example suggests, are as applic-able to understanding Nkrumah's political performanceas they aretoanybanalexampleofdisattention(suchasignoringyouremployer's bad breath). Yet in his analysis, Goffmanhimself disat-tends two significant"distal events." The first is the ostensibly post-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racistspeech being given by onerevolutionaryleader to a group of others. Ifthe "frame"of FrameAnalysis is a slightlyquirkyversionof empiricalsociology(withnewspaper clippings, a.k.a. "strips of behavior," as the principle cat-egoryof evidence) thenGoffmanhimselfmust find some way ofmanaging the "range of potentially distracting events" that pop upon every pagesuch as Nkrumah in Chinawith the consequenceDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 5 8 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Ethat the contemporaryreadermay experiencethe very"strained,abnormal, and almost unreal atmosphere" it is Goffman'sintent toanalyze. Inattendingto theconceptof"disattention,"Goffmanleads his reader to disattend to the constructedness of his own text,builtout of an archive of curious behavior. Theclipping andpre-serving of the Nkrumahin China article as an article o behavioralratherthan political interest exemplifiesan organizationof experi-ence that is just as characterizedby "normallyrigidprotocols" asthose ostensibly observed in China. Embedded in both this archivalpractice and the theoretical account of social experience built out ofit is a framing of news as "data," and a keying of politics as "behav-ior."3 Such a reductive model is hardly attractive as aperformancestudies analysis of politics, whatever insight it offersinto the conceptof social"frames."Goffman'smodel also failsto fullyaccountforanotherdimen-sionof social reality: 'race' andracism. Heignores thepossibilitythat Nkrumah's performance might be framedthrough that specificset of scopic and aural conventions that key behavior as black. Withthatpossibilityin mind, we mightsee a kindof unspokensuper-fluityin Goffman'sexample. As a deposed leader Nkrumah is "pre-tending"to be in power; he is "playing at"possessingtheperfor-mative authority of a head of state. But, as a black leader of a post-colonial Africannation, he is also understoodto be pretending to bein power, to be playing at the performativityof statesmanship. The"strained, abnormal and almost unreal atmosphere" created by anti-black racism, I would argue, framesNkrumahas a pretendstates-man, and Ghana as a pretend sovereignty, particularly in the anxiousmoment of decolonization.Discourseson Africaandon blackpeoplethathaveemanatedfrom the West, as scholars as various as Winthrop Jordan and AchilleMbemb haveargued, have been deeply conditioned by an early andformative judgment that black Africanand blackAfrican-descendedpeople are inferioror even subhuman(Mbemb 2001 1-18; Jordan1969). Milton Allimadi's analysis of The NewYork Times' coverageof decolonizationand independence in Africa,for example, showssuccinctly how anti-black racism framedpost-colonial black leaderslike Nkrumah. Delving into private correspondence between HomerBigart, aTimes reporter assignedto cover Ghana andNigeria, andhis editor Emanuel Freedman, Allimadi uncovers this comment:Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V 1 A N Y O N G ' O 5 9I'mafraidI cannot work up any enthusiasmfortheemerging republics.. .The politicians are either crooksor mystics. Dr. Nkrumah is a Henry Wallace in burntcork. I vastly preferthe primitive bush people. Afterall, cannibalismmay be thelogicalantidotetothispopulation explosion everyone talks about. ( 2003,6)What is revealing about this repugnant comment is howeffortlesslyit weaves ancient stereotypes"cannibalism"withthe latest popsciencethe "population explosion" into one seamless web. Anti-black racism is chameleonic, able to camouflageitself undershift-ing regimes of truth. The excerpt also is a small 'strip of behavior',as Goffmanmight put it, that illustrates how discourse is re-keyedwhen it comes to the subject of black people. In preferring the prim-itive people, Bigart also prefers his own cultural primitive. He beginsto utter a vernacular discourse relieved of the stress of euphemism.He calls a spade a spade. It is very relevant that Nkrumah in "burntcork"shouldaccompanythisshiftfromthepoliticallycorrectversion of events to what's 'really going on.' The enjoymentwhitesupremacist culture takes in blackface performance, the release suchhumor provides fromthe obligations of thought and indeed of pol-itics, seals and delivers this ideological maneuver.4Bigart's allusionto blackfaceminstrelsy, andhis keying of hisprivate correspondence as the "real" news fromGhana, suggest aconnectionbetweenhumorandtheperceptionofrealitythatisworth commenting on. Theconventions of anti-blackracism tendtoframeblack behavioras playacting, andtokey black soundasnoise. This is so even when meaningless or playfulbehaviors arethemselves taken as obtaining greater "reality" than the ostensiblymeaningfuland serious. Inthis latter case, as when blackperfor-mance is associatedwith liveness, naturalness, humor, andmove-ment, it participates in the 'ambiguity of play,' which is both a train-ing for the real, and that proto-realistic object of nostalgia towardswhich, in the figure of the child, we give the occasional nod (Sutton-Smith1997). Black performance, like child performance,partakesof the appeal of a certain fulsomenessthat is not, however,efficacy,but something like the penumbra of efficacy,part ofthatset of per-formances which are excluded from the frame, and thereforedefinedby it.5 The humor of black performance,the predictionthat blackpeople will be funny, is one way this membership without inclusionDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 6 0 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Eregisters within the consciousness of "common sense" within soci-eties structuredin racial dominance.Ontwo counts, then, the model ofbehavior-cum-performanceofferedby Goffmanis insufficient.It closes off a discussion of pol-itics qua politics, and it ignores the peculiar qualities of blackper-formanceunderconditionsofanti-blackracism.ReturningtoGoffman'stext, we encounter this comment:Given a spate of activity that is framedin a particularway...it seems inevitable that other modes and lines ofactivity (including communicationnarrowlydefined)will simultaneously occur in the same locale, segregatedfromwhatofficiallydominates, andwill betreated,when treated at all, as something apart. In other words,participants pursue a line of activitya story lineacross a range of events that are treated as out of frame,subordinatedin this particularway to what has cometo be definedas the main action. (1974,201)Oneway of thinking this periperformativeefficacymay be pre-cisely in the language of a "lines of activity" pursuedout offrame.When black performanceis engaged in an explicit challenge to polit-ical and cultural domination, it will often be regarded as one of these"othermodes" that, while occuring "in the same locale" are "seg-regatedfromwhat officiallydominates." This"framing"of blackperformanceas "outof frame"may be partof what FredMotenmeansin arguingthat"blacknessis always a disruptivesurprisemoving inthe richnonfullnessof every termit modifies"(2003,255).Itshouldbe notedthat Moten's emphasis on disruptionandsurpriseintroducesa decisivelevel of dynamismintoGoffman'saccount of "out-of-frame"activity. It does not simply sit placidly as"something apart" much less is it nonchalantly"subordinated."Itdiscomfits.AnypresentusefulnessofGoffman'stheorytoanaccountingofblackperformancethereforebeginsinitsutilityagainst itself, in attending to topics that have themselves been "sub-ordinated"to "what has come to be definedas the mainaction."6S h i f t i n g t h e F r a m eTwo framesneed shiftinghere, the sociological analytic that dis-attends history and politics, and the frame of anti-black racismthatDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 6 1overdcterminesthe reception of black political speech and action.These moves are complementary and interdependent. ForGoffman'sown take on how a shiftingof frameis accomplished, we may turnto an earlier work, Stigma:Notes on the Managementof SpoiledIden-tity (Goffman1963). In Stigma, Goffmanstudies how stigmatized(i.e.oppressed) individuals behave. In contrastto deviants, whosebehavior purposefullysets them against society's values, the stigma-tized are "normal-deviants" who typically seek to lose their stigmata,eitherliterallythroughsomesortofcureorconversion,orbyredefining normalcy in such a way that others can disattend theirdif-ference, a process he calls "disidentification"(44-5).7 Thestigma-tized may also seek to exaggerate and parody their difference,exploit-ing fortheirown ends the normal's badfeelingsabout the stigma-tized. Goffmancalls this "minstrelization" (1963,110).Itis nothardto see thatthis model is very limited. InDwightConquergood'sterms, Goffman'stheory is at least two stagesoutof date, intermsof theoreticaladvancesinperformancestudies(Conquergood1992).Goffmanmodelsperformanceas mimesiswhentheoryhas long advancedthrough poiesis and emergedwithkinesis, the"breakingandremaking"(1992,84)ofculture.Butassumptions very much like Goffman'slive on, in journalism as wellas in some academic disciplines such as political science. Changingthe static view of performanceas reflectiveandmimeticrequiresreworkingGoffman'sanalysisofbothhowsocialexperienceisframed,and how the frame isshifted.Disidentification,whichforGoffmanis simply a sort ofinter-nalized disattention, has been robustly re-theorized by Jos Muozintermsmadeavailable bypsychoanalysisandqueertheory. AsMuoz puts it:Disidentificationis...aboutthemanagementof anidentitythat has been"spoiled"in themajoritarianpublic sphere. This management is a critical negotia-tion in which a subjectwho has been hailed byinju-rious speech, a name, or a label, reterritorializes thatspeech act and the marking that such speech producesto a self. (1999,185)This redefinedconcept of disidentificationembraces precisely thedimensionof social experience that Goffmanevades: the political.Reterritorialization,or what Muoz elsewhere calls "queerworld-Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 6 2 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C EA waxeffigyofPresidentKwameNkrumah from TheGreat Blacksin WaxMuseum, Baltimore, Maryland.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 6 3making"(1999,195-200),ispreciselytheterraintowhichGoffman'sstatic mappings of behavior can provide little guide. Atthe same time as definingsuchreterritorialization,Muozleavesopenfordiscussionperformancesthat, while minoritarian,do notreterritorializethespeech-act,but remainwithinthe territory ofthemajoritarianpublicsphere.Suchactsof"divacitizenship"within a space within which the minority subject lacks privilege havebeensuggestivelythoughtthroughbyLaurenBerlant(Berlant1997). I am thinking of such skirmishes into a dominant world, alikebut irreducible to Goffman'scategories of minstrelization,whenIrefer in this paper to 'performing black eloquence.' Under what con-ditions can the overdeterminedframe of anti-black racism be shiftedby heroic and surpassing eloquence? And how has sucheloquencefaredof late, given recentandradical shiftsin boththe racial andpolitical formationsof the U.S.?To pursue answers to these questions, the problematic of blackpolitical performancemust be thought beyondthe categories sup-plied by Goffman. Accepting Goffman'soverall premise that polit-ical activities, as with other activities, can be thoughtof asperfor-mances need not lead us to accept the static model ofperformancehe offers. That is, if all politics is passing as politics, that is, if whatgets to be political is simply what is "framed"andunderstoodaspolitics (rather than what simply intrinsically political), this neednot leave us with the limited choices Goffmanoffers for how minori-tarian and specifically black performances resist stigmatization. Weneed an analytical language that is more capacious and dynamic. Inthe next section, I make some speculative forays into such a languagethroughan analysis of a recent example of performingblackelo-quence in the majoritarianspheretheDemocraticpresidentialnominee debates. I then turn to a more ambiguous example of blackpolitical performanceRogerSmith's performanceas black polit-icalconsultantFranciscoDupronKStreet.AdoptingReed'schannel surfingtechnique, I work to show how each of theseper-formances,the one framedas politics, the other asentertainment,generate and substitute for each other.F r a m e s h i f t i n g i n p r i m e t i m eFrom late summer 2003 into late winter 2004, the majorcandi-dates for the nominationof the Democratic Party to challengetheincumbentRepublicanpresidentGeorge W. Bushin the fall elec-Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 6 4 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Etiondebatedeachotheron television,in a varietyofformatsandundertheaegisofa rangeofmediaandpoliticalorganizations.Among this group of white (and one Jewish) men, two black candi-dates appeared, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois andthe Reverend AI Sharptonof New York. Thepresence on a singlestage of two black candidates forthe presidency, one of whom wasa woman, provided an occasion to ponder the symbolism of powerin the contemporary U.S. In particular, that black candidates threat-enedto expose the contradictionbetweenthe competingculturalfictions that, on the one hand, anyone can grow up to be president,and,onthe other, that only a white man can representthe nation.Senator Braun and Reverend Sharpton took contrasting approachesto shiftingthe frame of the mainstream politics of'race,'a contrastI want to discuss in terms of covering andsurpassing.8Since this issue is about passing, I should clarifythat neither can-didate* soughtto pass in thetraditionalsense ofthe word. To thecontrary, bothplaced their candidacies withina traditionof blackliberalism, combining a deep faithin the promise of mass electoraldemocracy with a sharp and stringent analysis of the failure of thispromise to be yet realized. Both BraunandSharpton'scampaignsdrewinspirationfrompriorblackpresidentialruns, fromformerU.S.CongressionalrepresentativeShirley(Chisholm'sprecedent-setting1972 run, and fromRev. Jesse Jackson's much more widelydiscussedrunsin1984 and1988. Butthere BraunandSharptonpartedways, at least in their televisedperformancestrategies.Braun's pitched her candidacy to women in general, rather thanto blackpeople or to black women. Beginning withthe announce-mentof her candidacyin September,she repeatedlycalledatten-tionto the fact that she was the only woman in the race. TheNewYorkTimes, reportingonherannouncement,commentedthat"whileshemademultiplereferencestobeingawomaninherspeeches, Ms. Braun limited overt referencesto race. Instead, thatmessagewas embeddedinherchoiceoflocations.Herfirsttwostopswereathistoricallyblackcolleges"(23Sep2003).Fore-grounding'gender,"Braunstrategicallybackgrounded'race,'employing it as a backdrop ratherthan base.Braun's self-presentationon television was polished, sunny, andnon-confrontational(except towards George Bush). She permittedheraudienceto disattend'race' by shiftingthe frameto'gender.'Such a shiftmust be understoodin the context of mainstream pol-itics,ratherthanintermsofthe'intersectinality'employedbyDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 1T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 6 5blackfeministtheory. Braundid not present herself as the candi-date who, by understanding both 'race' and 'gender,' was uniquelysuitedto understandhow social issues intersectedwith each otherand to propose correspondingly radical solutions to entrenched andfundamentalcontradictions in our political economy. Sheratheremployed'gender' in the manner in which a political consultant orpollster might recommend, as a demographic to appeal to. 'Gender'politicsinthissenseisnotseenasdivisiveintheway that,forexample, feminismor black feminismwould be. The popularity ofthatdemographic figment called the 'soccer mom,' dutifullyshut-tling herchildren aroundin herSUV, is one example of howfarfromfeminismsuch a targetting of womenas a demographiccanstray (the multiplying television networks 'forwomen' is another).Braun'sframeshiftingto 'gender'performeda disattentionto'race' that was vouchsafed,perhaps paradoxically, by her own legi-bility'as black (as was clearlyexemplifiedin an example I discussshortly). For this reason, her performancecannot be thought of aspassingorassimilation,butas akintowhatlegaltheoristKenjiYoshino has termed'covering.' Yoshino definescovering primarilyin terms of disattending, and as therefore akin to passing. I want tothink about how covering is not so much a hiding, and thereforenotso much like passing, as it is a shiftingof frame.I want to think ofcovering in its vernacular sense of'lets cover that topic next,' or 'nowwe've got that covered.' An example, so common as to often go unre-marked, is the covering of 'gender'by 'race,' in which black mendisattend the specificityof their gender in order to call attentiontotheir ability to represent the race (Carby, 1998). Braun's covering of'race' by 'gender' was just more noticeable than the more mundanepractices of'raceman' politics, which remain, despite several gen-erations of black feministcriticism, alive and well.Covering, as explicated by Yoshino, is related to but distinctfrompassing. The discourse of passing mobilizes a paranoid9 construc-tionof reality, which is characterizedas the relationshipbetweenhidden, secret causes and misleading appearances. Covering, by con-trast, disavows such paranoia and in particular, it disavows hiding.Coveringinsteadsuggeststhatthere is nothingdeeperthanthesurface, and nothing furtherback than yesterday. Withoutdenyingtheframeof difference,withoutpassing, it minimizesthediffer-ence of difference,as it were, by declining to act it out.Coveringdoes not involve pretending to be something one is not. Rather,itis a leaping into a presentin whichwhat one is, one's essence, noDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 S 6 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Elonger determines or even predicts one's behavior. Covering is thusa particulareffectivestrategyfora politicianlike Braun, eagertoredeem a political legacy clouded by accusations of improprietyinoffice.Rigorously disattending the implausibilityof her candidacy,Braun projectedin the debates a persona that knew no reason whyshe shouldnot be president, andaskedheraudiencetosimilarlysuspendits disbelief. Such a 'pretending,' if it is indeed a pretend-ing, cannot be understoodwithin an either/or logic of true orfalseappearances. I shall return to this point when I discuss KStreet.Shiftingtheframefrom"the black candidate"to"thewomancandidate" allowed Braun to negotiate, to some limited degree, howher candidacy wouldbe interpreted. While Braun'splatformandpublic statements supported civil rights and affirmativeaction, shestrove to appeal to women voters across color lines.Underscoringthis strategy was her endorsement by the National OrganizationforWomen(NOW), whose formerpresidentservedas hercampaignmanagerfor a period (Chicago Sun-Times17 Nov 2003). Whateverthe status of Braun's own political viability, her appeal as an icon ofa new generation of black women in public life was undeniable. Thatsafe, non-disruptive, and upwardly mobile blackness is increasinglygenderedasfemaleinpublicdiscourse,markslessanyactualprogress for black women in America, than it marks an ideologicalruse, in which traditional 'feminine'values are mobilized todefusepolitical conflictscoded as 'masculine.'10 (This is not to imply thatrace politics are thereforemoresubstantivethangenderpolitics.Indeed, we can say that when it comes to the operations of electoralpolitics, 'race' and'gender'are equally mythologized, in thesenseRoland Barthes attributes to that term. Both are signs that have beenemptiedof their political content and assigned a purely ideologicalfunction.Thisideologicalfunctionretainsus formthepoliticalcontent it has robbed, such that both 'race' and 'gender' achieve evena heightened visibility within a political order in which feministandanti-racist politics have been all but eclipsed. When confrontedwiththemulticulturalconservatismof thepresentadministration,inwhich the public face of U.S. foreignpolicy has been botha blackSecretary of State and a black woman as National Security Advisor,we can see especially starkly the completion of this ideological ruse.We neednot diminish the heroism of a Braun or, forthat matter, aSharpton,if we admitthe degree to whichtheirpolitical action istakenup withinthe constrains of such a mythifiedpolitical field.)Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 6 7Braun minimized(withoutof course eliminating) anythingthatwould key her candidacy as the disruptive surprise of blackperfor-mance.11 For example, she did not intervene during the November4 th exchange when bothSharptonand JohnEdwardschallengedHoward Dean for saying he would like to appeal to (implicitly white)Southern men who display the confederate flag on their trucks. BothSharptonandEdwardscharacterizedthisstatementasraciallyinsenstive, while Deaninitiallydefendedhimself. Braunhoweverdisattendedthe controversy.AI Sharpton, by contrast, was widely perceived to be running for"president of black America," or "head Negro in charge," claimingthe mantles from Jesse Jackson. Sharpton made little attempt to dis-attend'race' in his debate performances.Instead,he appearedtorelishhis role as black performer.Inparticular,he embracedtheexpectation that he excel in improvised humor and impassioned elo-quence. Sharptonwore his hair in his signature 'process' style thathas been a topic of comment in the past. He spoke a vernacular blackEnglish, relishing in a vocal deliverystyle derivedfromboththeblack church and fromcivil rights activism. Aurally andvisually,Sharpton emphasized the disruptive surprise of blackperformance,andmade it a majorpromise thathe would bring thatsurprisetoprime-time during the summertime Democratic presidentialcon-vention, whether it was at the podium in prime-time or in the streetsoutside.12 This promise emphasized the outsider status of his cam-paign, and with it he ventilated the formal debate with a rough windblowing in fromthe street.As implausible a candidate as Braun, at times Sharptonindicatedthat his campaign had an ulterior motive. Rather than literally tryingtobeelectedpresident,Sharptonstrovetousethenominationprocess as a forumfor disrupting the Democratic Party's belief thatblackvoterscouldbetakenforgranted.Sharptonprojectedapersona that knew very well he could not be president, anddidn'talways seem to care if the audience also knew.Given his performance of outsiderness, Sharptonunsurprisinglyappealedto many televisionviewers andstudio audiences,them-selves 'outside' the process as observers rather than participants. Inany given debate, many or most of the applause lines went to Sharp-ton, and no one on stage could surpass his wit or eloquence. Inter-estingly, no one even tried to; they simply permittedhim to surpassthem. In news analysis of the debates, bothon air and in print, acurious phenomena emerged. Although commentators did their bestDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 6 8 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Eto concentrate on the 'real' candidatesa group fromwhich Braun,Sharpton andwhite congressman Dennis Kucinich were emphati-cally excludedthey oftenadmitted that on any given night Sharp-ton "won" the debate, at least forensically.The New York Times evenwrungits editorialhandsover "the emergenceof a new breedofcandidates" who "look terrific in a debate for an election they can'twin," andcomparedsuchcandidates to "dinnerguests whodon'treally know the host all that well but are invitedbecause they're sogood at table conversation." Sharpton, they noted, "stole the show,"andthis theatricalmetaphorwas exactly pertinent(15 Sep 203).This "new breed of candidates" (in typical racial logic, a single blackperson out of place multiplies uncannily into a new breed) is the bitplayer who refusesto adhere to their minimal part of the script, re-casting themselves as the star of the show, to the consternationoftheir fellow players and the delight of the audience.Inthedebates,Braun,Sharpton,andKucinichwerealmostentirely ignored by the other candidates, as if they possessed a stig-matathatmightruboff.Buttherewasvarietyevenwithinthisstudieddisattention.Braunand Kucinichwere treatedas peopleengaged in a foredoomed and awkward attempt to be taken seriously.They received the condescension of courtesy. But Sharpton's appar-ent willingness to be laughed at, to relish in the absurdity of his can-didacy, occasioned moments in which the other candidates and themediacommentatorsdroppedtheirguard.LikeNkrumahpre-tending to be a statesman, Sharpton was considered to be pretend-ing to be a candidate. Rather than disattend this fact, Sharpton actu-ally usedit to rhetorical advantage, at once speaking directlyto histelevisionaudienceandpointing outthatno onenothisfellowdebaters, not the organizers of the eventtookhim seriously.Such a calculated and theatrical use of the master's tools againstthe master's discourse I want to call surpassing. Like passing, (andthus unlike covering), a surpassing performance such as Sharpton'srelies on a paranoidconstructionof reality in which hiddencauseswork behind misleading appearances. Where passingperformancesseekto hide withinthis paranoidepistemology,surpassingseeksdialectically to reveal and negate the paranoid context. Andindeed,Sharpton positioned himself throughout the debates (in a way muchlike Dennis Kucinich and to a lesser degree like Howard Den) as atruth-teller and confronter,exposing the misleading appearances ofhis fellow candidates on several occasions.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V A N Y O N G ' O 6 9Sharptonand Braun'sstrategiescame to a headin onedebatewhere Sharptonattackedthe thenapparentfrontrunnerHowardDean for not including black people in his cabinet when he was gov-ernor of Vermont. This attack, as we shall see, came in the wake ofnumerous attempts by Deanto positionhimself as the progressivestandard-bearer for the party, one whose record on civil rights wasstrong, but not so strong as to alienate white voters (hence the con-federate flag remark). In calling Dean's bluff, Sharpton thus "playedtheracecard,"theU.S. expressionusedwhenblackpeoplecallattention to racism and thus disturb or interrupt non-black people'seffortsto disattend it. This led to a rare verbal conflictbetween thetwo black candidates, when Braun stepped in to deplore Sharpton'sdivisive use of'race.'"It'stimeforus to talkaboutwhat are yougoing to do to bring people togetherbecause people cannotafforda racial screaming match," Braun told Sharpton. "We have to cometogether. We have to come togetheras one nationto get past theseproblems."TowhichSharptonresponded"Iwanthimtobeaccountable, since he broughtup race. That'snot racialhysteria.Thatis accountability" (The NewYork Times, 12 Jan 2004).This shortinterchangedisplayedespeciallyclearlytheircom-petingapproaches.Inemphasizing"movingforward,"Braunshiftedaway froma paranoidframeof hidden causes andmislead-ing appearances. Inparticular, she strove to underplaySharpton'simplicationthat minority voters would be seduced andabandonedby Dean, who, like other white Democrats, was performinga mis-leading appearance of racial solidarity that did not match his actualrecord. Sharpton's challenge threatenedto reveal Dean as passingfor a progressive on civil rights. In contrast to Dean's passing per-formance, Sharpton juxtaposed his surpassing performance, reveal-ing andcalling to account misleading appearances, andemphasiz-ing to his constituency that they are right to be paranoid, that is, tobe vigilantandsuspicious of the nominationprocess, afterwhichthe winning candidate would inevitably tack right to gain backtheall important'swing vote' in the general election.B r e a k i n g t h e F r a m e ?As if followingSharpton'sinvitationto dig beneath the appear-ances of the nominationprocess and'see what is really going on,'thepremise of KStreet was that it wouldshow, forthe first time,the influenceof behind-the-scenesoperatives in politics, in partie-Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 1 0 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Eular, the lobbyistswho operate on KStreetin Washington,D.C.Insofaras the massive influence of lobbyists is taken by many com-mentators as an index of how much mass electoraldemocracyhasdecayed in the U.S., an analysis of K Street is usefulhere to extendmy analysis of black political performance beyond analyzing politi-cians' public statements and behavior. That is to say, if the businessof politics is decreasingly relatedto the 'charade' we see actedoutin such political performances as candidate debates (a phenomenonperhaps evidenced by, perhaps caused by, decreasing viewerinter-est in watching such programs), thenwhat KStreet offeredto dowas renewtelevision's active relation to politics in a way thatwasnot the usual misleading appearance.13K Street, co-created by George Clooney and StevenSoderbergh,broke ground in persuading actual lobbyists and politicians to 'playthemselves' in a narrative thatinterwovefictionalcharacterswithcurrent events.14 Shot "fly-on-the-wall,"hidden camera style, andedited in five days, each episode sought to produce a kind of meta-televisionthatportrayedpolitics, effectedpolitics, andportrayeditself effectingpolitics. SoderberghandClooneysoughtto visibi-lizetheframethroughwhichaudiencesperceivepoliticsandtoexperimentwiththe periperformativepolitical efficacyof such avisibilization.Inthefirstepisode,JamesCarville,playing JamesCarville,preppedcandidateHowardDean,playingHowardDean,foradebatesponsoredbytheCongressionalBlackCaucusInstitute.Dean had been very conscious of his vulnerability on "the Vermontquestion,"thequestionof how a candidate froma predominantlywhitestatewould'relate'toblackandbrownvoters. Thescenefocusedon the consultants coaching Dean on this matter, to whichDean initially offereda canned line fromhis campaign that "I'm theonly white personI've ever heardtalk aboutrace in frontof whiteaudiences." Carville then suggests Dean say somethinglike: if thepercentage of black voters in your state was any indication of one'sprogressiveness on civil rights, Trent Lott (of Mississipi) would beMartin Luther King, Jr. Later in the show, Dean delivered a versionof this line in the actual debate to the happy surprise of Carville andsome of the viewers of K Street. The line broke the frameof'enter-tainment' around K Street and left the viewer temporarily unable todetermine exactly what it was that one was watching. It was a kindof coupforthe show's meta-televisualambitions thatwas notbeDownloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y Q N G ' O 7 1repeated,butit didscore a telling pointaboutthe imbricationofperformance, mediation, and politics.During the sessionCarville had also mused aloud, seemingly inrelation to the politics of 'race,' that "that's a pit that you just can'tgetoutof."PoliticoPaulBegala,playingPaulBegala,wasalsopresentcoaching Dean on'race.' AfterDean answered a questionon slavery reparations, Begala informedthe candidate that his inten-tion in asking it had been to see if Dean would "pander" to his blackaudience, to the detriment of his general election viability. The"pit"of "race," this scene shows, is a trap for any white Democratic politi-cian, who needs black Americans to vote for him but cannot appearbeholden to them. What KStreetdiscloses, with the frankcollusionof the real political figures Dean, Begala, and Carville, is thatbothlines delivered by Deanthe candidate that can talk about race, andthe Trent Lott/MartinLutherKing linewere in a strictsenseintended to rebuff black voters, disarming rather than engaging theirissues. Such strips of political behavior form part of a liberal rhetoricgeneratedandcirculatedlargely among white men forpurposes ofreassuring themselvesthat they andthe system withinwhichtheyfunctionare not racist, while avoiding at all cost the"pitthat youjust can't get out of,"that is, a substantive engagement with racismand blackempowerment.If KStreet thus offeredreal insightinto the racialunconsciousof political sound bites, it also sought to explore the world ofthecynicalpeople who create them. KStreet returnedrecurrentlytothe"pit"to show how'race' also workeddifferentlybehindthescenes. Thedebate performanceon KStreet hadframed'race'inthe generic terms of electoral politics, in which'race' functionsasa euphemism for the black vote. Framed in these terms, 'race' couldbe thereby reducedto a sincere but somewhatnostalgic obligationto remember to not wholly exclude black American issues as part ofa mainstreamedpolitics thatleftsuchissues, forthe most, atthemargins.Theremainderof the show, however, beliedthis reductive anddismissive discussion of'race,' and pursued the alternative hypoth-esis that'race' saturatedthe cultural logic of Americanpolitics inall its dimensions, perhaps especially when a rhetoric of 'race' wasnot voiced but left implicit. The show pursued the radicalized liberalhypothesisthat racial equality remainedthe unsolveddilemma ofAmerican political life, thereby forming a kind of frame around pol-itics itself, delimiting the scope of political action. But,significantly,Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 7 2 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C Eitdidso intheparanoidstyle,forexample,by exposinghiddenracists or racial motivations. Instead, in a hybridizationof genres,K Street placed at its narrative core a character whose own relationto 'race' and 'gender' shared many characteristics with the figure ofcovering, which makes it a fit site for concluding my analysis.Washington'smost famous bi-partisancouple, arch-RepublicanMary Matalinand arch-Democrat James Carville, are theputativestars of the show. They run the D.C. political consultancy that Fran-ciscoDupr(playedby actorRogerGuenveurSmith)arrivesatfromCaliforniain the first episode, to 'interview'fora job he hasalready beengrantedby the powerful financial backer of thefirm.Fromthe very first shot, Dupris a figureof recurrentvisualfas-cination. His appearance as a must-hire job candidate at the other-wise all-white lobbying firm deeply unsettles his employers and col-leagues. An exasperatedMary Matalin asks shortlyafterhisinter-view: "Ishe black is he white? Is he straightis he gay? Is he West[coast] is he East?" Her middle questionis particularlypertinent,given Eve Sedgwick's hypothesis that the homo/hetero divide formsa kindof epistemologicalprinciple in Westernculture(Sedgwick1990). Dupris indeedrepresentedas of ambiguousskinhue andnon-specificaccent, and he is verbally evasive about the East Coastconnections he clearly possesses. But nothing in the scene connotesthat he is gay. So it is this very 'nothing' thatformsthe contents ofhis putative queerness. Because he cannot be framedaseither/or,he is taken to be queer (both as in odd and as in possibly gay).Two of Dupr's other colleagues are also unnerved by his arrival,so much so that they hire a private detective to find out more abouthim. Theygo into even greater bouts of paranoiawhenthe detec-tive calls them back to say he can't take this particularjobDupr'sinfluence apparently extends even to the mechanisms through whichone uncovers such influences. Out of the frameof 'race' and partyaffiliation(he evades the questionof whetheror not he is a Demo-crat), Dupr is the figure of paranoia par excellence. Repeatedly, blackand white characters try to place him in an appropriate frame, polit-ically and racially, but Dupr evades these attempts, both alternatelydisattending andcalling attentionto behaviormarkedas black. Hetoyswithhiscolleaguesdesiretoframehim,atvariouspointsenthusingaboutjazz andsuggestingthefirmcometotheaidofPhiladelphiamayorJohnF.Streetwhenheisperceivedtobe"playingthe race card"in his bidfor reelection. ButDuprneverpermittedhimself to be perceived as a spokespersonor representa-Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 7 3tive for black interests, even when he was taken aside by black char-acters and advised that he was perceived as such. In terms of blackpolitical performance, Dupr's performance was one of almost anti-eloquence. The figure or object of paranoia, Dupr himself scarcelyengaged seriously in a paranoid rhetoric.The key moment that drives his white colleagues into paroxysmsof paranoia comes when, angered that one of them is confusingtherappers Ice Tand Ice Cube, Dupr says "You have to recognize...the distinction between Ice Cube and IceT." Smith delivers the linewitha calibratedpause between"recognize" and"the." Thisgapforms a point of undecidability for this sentence, indexing the unde-cidability of his overall performance."To recognize" has a specificinflexionin black English: an "exclamation encouraging another toreflectuponhisorheractions,potentiallyinlightofpunitiveaction" (Urbandictionary.com). HadDupr stopped there, identi-fied himself verbally as a black person incensed at the lame or evenoffensiveignorance of his white colleagues, that would have been atleast reassuring to them. It would have framedhim, if briefly, as anangry black man. Butcompleting the sentence retroactivelyrein-statedan almost parodically perfectgrammar (of the 'he speaks insentences'variety), renderingtheminoritarianmeaningstrictlydeniable. Itis this performanceof both/andratherthaneither/orwhichinvalidatesthedesireto locate Dupras eithera mimetichybrid or a distinctly black surpasser.Dupr'shybridizedperformance,partaking of bothsurpassingandcovering, beholdento neither, raises interestingquestions. Inparticular, it raises questions about the paranoid style of Americanpolitics, a style that may need a radical re-think in order to face thecurrent politics of manageddemocracy within a permanentlymil-itarizedsecurity state. Intheface of such a politics, in whichonecan never be paranoid enough, the efficacyof the paranoid strategyof revealing hidden meanings is radically curtailed. So while Sharp-ton's performancein this tradition, in the final analysis, mustringsomewhat nostalgic, and Braun'sdeparturefromitinsufficientlyradical, K Street provides food for thought about the shifting contextwithin which such performances of black eloquence are now occur-ing. The radical waning of paranoia's efficacy is nowhere better illus-tratedthan in the underwhelmingimpact of KStreet itself, whichsuccessfullyexposed a greatdeal about Americanpolitics to verylimitedeffect(theshowwas notrenewed). Thiswouldseemtosuggest a limit to the politics of frame shifting and frame breaking.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 U W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C EC o n c l u s i o n : P a s s i n g a s P o l i t i c sThisessayhasdrawnfromtheobservation,madebyErvingGoffmanamong others, that politics is a performancegenre. I haveargued that black performancehas functionedas a kind of epitomeof performance,suchthat'black performance'is a kindof redun-dancy insofar as the black subject is always already performing. Thisblacktheatricality,whichIhavetrackedwithinpoliticalperfor-mances andacting performancesaboutpolitics, functionsaslantfromthe efficacyof the traditional"performative."Insofaras theblack political performerseeks efficacy,he or she seeks to do some-thing with blackness that has not yet beendone, to re-frameor re-key performancein such a way as to disruptthe ordinarydistinc-tionbetweenplaying at something andreally doing it. At root,Iwould'argue,this means that posing/passingis politics. Returningto what I called Reed's complex contrast, between generating or sub-stituting and reflectingand supporting, I would argue thatperfor-mance is best understood not as reflecting (performance as mimesis)or supporting(performancegenderedfemale) but assubstitutingfor politics, that is to say, as surrogating it. In evoking Joseph Roach'stheory of performance as surrogation, as the endless casting of sub-stitutes for a supposed original, I want to indicate both a practice ofcontemporarypoliticsthe search for the next black leader and animaginedfuturityin which we might have a black presidentanda practice of contemporary theory, the search for a newframeworkinwhicha newtransfigurativepoliticsmightbe located. Ifmasselectoral democracy is dying, there are other activities we may wishto engage inthaninits lifesupport.Whatthese otherthings wemightb doing are, I cannotsay. ButI believe I can say thatper-mittingblackpoliticalperformancetoemergeas aproblematic,rather than as a problem, may begin to change our sense of what isat stake.N o t e sMy thanks to John L. Jackson, Joshua Chambers-Letson, and myanonymous reviewer for commenting upon draftsof this essay.1.Goffmanassigns to framing the task of distinguishing between"meaningful"and"meaningless"behavior,whileheassignstokeying the task of distinguishing between "real" behavior and "play-Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V 1 A N Y O N G ' O 7 5acting." This association, in terms of Goffman'stheory, is purelyheuristic. It is quite easy to understand the distinction between realbehaviors and play acting through the metaphors of frame or prosce-nium, and just as easy to understand the distinction between mean-ingfulnessand meaninglessnesswith the contrast betweenmusicand noise.2.Goffman,aCanadian,spenthisprofessionalcareerintheUnited States.3. Fredric Jamesonhas discussed the disattentionof the social-science framein terms of a modernistintellectual projectof "sep-aration." Turning to a foundational figure in sociology, Max Weber,Jamesonargues that Weber's influentialtheorization of the "ratio-nalization"ofsociallifebothnarratesandisanexampleof"aprocess whose fundamentalpreconditionlies in the dismantling oftraditional activities... .Separation is registered in Weber's theory asthe analysis offeredby Taylor and scientific management in the ety-mological sense of that word: the 'unloosing' of the parts fromeachother, the breaking into componentsegments of thosetraditionalunits of work which seemed natural and which were generallyper-formed by a single person" (Jameson 2002, 83). If we transpose thisdiscussionof the work process to Goffman'ssubjecttheorgani-zation of social experiencewe may see the modernistdimensionsof Goffman'sproject: the breaking into its "component segments"of the phenomena of daily life. ThatGoffman,in contrast to Weber(or Taylor), is explicitly concerned not with society as structure butsociety as experience (fromthe groundup rather than the top downas it were) does not mitigate but ratherintensifiesthisnarrowingandseparating of "traditional units" of meaning.4. In suggesting white supremacist culture enjoys blackfaceper-formance,I am oversimplifyingmatters. For two importantcom-plicationsofthe relationshipbetweenblackfaceandracism,seeCockrell1997; Lhamon1998.5. Lauren Berlant's theory of infantilecitizenship, in whichthepublic sphere is refashionedfromthe perspective of a small whitegirl, provides one example of this principle of membership withoutinclusion (Berlant1997).6. My argument to this point may be compared to Roderick Fer-guson's critiqueof the sociologyof AfricanAmericanpathology(Ferguson 2003). Like Ferguson, I consider it to be critical to restorethe experiential viewpoint of those stigmatized as the basis of a nor-mative critique of stigma theory.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 7 6 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C E7.The appearance of an account of black experience in a discus-sion of various formsof bodily illness anddisfigurationis a tellingthrowbackto eighteenthcentury Europeanmusings on the "etiol-ogy" of black skin (Eze1997). Alternatively,it anticipatesrecentdevelopmentsindisabilitystudies. How a disabilitystudiesper-spective might interpret, for example, the prominence of blind per-formersin black music, shouldprove important in thefuture.8.CoveringisatermIborrowfromthelegaltheoristKenjiYoshino, who has coinedit inrelationto animportantargumentregardinganti-discriminationprotections.ThefullcontextofYoshino'susage, however, goes beyondmy presentpurposehere,which bothintersectswith anddivergesfromcovering as Yoshinodefines it (Yoshino 2002).9. Throughout this essay, I intend the cultural meaning of "para-noia" wherever the word appears, and not the clinical meaning. Byreferring to a style of politics as paranoid, I emphatically do not wishto pathologize it.10.Recent effortsto defendheterosexualmarriage as the insti-tutionthroughwhichwomendomesticatemenprovideanotherexample of how a decidedly anti-feminist"femininity"is deployedto shore up the maintenance of traditional bigotries, in this case, thebigotry against same-sex couples.11.It is perhaps too obvious a comparison, but one mightthinkofherperformanceinrelationtoOprahWinfrey'sinherverypopulartelevisionshow and monthly magazine.12.Inthe end,Sharptondelivereda primetimesurprise, goingoff-scriptto deliver a sharp challenge to President Bush, which theDemocratic Party had strove not to do. His speech was upstaged bythemeteoric riseofIllinois SenatorialcandidateBarackObama,whose own addressto theconvention,andsubsequentlandslideelection, leapfroggedhim into the frontranks of nationalDemoc-ratic politicians.13.Inmentioningtelevisedpolitics, I am thinking primarilyofads taken out by candidates and their supporters, and formal debatessponsoredby mediaandpoliticalorganizations. Onlysecondarilyam I thinking of the political coverage on news channels, or the leg-islative coverage of C-SPAN, although those are clearly also impor-tant venues in which politiciansperform.14.Episode one premiered14 Sep. 2003. The final episode pre-miered16 Nov. 2003.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 T A V I A N Y O N G ' O 7 7W o r k s C i t e dAllimadi, Milton. 2003. The Hearts of Darkness: How WhiteWritersCreated the Racist Image of Africa. New York: Black Star.Berlant, Lauren.1997. The queen of America goes to Washington city:essays on sex and citizenship.Durham, NC: DukeUniversityPress.Carby, Hazel V.1998. Race Men. Cambridge: HarvardUniversityPress.Cockrell, Dale. 1997. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrelsand Their World.Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Conquergood, Dwight.1992. Ethnography, Rhetoric, andPerfor-mance. In Quarterly Journal of Speech (78):80-123.Eze,Emmanuel Chukwudi, ed.1997. Race and the Enlightenment:A Reader. London: Blackwell.Ferguson, Roderick A. 2003. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queerof Color Critique.Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress.Goffman,Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of SpoiledIdentity. Englewood Cliffs:Prentice-Hall..1974. Frame Analysis: an Essay on the Organization of Expe-rience.New York: Harper & Row.Jameson, Fredric. 2002. ASingular Modernity: Essay on the Ontol-ogy ofthePresent. London: Verso.Jordan, Winthrop D.1969. White Over Black: American AttitudesToward the Negro, 1550-1812. Baltimore: Penguin Books.Lhamon, W. T. 1998. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from JimCrow to Hip Hop. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press.Mbemb, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.Moten, Fred. 2003. In the Break:TheAesthetics oftheBlack RadicalTradition. Minneapolis,MN:UniversityofMinnesotaPress.Muoz, Jos Esteban.1999. Disidentifications:Queers of Color andthe Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press.Reed, AdolphL.2000.Class Notes: Posing as Politics and OtherThoughts on the American Scene. New York: New Press.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky.1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press.Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014 7 8 W O M E N & P E R F O R M A N C ESutton-Smith,Brian.1997.The Ambiguityof Play.Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press.Yoshino, Kenji.2002. Covering.Yale Law Journal111 (769).Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 20:48 15 October 2014