This study examines recurring motifs and personas in hip-hop. Interviews with influential hip-hop scholars, writers and music industry personnel were conducted and analyzed using qualitative methods. Interview subjects were selected based on their insider knowledge as music critics, hip-hop scholars, ethnomusicologists, publicists, and music industry positions. The vast majority of constructed imagery in hip-hop is based on a single persona, the gangsta. This qualitative analysis reveals why gangsta personas and motifs have become the de facto imagery of hip-hop. Gangsta imagery is repeatedly presented because it sells, it is the most readily-available role, and because of music industry pressures. This study is significant because gangsta imagery impacts African American social knowledge and the generalized perception of blackness. Gangsta imagery has also served to alienate black culture and has caused rifts in the African American community.

Cette thèse explore la façon dont différents personnages de Tar Baby et Americanah perçoivent et vivent leur « Blackness » dans un contexte diasporique transnational affligé par l’impact de l’origine, de la nationalité, du statut, et de la classe sociale. Cela est principalement fait à travers l’analyse du concept de la romance et de sa connexion profonde avec la négociation identitaire. En tandem avec un contexte social plus vaste, il y est aussi argumenté que la remise en question par Ifemelu et Jadine de leur identité noire et de leur « Blackness » est la résultante d’une volonté d’endoctrinement idéologique de la société hégémonique blanche. Ceci approfondi et intensifie par le fait même les négociations avec leur identité transnationale et multiculturelle qui se manifestent à travers le langage, le maniérisme et le style cheveux. Cette thèse se base principalement sur la théorie des appareils idéologiques d'État de Louis Althusser et sur le concept de conscience double de W.E.B DuBois. Elle s’inspire aussi de l’œuvre The Coupling Convention d’Anne DuCille lorsqu’il est présenté de qu’elle façon la romance non conventionnelle joue un rôle intégral dans l’affirmation racial et culturelle de soi / This thesis explores how different characters perceive and experience their Blackness in a transnational diasporic context, as inflected by national origin, status, and class in both Tar Baby and Americanah. This is mainly accomplished through analyzing the concept of romance and its profound connection with identity negotiations. In tandem with the larger social context, I also argue that the (self) questioning of identity and Blackness, is a result of a whitehegemonic society that seeks to ideologically indoctrinate Ifemelu and Jadine. Hence, it deepens and intensifies the negotiations with their transnational, multi-cultural identities, made manifest by language, mannerisms, and hair. This thesis primarily draws on Louis Althusser’s theory of the ideological state apparatus and on W.E.B DuBois’ concept of double-consciousness. It also relies on Anne DuCille’s The Coupling Convention, as I attempt to reveal how the unconventional romance plays an integral part in racial/cultural self-affirmation.

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[pt] Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo conhecer o surgimento das afro-pastorais no Brasil a partir do desenvolvimento das Teologia(s) Negra(s). A partir do Vaticano II, o mundo caminhou em direção a novos caminhos para diversas áreas de conhecimento, dentre elas a Teologia. Devido às viragens epistêmicas ocorridas no século XX, percebe-se o surgimento de novidades teológicas, a contar da ambientação contextual em que o ser humano está inserido. Este impacto antropológico se encontra com a estrutura racial que o mundo ocidental cunhou para dominação de povos ditos primitivos e inferiores, gerando a narrativa racial e, consequentemente, o racismo. Ainda que seja negado, o racismo perpassa as comunidades religiosas e a Igreja não está imune a ele. Urgiu a necessidade de uma teologia, nascida em contexto diaspórico, que afetasse essas marcas seculares de opressão. A Teologia Negra encontra-se nesse lugar e percebe-se teologias negras emergentes em diversos solos continentais, que influenciam umas às outras, como um grande quilombo mundial. Este cuidado coletivo nasce pela gestação de pastorais que, numa perspectiva cristológica, compreendem a Revelação pelo rosto do Cristo negro. Seja nos séculos das colônias, seja no pós-abolição, as afro-pastorais são lugar de acolhida e entendimento das (inter)subjetividades negras, que se dá no encontro da pessoa negra com a sua própria negritude perpassada pela fé cristã. Conclui-se que o nascimento da Teologia Negra sistematizada verbalizou o que já era vivido há épocas anteriores no Brasil no que tange a afro-pastoral, potencializou o que foi criado após a sua organização sistemática e afetará a Igreja de forma futura, trazendo um novo olhar para o objeto da Revelação e produzindo uma pastoral cada vez mais horizontalizada e descentralizada da figura sacerdotal. / [en] This research aims to understand the emergence of Afro-pastoralists in Brazil from the development of Black Theology(ies). Since Vatican II, the world has moved towards new paths for different areas of knowledge, among them theology. Due to the epistemic changes that took place in the 20th century, the emergence of theological novelties can be seen, based on the contextual setting in which the human being is inserted. This anthropological impact meets the racial structure that the Western world coined for the domination of so-called primitive and inferior peoples, generating the racial narrative and, consequently, racism. Although it is denied, racism permeates religious communities and the Church is not immune to it. There was an urgent need for a theology, born in a diasporic context, that would affect these secular marks of oppression. Black Theology is in this place and it is possible to see black theologies emerging in several continental soils, which influence each other, like a great world quilombo. This collective care is born from the gestation of pastorals that, from a Christological perspective, understand the Revelation through the face of the black Christ. Whether in the centuries of the colonies or in the post-abolition period, Afro-pastorals are a place of acceptance and understanding of black (inter) subjectivities, which takes place in the encounter of the black person with his own blackness permeated by the Christian faith. It is concluded that the birth of systematized Black Theology verbalized what was already experienced in previous times in Brazil with regard to Afro-pastoralism, enhanced what was created after its systematic organization and will affect the Church in the future, bringing a new looking at the object of Revelation and producing an increasingly horizontalized and decentralized pastoral care of the priestly figure.

The 1920s represented a time of tension in America. Throughout the decade, marginalized groups created competing versions of a proper citizen. African-Americans sought to be included in the national fabric. Racism encouraged solidarity, but black Americans did not agree upon one method for coping with, and hopefully ending, antiblack racism. White women enjoyed new privileges and took on more roles in the public sphere. Reactionary groups like the Ku Klux Klan found these new voices unsettling and worrisome and celebrated a white, nativeborn, Protestant and male vision of the American citizen. Simultaneously, technological innovations allowed for advertising to flourish and spread homogenizing information regarding race, gender, values and consumption across the nation. These advertisements selectively represented these changes by channeling them into pre-existing prescriptive ideology. Mainstream ads, which were created by whites for white audiences, reinforced traditional ideas regarding black men and women and white women’s roles. Even if white women were featured using technology or wearing cosmetics, they were still featured in prescribed roles as housekeepers, wives and mothers who deferred to and relied on their husbands. Black women were featured in secondary roles, as servants or mammies, if at all. Concurrently, the black press created its own representations of women. Although these representations were complex and sometimes contradictory and had to reach multiple audiences, black-created ads featured women in a variety of roles, such as entertainers, mothers and business women, but never as mammies. Then, in a decade of increased tensions, white-created ads relied on traditional portrayals of women and African-Americans while black-designed ads offered more positive, although complicated, visions of womanhood.

This thesis explores the interweaving of colonial and post-colonial British and Jamaican Laws and the interpretive legalities of sexuality, compulsory heterosexuality, and queerness. The research project begins by exploring the ways in which the gendered colonial law produces black sexualities as excessive and in need of discipline while also noticing how Caribbean peoples negotiate and subvert these legalities. The work then turns to dancehall and its enmeshment with landscape (which reflects theatre-in-the round and African spiritual ceremonies), psycho scape (which retains African uses of marronage and pageantry as personhood), and musicscape (which deploys homophobia to demand heterosexuality), in order to tease out the complexities of Caribbean sexualities and queer practices. I couple these legal narratives and geographies with interviews and ethnographic data and draw attention to the ways in which queer men inhabit the dancehall. I argue that queer men participate in a dancehall culture—one that is perceived as heterosexual and homophobic—undetected because of the over-arching (cultural and aesthetic) queerness of the space coupled with the de facto heterosexuality afforded all who ‘brave’ dancehall’s homophobia. Queer dancehall participants report that inhabiting this space involves the tactical deployment of (often non-sexual) heterosexual signifiers as well as queering the dancehall aesthetic by moving from margin to centre. In so doing, I argue, queer dancehall queers transition from unvisible (never seen but always invoked) to invisible (blending into the queered space) while also moving across and through, as well as calling into question, North American gay culture, queer liberalism, and identity politics. / Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-30 13:32:15.082

This study is an attempt to contribute to the discussion on theology and land restitution. The researcher approaches it from a theological background and acknowledges the many contributions on this subject in other fields. Since this is a theological contribution, this research has the Bible as its point of departure. Black people are deeply rooted in the land. Land dispossession destroyed the God-ordained and created bond between black people and their black selves. Land dispossession also had a terrible economic impact upon black people. As result of land dispossession Bantustans were established. These black areas were economically disadvantaged and black people were forced to live in impoverished conditions. Land, which was a primary source of life for black people, was brutally taken away from them. Consequently, black people were forced to leave the Bantustans in search for employment in “white” South Africa. Because of this, they were made slaves and labourers in the country of their birth. The Bantustans were not considered to be part of South Africa; hence black people were aliens in their ancestral motherland. The black communal economic system was destroyed as a result of land dispossession. (The black communal economic system refers to an economic system where everyone works the land and thus benefits economically from the land.) The results of this are still seen in present-day South Africa. The majority of black people are still living at the margins of society because in the past, they were made subservient and dependent on white people to survive economically. Since apartheid was a system that was sustained on cheap black labour, this dependency on the white economy was systemic and generational. It is for this very reason that we see the very disproportionate face of the economy today. In an attempt to arrest the imbalance, the restoration of land to black people is inevitable. It is only then that black people will be liberated from being overly dependent on white people for their 3 survival. Land dispossession also had a terrible impact upon the identity and “blackness” of black people; black people internalised oppression as a result of the apartheid system, which was affirmed by the Dutch Reformed Church as a God-ordained system. This system officially paved the way and was used as the vehicle for land dispossession in South Africa; it destroyed black people and it is therefore not by chance that black people have become the greatest consumers. The identity of black people is deeply rooted in their ancestral motherland and land dispossession had a brutal impact upon the blackness of black people. Black people, as a result of land dispossession, started to doubt their humanness. Land dispossession also had a dreadful impact upon the relationships of black people with themselves and the relationships between white people and black people. These relationships were immorally and officially damaged by the apartheid system, which was deeply structural. Thus, when dealing with the land question in South Africa, the fact that it is deeply structural should be kept in mind. The church is entrusted with the task of reconciling the damaged relationships in a transformational manner. This can only be done when black people and white people engage and embrace each other on an equal basis. But black people and white people in South Africa cannot be on an equal basis as long as structural divisions which still advantage some and disadvantage others are not dealt with in a transformational manner. Therefore the need for land restitution in South Africa is necessary today because it does not only relate to the issues of faith and identity, but it is also economic. The consequences of the dispossession of land in the past are still evident in present-day South Africa. Land dispossession has had a terrible impact upon the faith of black people, whose faith is strongly linked to land (place). Faith and belonging are interrelated. The restoration of land to black people is necessary to reconcile black people with their faith and consequently with themselves. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Theological Ethics)

À partir des années 90, parmi les transformations qu’entraine l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique à Cuba et au milieu des redéfinitions de la cubanité, apparaissent des œuvres narratives contre-discursives et actualisées sur la négritude, la race et le racisme. La représentation du Noir dans les romans de cette période prend toute sa signification du fait que se configure alors un champ de discussion dans lequel convergent différentes modalités et perceptions. Notre recherche explore le terrain discursif entourant les définitions de la cubanité et la négritude qui circulent à cette période à Cuba, pour ensuite voir de quelle manière elles se répercutent sur les auteurs et textes littéraires. À travers l’analyse des oeuvres des écrivains Eliseo Altuanga et Marta Rojas, cette thèse reconstruit leurs dialogues avec l’historiographie littéraire cubaine, l’Histoire de l’Ile et les discours plus actualisés quant au débat ethno-racial. Au moyen de visualisations opposées par rapport à l’histoire de Cuba, Altuanga et Rojas élaborent des œuvres et des personnages avec des différences idéoesthétiques marquées. Ainsi, le premier focalisera sur la recherche d’une rupture épistémologique quant à la conception du Noir dans l’imaginaire cubain, soulignant les événements de l’histoire nationale qui considèrent le Noir comme protagoniste, ce qui renforce l’idée d’une continuité dans son état de subalternisation. En ce qui concerne les protagonistes de Rojas, elle fait appel à des mulâtresses pour raconter le processus de transculturation par lequel, à son point de vue, s’est consolidée l’identité culturelle actuelle des Cubains. Suspendue dans un espace d’énonciation intermédiaire entre les premières décennies de la Révolution et la Période spéciale en Temps de Paix, Rojas construit une trilogie romanesque qui s’efforce à signaler la coupure entre les périodes pré- et postrévolutionnaires quant au traitement du Noir. / The collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union implied many transformations in the Cuban society, which altered the traditional construction of identity within the frame of the nation-state. It is in that context where alternative new discourses on “race”, racism and negritude emerged. The representation of the afro-descendent in the novels of the 1990’s and 2000’s poses enormous interest since the literary text has been one of the spaces where identity markers have been renegotiated. This dissertation explores how social discourses on cubanidad and negritude have an effect on the writers Eliseo Altunaga and Marta Rojas and their literary production. Analyzing the works of Eliseo Altunaga y Marta Rojas, this thesis reconstructs their dialogues with Cuban literary historiography, the history of the island, and the discourses circulating around current ethno-racial debates. Altuanga and Rojas have opposed visualizations of Cuban history, and elaborate works and characters with marked ideo-aesthetic differences. Altuanga focuses on the search for an epistemological rupture in the conception of the Negro in the Cuban imaginary, emphasizing national historic events with black progratonists to reinforce the impression of continuity in their condition of subalternity. Rojas, on the other hand, turns to black and mulata protagonists to narrate the process of transculturation that has contributed, in her view, to the consolidation of contemporary Cuban cultural identity. From an intermediate space of enunciation between the first decades of the Revolution and the Special Period in Times of Peace, Rojas constructs a novelistic trilogy that signals the border separating pre- and post-revolutionary periods with respect to the treatment of the Negro. / A partir de los ’90, entre las transformaciones que se producen en Cuba por el colapso de la Unión Soviética, en medio de redefiniciones de la cubanidad, asoman renovadas y contradiscursivas narrativas sobre la negritud, las razas y el racismo. La representación del negro en las novelas de este período adquiere significancia en la medida en que se configura un campo de discusión en el que convergen diferentes modalidades y percepciones. Nuestra investigación explora el suelo discursivo en torno a las definiciones de cubanidad y negritud que se mueven en este período en Cuba, para luego ver de qué manera refractan en los autores y los textos literarios. A través del análisis de las obras de los escritores Eliseo Altunaga y Marta Rojas, la tesis reconstruye sus diálogos con la historiografía literaria cubana, con la Historia de la Isla y con los discursos más actualizados en cuanto al debate etno-racial. Por medio de opuestas visualizaciones en relación con la historia cubana, Altuanga y Rojas elaboran obras y personajes con marcadas diferencias ideoestéticas. Así, el primero se focalizará en la búsqueda de una ruptura epistemológica en cuanto a la concepción del negro en el imaginario cubano, destacando aquellos acontecimientos de la historia nacional que tuvo al negro como protagonista, con lo cual refuerza la idea de una continuidad en su estado de subalternización. Por su parte, Rojas recurrirá a la figuras protagónicas de mujeres negras y mulatas para narrar el proceso de transculturación por el cual, desde su perspectiva, se fue consolidando la actual identidad cultural cubana. Parada en un espacio de enunciación intermedio entre las primeras décadas de la Revolución y el Período Especial en Tiempos de Paz, Rojas construye una trilogía novelesca que se esfuerza en señalar la frontera que se establece entre los períodos pre y postrevolucionarios con respecto al tratamiento del negro.

Abstract This thesis acknowledges the social and cultural importance of education and the role the institution plays in the construction of knowledge – in this case of young Nunga males. It also recognizes that education is a contested field. I have disrupted constructions of knowledge about young Nunga males in mainstream education by mapping and rapping - or mappin and rappin Aboriginal English - the theories of race, masculinity, performance, cultural capital, body and desire and space and place through the use of Nunga time-space pathways. Through disruption I have shown how the theories of race and masculinity underpin ways in which Blackness and Indignity are played out within the racialisation of education and how the process of racialisation informs young Nunga males’ experiences of schooling. The cultural capital that young Nunga males bring to the classroom and schooling environment must be acknowledged to enable performance of agency in contested time, space and knowledge paradigms. Agency privileges their understanding and desire for change and encourages them to apply strategies that contribute to their own journeys home through time-space pathways that are (at least in part) of their own choosing.

Thirty-three young Black men of the Post-Hip Hop Generation (ages 18-25) in Austin, TX, participated in a qualitative study centering on questions investigating Black manhood, media use, and the consumption of popular cultural products. Further, the researcher examined representations of Black men throughout music videos, films, and MySpace profiles. The purpose of this study was to enhance our knowledge about how Black manhood is being defined, conceptualized, and expressed by young Black men, and how significant media and cultural consumption plays a role in their lives. This study probes six questions: RQ1: How do young Black males interpret the images and messages about Black men from mainstream media? RQ2: What types of cultural products are being consumed by young Black men? Why do they consume them? RQ3: How do young Black males define Black manhood? RQ4: Do these cultural products influence the ways that young Black men define/express Black manhood? If so, how? Focus group sessions were conducted throughout the study, which were video recorded and transcribed. Transcriptions were then imported into a qualitative software program known as Atlas.ti, where statements related to the purpose of the study were coded and analyzed. These coded statements were then compared to observations made by the researcher from the examined media representations. / text