Parting from the centre

Black hair/style, postmodernism, and identity

by Tamu Townsend

Postmodernism is commonly known as a politic or discourse concerned with "otherness", "difference" and "identity" - a reaction to modernism, which only touches on certain experiences. High modernism is rarely occupied with the black experience, and I feel postmodernism, despite its reputation as a reaction to modernism, is rarely occupied with it either. There is little relation made to black scholarship such as the work of Kobena Mercer and bell hooks, black literary traditions, or critical analyses on black experiences within either of these discourses. However, postmodernism does offer more of an opportunity to be an effective liberating space when looking critically at the black community. Unfortunately, it seems that it is not always used in such a manner.

I would like to discuss postmodern systems of meaning specifically in relation to this community. There are many postmodern notions already within the black community, including elements of its visual aesthetic, including those of the body. The ideas surrounding black hair/style politics and its relations to modernity, and postmodernity (a concern of cultural critic Kobena Mercer) provide a contextual framework from which these politics can be discussed. Although postmodern thinking provides obstacles and opportunities for the black community, the use of such a discursive tool can make a member of the black community wary - as when it is often used to deny that community's very existence. Can postmodern systems of meaning really help black progress or is it just an academic exercise?

Despite the concern for "otherness" and "difference" within the university, postmodern discourse is fairly hegemonic. The audiences these discussions are being targeted to are usually not the margins. Many times, they are being done for other academics. This makes postmodernism seem, at the very least, undesirable, or at worst inaccessible to the very people they are concerned with: those at the margin. In an attempt to broaden and politicize its impact, these discussions of meaning-making concerning the margins should be assessed for their political currency and for the possible redefinition of the psyches at stake.

bell hooks, a professor at City College in New York concerned and interested by proposals set forth by postmodernism, struggles with postmodern connections to her community:

The failure to recognize a critical black presence in the culture and in most scholarship and writing on postmodernism compels a black reader [...] to interrogate her interest in a subject where those who discuss and write about it seem not to know that black women exist or even consider the possibility that we might be somewhere writing or saying something that should be listened to, or producing art which should be seen, heard, approached with intellectual seriousness. 1

One of the mechanisms of modernism is that it tries to find an absolute "essence" of its subject, denying all the other experiences that make up a community. Within and outside their community, essentialist arguments have been used to fit the entire black community into easy categories. The natural texture of black hair has been used as one of the dominant visual elements in a system of ethnic signifiers. The first essentialist construction of black hair in the New World was that black hair was all of the things white hair was not. Instead of being assessed in terms of its own qualities, black hair was not good, beautiful, manageable or even interesting. As an ethnic signifier, its metonymic qualities were obvious - it also became the construction of what whiteness was not. This first essentialist argument was not created by the black community, but it was internalized. It is still in use today by individuals inside and outside the black community.

The black power movement tried to rectify this during the nineteen sixties. The movement used modernist tactics to attempt to fight the North American ideal of what blackness was supposed to be within and outside the community. In this system, straightened and processed hair is replaced with a different signifier for good black hair - Afros, and increasingly in the Caribbean, dreadlocks. This was when the second essentialist construction of black hair gained a foothold. This argument counters the meaning of the first essentialist construction, so it is also intimately tied to it. One of the main elements of this counterlogical semiotic system is that black and white are still diametric opposites - however, blackness is now all that is good and natural.

Unlike Kobena Mercer, I would argue that the main aspect of "the natural" is not its secondary meanings of a return to Africa or African-ness2, but a return to the texture of hair that blacks could be admonished for - by anyone from one's mother to a stranger walking on the same side of the street. Although it still assumes the problematic black/white dichotomy, this construction of how blacks understood the meaning of their hair was initiated within their own community in an effort to consciously make meaning, and in a sense, attempt to control their own realities. At this time, many were also using tools accepted by the centre to try and gain access to greater resources. The concept of meta-narratives was more readily embraced and implemented. It is ironic that it was the manner in which alienated, decentered subjects were heard with some degree of success. It was seen as less of a threat because these totalizing concepts were coming from within the community and more gains were being made than ever before.

In the nineteen eighties, many, using postmodern sensibilities, debated there was no "true" black community because many blacks had a multiplicity of perspectives on what constituted a black identity. Outside of the black community, this was used, most notably by the media, to demobilize activism within the black community. At a time when blacks simply sought to de-essentialize the black identity, television and print media were reporting that these multiple interpretations of identity meant that there was absolutely no commonality in the black experience.

Postmodern identity politics may still be crucial in some aspects of how members in the black community define themselves. Due to modernist thinking, essentialized representations of blacks have been created, and while many have little problem with this, there are a number of individuals who have been marginalized within the margin. This leads to a considerable shift in the way one must identify one's self. Many blacks who said there was no "true" black community did not concur with the idea that there was no black community was not there, and many identified themselves as members of this community. However, the goal was that one could still be a part of this community yet have a broader definition of blackness. Isaac Julien, the black filmmaker in a discussion on black popular culture, notes:

Basically, in the work that I do, I try to produce a self-reflexive response. I think blackness is a term used [...] to exclude others who are a part of that community. The "black" in black popular culture is really monopolizing that term. To create a more pluralistic interreaction [sic] in terms of difference, [...] one has to start with de-essentializing the notion of the black subject because it's very fixed at this moment[.]3

The landscape of the body has always been a place of contestation since colonization for the black community. In many places in the world, including the North American continent, many blacks have been colonized. It has been a colonization that has been physically and psychologically brutal. Many undergo what is called a decolonization of the mind. The constructions of blackness are constantly questioned. Some of postmodernism's theories are directly in tune with this way of thinking, now that a growing number of people from all walks of life are feeling alienation, marginalization and increasing disenfranchisement. The politics of racism which affects all blacks (as well as other movements) should not be disconnected with the politics of postmodernism and the politics of the body. It can be said that because black identities are so different from one another, that racism is not a factor in some black people's lives.

Instead of postmodernism denying that there is a commonality of racism, it can be used to discuss how such factors as class mobility has altered the collective black experience, and how black people experience different degrees and forms of racism in their lives, and how it marks their psyches and their bodies. I do not want to imply this is the sole factor which binds the black community together, but it is a key element in many people's decisions as to whether this is a valid discourse or not, since dealing with racism is one of the main goals of empowerment. Postmodern thinking questions what is "real" and what is "false". Naturalized positions in society for black men and women are being called into question to accommodate for all experiences of blacks as individuals. Julien feels similarly:

In terms of thinking about identity and hybridity, the notions of ethnicity and blackness always seem to be fairly fixed. There's a lot of taken-for-grantedness, even in the discussions here, of a unitary blackness that, to be honest, I think is a fiction. If we're going to discuss questions of de-essentializing blackness, what I mean by that is talking about blackness as something that has more scope, that has a wider frame of reference than this narrowing down to very specific reactions.4

According to postmodernism (and Mercer), no interpretations are privileged over others, but this seems to ignore basic cultural economics which are in place. Many talk as if the postmodern space already exists, but it is merely a space we would like to occupy. The perspective that all interpretations are equally privileged is attractive to the black community as well as a potential threat.

During this socio-historical moment individuals at the margins are being told they can provide their views on a number of issues from their point of view. The idea that everything is permissible may also strengthen old stereotypes, due to an inability to use the argument of whether a representation is "right" or "wrong" or carries cultural baggage. Those who are only recently gaining some sort of a critical voice to control their own representations, now have to share that power with parties who may not have a similar interest in mind.

Postmodern discourse tends to direct its energies to a fairly specialized homogenous audience who share a common knowledge and a sense of language rooted in meta-narratives it alleges it doesn't believe in. However, it tries to use these tools to discuss marginality and heterogeneity. There are many ideas postmodernism can offer the black community, especially its discourse on the knowledge of the self. However, these two forces will both have to work to clear a space to reach their own middle ground.

2 Mercer, Kobena, Welcome to the Jungle. Routledge, London, 1994), p. 106.

3 Dent, Gina (ed.), Black Popular Culture. Duke University Press, North Carolina, 1992, p. 274.

4 Dent, Gina (ed.), Black Popular Culture. Duke University Press, North Carolina, 1992, p. 271.