Performing Postracialism: Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education through Contemporary Blackface in Canada

Philip S.S. Howard

Open Access Published by University of Toronto Press 2023

Performing Postracialism

Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education through Contemporary Blackface in Canada

Philip S.S. Howard
Funded by: University of Toronto Libraries

https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487548346

Overview
Contents

About this book

Performing Postracialism provides an in-depth investigation of contemporary blackface incidents in Canada and its educational institutions.

Author / Editor information

Howard Philip S.S. :

Philip S.S. Howard is an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

Reviews

Rinaldo Walcott, author of The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom:

"The sticky persistence of race and racism comes under significant scrutiny in Performing Postracialism. Taking the practice of blackface as its starting point, Howard powerfully demonstrates how ideas about Black people and Blackness embedded in blackface not only shapes Black peoples’ lives, but also structures practices and institutional forms of dominance in Canada and beyond. This work is a major reminder that blackface remains not only present with us, but that it underwrites our current encounters, especially so in educational contexts which are among the most potent for fashioning futures for continued injustice and potential justice. Performing Postracialism is a necessary and urgent account of the persistence of raciological thinking as a founding technology of Canadian-ness."

Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Professor of African American Studies, Northwestern University:

"Against the mirage of Canada as a postracialist promised land, Philip S.S. Howard provides an exhaustive mediation on blackface incidents in Canadian universities and beyond as indicative of the manifold afterlives of slavery that we all inhabit. Both path-breaking and original, Performing Postracialism is a trenchantly timely book."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Genesis and Intentions Open Access Download PDF	3
Part One: Blackface in the Context of the Canadian Settler-Colonial Nation State
1. Contemporary Blackface in Canada as Performance of Antiblackness Open Access Download PDF	27
2. What’s the Joke? The Black Body as White Pleasure in Canadian Blackface Open Access Download PDF	49
3. Defending Blackface: Performing the “Progressive,” Postracialist Canadian Open Access Download PDF	73
4. Pornotroping Performances: Overt Violence, Un/Gendering, and Sex in Contemporary Blackface Open Access Download PDF	91
Part Two: Blackface in Education Contexts in Canada
5. Blackface at University: The Antiblack Logics of Canadian Academia Open Access Download PDF	117
6. “Making Them Better Leaders”: The Pedagogical Imperative, Institutional Priorities, and the Attenuation of Black Anger Open Access Download PDF	141
7. Learning to Get Along at School, or Antiblack Postracialism through Multicultural Education Open Access Download PDF	163
8. The Costs of Belonging for International Students Open Access Download PDF	187
9. Fugitive Learning: Countering Postracialism and Making Black Life at University Open Access Download PDF	201
References Open Access Download PDF	225
Index Open Access Download PDF	249

Language: English
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Keywords: blackface; humour; postracialism; minstrelsy; Black studies; antiblackness/anti-Black racism; racism; higher education; Canada; settler colonialism

eBook

Published: February 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781487548346