Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975)
- 1
- Department of English, University of California, Berkeley 94720-1030, USA. anneacheng@gmail.com
Abstract
This
paper traces an intricate path connecting racial fantasy, aesthetic
judgment, and the larger cultural problem of inter-subjective
recognition. In particular, the author examines the theme of fetishism,
both sexual and racial, in a Western historical, colonial context, in
order to unravel a set of disturbances that cohere around the racial
fetish then and now. Taking the figure of an entertainment icon of the
1920s, Josephine Baker,
as a case study, the author shows how the imagination of the colonizing
white male was both articulated and disrupted by Baker as a ready-made
representation of the cultural, racial, and sexual other.
