Exposing the lemons that made Lemonade
How the black female experience represented in the visual album ‘Lemonade’ carves a wakeful third space
Master thesis in Comparative Cultural Analysis Laura Boog 10615148 Supervisor: Kasia Mika University of Amsterdam June 13th, 2018 Words: 20648
Contents
Introduction 5
Situating the project in its fields 9 Feminism and black feminism 9 Black studies 10 Postcolonial trauma theory 11
Chapter one: How the visual album Lemonade creates unity, recognition and resistance 13
History 13 Third space 14 The Female Group 16 Recognition 19 Resistance 22
Chapter two: Suffering and its possibilities in the poetry of Warsan Shire 27
Voices 28 The Female Body 29 Mother’s Lemonade 36
Chapter three: Creating a wakeful third space 41
Revisiting the third space 41 Including a specific group 42 Origin in the past 43 The wake 44 Liberation 49
Conclusion 51
Bibliography 56
Appendix 61
“FOR THOSE WHO HAVE DIED RECENTLY [..] FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN THE PAST THAT IS NOT YET PAST [..] FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN [..] FOR ALL BLACK PEOPLE WHO, STILL, INSIST LIFE AND BEING INTO THE WAKE, [..] FOR MY MOTHER [..] AGAIN. AND ALWAYS.”
(Sharpe 2016)
Fig. 1. Winnie Harlow in a still from Lemonade. Billboard. Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment.
Abstract According to black feminist scholars, the specificity of the realities of the black female group has been neglected and should gain more recognition, considering that their suffering inhabits both the suffering as a woman as well as that of being a black woman. Frantz Fanon argued in Black Skin, White Masks that the under-recognition of the black population has as a result that it hopes to find recognition ‘through the white world’, and that the black population should start to redefine themselves on their own terms. The idea of acknowledgement of the realities of suppressed groups and enabling silenced groups to express their realities on their own terms, rules different academic fields. This project will contain an analysis of the black experience presented in the visual album by Beyoncé, in which the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire plays a significant role as the leading narrative of the album. It is positioned within these discourses as it exposes how a collaboration of black female artists propose their black experience, acknowledging the pain of a bigger group in the population and creating an opportunity of change in the future. Through the tools of quotation and remembrance there is a synergy of personas, voices and perspectives created in the album, of which the effects to the entirety of the album will be exposed and explained. The album’s shift from recognition to resistance will be anchored in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s vision on history as a perspective, Christina Sharpe’s notion of a past that is never past. The close-reading of the visual album is two folded; the visual album will be analyzed with a clear focus on the themes addressed in the visuals as well as the quoted poetry by Warsan Shire will be thematically analyzed, the leading themes of the black experiences represented are brought to light. By putting the concepts of the third space by Homi Bhabha and the wake by Christina Sharpe in conversation with each-other, the effects of this synergy will be demonstrated.
Introduction
My best friend has a Dutch passport, an Iraqi background and her soul -I would say- lies in a space somewhere in-between. On the nights I went to her house this last year, there was always a moment she would propose to watch the videos of the album Lemonade (2016) together. Although I had never considered myself to be a huge fan of Beyoncé, I enjoyed seeing my friend feel empowered by the videos. I believe that in these videos she found a space she somehow could identify with, and I felt honoured she wanted me to enter that space with her. This project will contain an analysis of the visual album of Beyoncé, an album whose production was kept a secret until a few weeks before its launch in April 2016, when Beyoncé announced the (soon-to-be) release on Twitter. Although the popular press received Lemonade as an autobiographic album in which Beyoncé comments on her marriage with Jay-Z (Vernallis), scholars received and discussed Lemonade as an album that inhabits both a black empowerment message as well as a feminist message (Massie; Caramica). Neither one group or the other is wrong in this case; due to the album’s ambivalence in aesthetic form, it provides a space where multiple storylines work through and along each other. By containing multiple forms of aesthetics including music, film footage (both fictive as well as real footage of Beyoncé’s personal life) and poetry written by Warsan Shire, the visual album provides a multi-layered space for a multi-layered content. Carol Vernallis explains how form can influence the working together of different stories: “Music videos can develop several visual and aural threads, each containing motifs and meanings. Because each thread is connected to distinct musical gestures, timbres, and song sections, none needs to win out or be annihilated” (Vernallis). Lemonade is at once concerned with the pain resulting from betrayal in love whilst at the same time it addresses the reality of being a woman and the history of black racism (Perrott et al.). The engagement between audio and visuals in Lemonade provides a format in which more than one story can be told; what may seem an autobiographic film on a first view, when more closely encountered with, turns out to contain a black experience that speaks of violence and injustice to the black female population. This experience is represented by the quotation of various voices and perspectives, resulting in the album becoming a platform for the personas pictured in the frame, the artists that have collaborated to its production and its viewers (Vernallis).
5 Whilst the lyrics of the songs provide the album with the popular theme of love and betrayal, inhabiting the commercial character of the album and the signature of the individuality of the story of Beyoncé, it is in the images supporting the songs and the poetic passages between the songs where the opportunity is being taken to tell a different story. Holly Rogers states that “Lemonade’s hybrid form moves us affectively and encourages critical reflection. Bell hooks might claim that a viewer would not perceive these moments on first viewings, but music videos are intended to be watched many, many times” (Perrott et al.). Like Rogers points out, it is by closely encountering with the visuals that the album exposes itself as addressing themes that go further than the individual story of Beyoncé and represent a communal black experience (Perrott; Pareles). An important voice addressing the black female experience in the album can be found in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire. The poetry written by the Somali-British female artist is the backbone of Lemonade that connects the different sections - consisting out of songs and/or other footage- to each other, creating a balanced aesthetics. The poetry, read by Beyoncé’s voice, has a captivating effect and draws the viewers further in the story (Vernallis). The importance of the poetess’ work for the entirety of the album is made clear, when in the credits of the album Warsan Shire is named as one of the first names credited for “Film Adaptation and Poetry”. Until the mentioning of her in the credits, her name remains anonymous. Apart from attributing to Lemonade’s varied form, the poetry is elementary to the album’s focus on oppressive social structures through addressing the psychological and socio-cultural implications of black womanhood. In ““Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” A feminist approach to Warsan Shire’s poetry”, Mayte Cantero Sanchez analyses the original poetry of Warsan Shire and argues that the poetess addresses in her poetry different kinds of violence associated with war, migration, trauma and patriarchal dynamics (57). She proposes the poetry of Warsan Shire to contain feministic views and looks for explanations of the themes addressed in the background of the writer. In the quoted poetry in Lemonade, the overarching theme seems to be ‘betrayal in love’, yet other themes are addressed through this notion of love; the poetry embodies the sorrow of the female body with a clear notion of violence and grief. The poems also address the role of the father as absent and the character of the mother as strengthened despite her pain. Therefore, I
6 will analyse the themes in the poetry and look at what it creates together with the images in the album as the second part of the project. The concepts of Quotation and Remembrance will be used as a red line through my analysis, as it is through these tools that the perspectives attributing to the black female experience are introduced in the album. For this reason, I will analyse the black experience of the album by mostly focusing on the visuals in the album and the poetry where these tools are at work, and put the lyrics of the songs on the background as it solely contains the individual voice of Beyoncé speaking of love. As pointed out earlier, the album is more than a story; it is a synergy of perspectives and threads, in which quotation is used to introduce, connect and sometimes merge multiple personas and voices. I will use the concept of quotation to expose which personas are quoted in the album, how the personas are quoted and what effect is created with their quotation in the album. In the analysis of the visuals this will mean that I will mostly look at who the channelled female artists are, and how they are being pictured in the album. By attending to the anonymous figures in the visual cuts, their contribution to the communalization of the black experience in the album will be demonstrated. I will turn to the quoted poetry by Warsan Shire in the second chapter. To understand what its quotation brings to the entirety of the album I will draw on a more profound theorization of the concept of quotation by applying the text ‘Quoting Caravaggio’ by Mieke Bal in which Bal elaborates on the different possible levels of quotation. Apart from addressing quoted personas and voices from the present, Lemonade provides a space where perspectives of different generations construct part of the narrative. Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn speak repetitively of the importance of this remembrance when she talks about the feminist duty of rewriting history; they claim remembrance to be a feminist issue as it is the female narrative that has been neglected in the past and present. The focus on history by giving voice to the black women of the past that until now have not been able to speak up and be heard, comes back on multiple levels in the album which makes it a crucial element in the black experience of the Lemonade. The element of remembrance of history in the album can be seen as both a quotation of the past into the present, and the other way around by changing the conversation about the past in the present. Vernallis describes this relationship of time in Lemonade as follows: “Two overlapping genres-music video and experimental film- provide Lemonade with a means to hold the past, present, and future together.” Through
7 remembrance and quotation, a narrative resulting out of the merging of perspectives of the past and the present is constructed. The question of what the effects of quotation and remembrance in Lemonade can create for the future will repetitively be addressed throughout the analysis. To answer this question, I will draw on, and challenge, the third space by Homi Bhabha, putting it in conversation with the concept of the wake by Christina Sharpe. This brings me to the research questions I will answer with the analysis of (mainly) the visuals of the album and the poetry: ‘How is the black female experience manifested through quotation and remembrance in Beyoncé’s visual album ‘Lemonade’, and how does this create a wakeful third space?’ In an interview, Bhabha defines the concept of the third space as a process of hybridity that "displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives. The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (Rutherford). Therefore, I will draw on the third space in demonstrating the new space the artists of Lemonade are a part of and create. I will problematize and turn to the concept of the wake proposed by Christina Sharpe for the demonstration of the specificity of the album in its shift from recognition to resistance in Lemonade. Building on the leading themes in the visuals and the poetry of the album that will come out of the analysis in the first two chapters, these two concepts will be put in conversation with each other, providing a framework that demonstrates the album and its effect. This analysis aims to add insights to the discourse of the feminist field and especially the discourse of the specificity of black feminism. The growing voice of women with a migratory background in contemporary society shows how there has been a new space created by and for these women. In the album there is not only a shift from the male to female narrative being made, there is a shift made towards the perspectives of black females on the past, the present and the future. The analysis of the themes in the album can give insights on the current conversation and the feelings of this group of women with a black identity. I will show how the album, through quoting and merging silenced perspectives and communalizing these, creates a new space for women with a black identity.
8 Situating the project in its fields
The location of the project within the academic field is an embodiment of the intersectionality the content and form of the album breathes. Touching upon discussions inherent to feminist discourse, black studies, postcolonial studies and trauma theory, Lemonade shows how the experience within the album speaks to different debates that, on their own, intersect with some of the discussions in the other fields as well.
Feminism and Black Feminism The work of Beyoncé frequently seems to contain a female empowerment message, which is why many consider her to be a feminist artist (Caramica). Feminist discourse has the political aim of constructing alternative meanings to those that we have grown accustomed to (Godard). Feminist film theorists, for example, have argued that by developing films with a different aesthetics and construction, the male gaze that dominates traditional narrative film could be changed for a new female gaze (Mulvey; Lesage). This fighting against the dominant narrative by proposing alternative ways of construction, is important to take into account in the project, considering that Lemonade introduces multiple quoted black female perspectives generating it into one black female narrative. One of feminist’s main goals is that women, by gaining a bigger role/voice in society, will break out of the male oppression. One way of doing this is by acknowledging history from a woman’s perspective. Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn call this development a feminization of male meta-narratives and state that by rewriting male storylines, insights on the role of the women in society can be gained (147). They claim that remembrance is a feminist issue; a duty in which all women should have a responsibility. According to the black feminist discourse, white feminists have neglected this specificity of the history of black women (Carby; Springer; Hudson-Weems). Clenora Hudson-Weems even argues that the terminology of black feminism should not be used as a label and that a new construct should be proposed: “While Africana women do, in fact, have some legitimate concerns regarding Africana men, these concerns must be addressed within the context of African culture. Problems must not be resolved using an alien framework, i.e. feminism, but must be resolved from within an endemic theoretical construct- Africana Womanism.” (27) Feminist perspectives of black women are underrepresented in the feminist movement and are to be given space, as they are
9 elementary for the field’s accuracy in representation of all women (Hudson-Weems 26). The album can both be positioned within the feminist discourse, providing an alternative form that gives women the platform to stand up and this way to break out of the male narratives, as it speaks to the debate within the black feminist discourse, drawing attention to the neglected specificity of the black female struggle the field is concerned with.
Black studies The album Lemonade looks back on history from a black female point of view and shares in this sense aims with the feminist field. According to the article “The Black studies Movement” by Darlene Clarke Hine, Black studies shared this goal of developing an oppositional consciousness to the dominant one, which would lead to the liberation of the black population (Hine 17). This battle with dominant Western paradigms is one that has to be fought through the development of a new black consciousness commenced in the rise of consciousness around 1960, which was set in motion by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (Ziegler). Ama Mazama argues in “Afrocentric Paradigm” that “we [black people] do not exist on our own terms but on borrowed, European ones.” (387) As a reaction to this cultural oppression, scholars of Black studies have tried to create a new Afrocentric paradigm. The term ‘Afrocentricity’, introduced by Molefi Kete Asante, is a concept that is found elementary in this process (Mazama). The epistemological African centeredness would provide a tool to recognize and dislocate the structures that oppress the back population (Asante; Mazama). An important theorist for this line of thought has been Frantz Fanon, whose work set (part of) the base for Black studies. Fanon wrote his first book Black skin, White masks in 1952, in which he claims that a way black population deals with its under- recognition is adapting itself to dominant life manners in the hope to find recognition ‘through the white world’, and that the black population should start to redefine themselves on their own terms; an idea that now rules the field of Black studies. Tendayi Sithole speaks of the relevance of Fanon’s uncovering of the disturbing subjection by white supremacy and claims Fanon’s emphasis on how the past is present and the present is past is crucial in recognizing the status of non-humanity of the black population (2). This recognition of the past is also one of the central themes in black feminist discourse. The project exposes the centrality in Lemonade of the recognition of
10 the entanglement of history with the present to manifest the possible liberation for black women.
Postcolonial trauma theory The work of Frantz Fanon has also influenced Postcolonial Studies, a field that picks up on some of the questions proposed by Black studies. In the International Journal of Science and Research, Mondal explains how “on the one hand, the postcolonial field acknowledges that the material realities and modes of representation common to colonialism are still very much with us today [..] But on the other hand, it asserts the promise, the possibility, and the continuing necessity of change (McLeod cited in Mondal 2965)”. In attending to the suffering of non-western groups, an engagement of postcolonialism with theories on trauma initiated the process of the decolonization of trauma theory (Andermahr 1). The foundation of traditional trauma theory lies in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic notion of trauma (Zwarg). Freud stated that through reiterating trauma, people can re-gain control over it (Luckhurst). Freud’s notion on trauma has had a big influence on different academic fields; W.E.B. Du Bois’ conceptualization of “the double- consciousness” of black people is anchored in Freud’s psychoanalytic study of trauma and persists in “framing the psychological issue of trauma as a social situation, one that is deeply cultural and relational in its conception” (Zwarg 11). Also in the feminist discourse trauma theory has been used, for example it was used by Reina Van der Wiel as a framework for her study on how female artists like Jeanette Winterson and Frida Kahlo reiterated their trauma through artistic work (Van der Wiel). However, in the last decades the field of trauma theory has received multiple critiques by theorists on its limitations (Visser 251), resulting in a scholarship that concentrates on the process of decolonizing trauma theory. In his book Postcolonial witnessing: trauma out of bounds, Stef Craps states that trauma theory fails to provide an adequate conceptualization of trauma for non-western sufferings (2012: 3). Like scholars of the feminist field and Black studies, Craps contends that postcolonial trauma-theory should provide an acknowledgement of trauma of non- western or minority groups ‘on their own terms’ (2012: 5). Explaining that traditional trauma studies have been focusing on individual distress, as a manifestation of its Western perspective, Craps states in his works that the notion of trauma as catastrophic
11 events that interrupt individual lives should be changed to “ongoing, everyday forms of violence and oppression affecting subordinate groups” (2010: 54). By reiterating their grief and trauma in Lemonade, the artists communalize their own experience to a shared black experience. The project embodies the shift from individual to collective notion of trauma, which Craps describes as an important step away from dominant ‘white Christian male’ paradigms (2010: 55). Craps argues that decolonized trauma theory has the possibility of attributing to “understandings of postcolonial literature that bear witness to the suffering engendered by racial or colonial oppression” (2012: 5). This thesis project can attribute to the knowledge of the experiences of these groups in its analysis of the black female suffering, expressed on their own terms. Craps states that by enabling theorists “to recognize and attend to the sufferings of people around the world, an inclusive and culturally sensitive trauma theory can expose situations of injustice [..] and open up ways to imagine a different global culture” (2012: 8). The project opens up this imagination of a different future in its analysis of the black experiences presented in the album and will turn to, as well as interrogate, concepts provided by Christina Sharpe and Homi Bhabha in doing so. Post colonialist Homi K. Bhabha aims with his proposition of the third space to theorize an in- between space where new positions and political perspectives can emerge. Christina Sharpe argues in In the wake: of blackness and being that for dominant oppressive structures to be changed, a recognition of the suffering and non-status of black people is of great importance, a black condition that she calls ‘the wake’. The project will expose how Lemonade can attribute to the recognition of the past while possibly changing the future; in other words, how the album carves a wakeful third space for black women in America. I will mostly draw on theories of Fanon and Bhabha when exposing what role the element of quotation and remembrance have in the presentation of the black female experience in the visual album in the first part of the project. In the second chapter I will expose what themes are elementary in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire and how the collaboration of the artists merges into one narrative. I will end the chapter by introducing the concept of the wake. Then, in the third chapter, I will turn back to the concept of the third space and put it in conversation with the wake, exposing with this combination the totality of the synergy of the black female experience presented in the album.
12 Chapter one How the visual album creates unity, recognition and resistance
The text of Lemonade is made out of different chapters, each inhabiting a song accompanied with poetry. The chapters can be seen as multiple music videos following each other without a direct relationship with the content rest of the videos. Their autonomy within the album is accentuated by the -each time different- use of costumes, use of certain colours and décor. Before the start of the sequence of chapters there is an unnamed fragment in the text, which could be seen as an introduction to the text of the album. Chronologically the list of chapters is: Intuition, Denial, Anger, Empathy, Emptiness, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness, Resurrection, Hope and Redemption. After the credits a chapter called ‘Information’ is added, which could be compared to a ‘bonus’ song of a music album. Every segment lasts approximately five minutes. The names of the chapters seem to be linked to the themes of the songs, which are mostly about betrayal in love and are dedicated to Beyoncé’s husband known as ‘Jay-Z’, but can also be interpreted in context of the process of the black experience Beyoncé proposes through the visuals. Although the videos do not seem to provide one explicit story line, there is still a story being told in these videos: that of the black female experience. Therefore, the focus in the analysis of the visual album will lie on exploring the leading themes that I come across while close reading the visuals of the album to expose what this experience inhabits. The lyrics of the songs by Beyoncé will be put on the background in the analysis, as it is namely in the visuals where I find that the black experience is most being represented, although when relevant in the acknowledgement of the black female experience the audio will be taken into account. Main themes that will be encountered with in this analysis are the female group, recognition and resistance in the illustration of how the album creates the movement from living in a ‘no-space’ to a ‘third space’.
History The element of remembrance/history is important to further emphasize on, before starting with the close reading of the object. Michel-Rolph Trouillot sees history as a perspective/position on which power-dynamics (either consciously or unconsciously) can play their parts. As a consequence of an inequality in selection of historic
13 information, Trouillot argues that there are groups in society that have been silenced (52-53). He argues that by giving voice to the silenced, new visions and perspectives can be gained regarding history. This ‘taking position’ towards history, by giving voice to the unheard, is something Lemonade seems to do in various chapter of the album; Lemonade takes position within/towards the past by giving a voice and role to a specific group of people and with this resisting the dominant narrative that until now has put their voices to silence. It does so through reference to an epoch through settings and costumes but also through the literal quotation of black female voices and faces from the past. The element of accounting to unheard history is something that gains attention in the feminist discourse, considering the dominance of male meta-narratives (Weder). Hazel Carby states that the specificity of black history (or as she states ‘her’ story) has been neglected and that black women not only pose the struggle of being a woman but also that of being a black woman. She argues that this difference in position between white females and black females has not received enough recognition in the feminist field and that this should change. Active in the field of Black Diaspora studies, Christina Sharpe emphasizes on the specificity of the lives of black people in her book In the wake: On blackness and being. She defines blackness as a continuous struggle of living in a no- space that is characterized by death and violence. For her conceptualization she draws on Trouillot’s notion of past as a position and his claim that therefore the past can never be past. With this argument Sharpe argues that for black people in the wake, “the past always reappears to rupture the present” (9). This perspective on the past is crucial to this project, as it exposes the album to take a certain position within the past and this is, of course, only possible if one assumes the possibility of doing so.
Third space Coming from a post colonialist point of view, Homi Bhabha acknowledges the problematic of the oppression of certain cultures by others. He sees a problem within the idea of cultural diversity, as it inhabits a containment of it; “A transparent norm is constituted, a norm given by the host society or dominant culture, which says that 'these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid'. This is what I mean by a creation of cultural diversity and a containment of cultural difference” (Rutherford). Bhabha also sees the problem of existing racism in societies where this multiculturalist paradigm is recognized. Bhabha states that “This is because the
14 universalism that paradoxically permits diversity, masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests” (Rutherford). The theorist then proposes a view of cultural difference with as a main value inclusivity instead of the exclusive cultural diversity and introduces a new vision on the concept of hybridity and his own concept of third space. Bhabha argues all cultures are in a process of hybridity, as there is no essentialism of an original. To clarify the latter, Bhabha takes the example of the translation and explains how translating is ‘imitating’ the symbolic meaning-giving process in one language to another (Rutherford). The same happens with hybridity in culture: it bears the traces of feeling and practices which inform it, so that it puts together the traces of certain other meanings or discourses. To Bhabha, “hybridity is not about tracing two ‘original’ moments from where the third emerges, but it is about a third space from where other positions can emerge” (Rutherford). This third space displaces histories that constitute it, while setting up new structures of authority and political initiatives. Drawing on this theorization by Bhabha, using his concepts of ‘hybridity’ and ‘the third space’, I will demonstrate how Lemonade creates this third space for the people categorized as ‘nonhumans’. The album not only creates a stance within and towards the past, but also attempts to do the same towards the future rooted in a shared history. To this notion I will come back in my third chapter where I will apply the concept of the wake. In this chapter I will concentrate on the images and turn to theories of Fanon and the concept of third space to expose what I see happening. With Trouillot’s notion on history as a perspective, I will show how this album takes a stand towards the past and the present, creating a new space for hybrid female identities in society through the elements of quotation and history/remembrance. Summarizing, I will start by showing how quotation works together with the element of the female group, exposing the way this adds to the communalization of the album. Turning to theories of Fanon in the analysis of how quotation and remembrance create the recognition of history of black population in the album I will expose how the album provides a hybrid space wherein history can not only be addressed, but also be changed. Building on these founding’s, I will then turn to the third space in the demonstration on how the album has created a space for resistance.
15 The Female Group In the visuals of Lemonade, the group of black women plays a significant role. The first chapter of the text, called ‘Intuition’, opens with a cut of multiple black women standing on a veranda. In this scene, the women are similarly dressed (they are wearing white dresses) and have a black skin, which is even more accentuated by the colour of the dress and the close-up on this contrast when the camera focuses in on the skin of one of the women. The actions of the women are minimal; they are standing with almost no movements, look forward while ignoring the camera and have a serious look on their faces. This imaging of a group in a ‘formation’ is also manifested in the chapter ‘Anger’, which starts with majorettes performing on the road. Firstly, a group of male majorettes is briefly shown in this chapter; afterwards the group of the majorette women is pictured dancing their choreography on the road. The element of the group also emerges in the chapter called ‘Apathy’, where a small group of black women is filmed while they dance together with the sleeves of their dresses tied to one another’s. In this scene the women are dancing without music on the artist’s voice, which gives the setting a surrealistic sphere. The focus in this scene is clearly on the group and not on the individual. Because of the tied sleeves, the group seems like an organism that functions organically and, most importantly, together. These are all examples of the form the concept of the group can be taken in this album. The similarity of styling and physical features of the women when there is a group shown in the album creates a feeling of unity and togetherness that the women seem to be representing. Beyoncé is often pictured as part of the female group yet is always standing out in some sort of way (fig. 3.). She is wearing either a different outfit, is standing in the centre of the group or she is performing for the group of females. This way the viewer is given the sense that Beyoncé is speaking about, to or for the group that is pictured in the album. The concept of the female group is manifested through different forms: in majorette formations, female street crews/dancing crews, groups of cooking females, or women working on the land. The anonymous women in the album are mostly young black females1. The clothing of the women is either the same or similar, which makes it clear
1 Only two times in the album there is a white girl pictured. They are both on the background, never in the camera’s focus. In the lyrics there is one time a (negative) mentioning of a white woman, when Beyoncé sings: “Better call Becky with the good hair”.
16 that they belong together and the viewer should see them as a unity. The group represents the young black female group in society. Multiple quotations of female artists can be found in the visuals of Lemonade. Beyoncé quotes Nina Simone through an image of her EP just before Beyoncé starts playing on a piano on the floor in the chapter ‘Forgiveness’, creating an association between the big entrepreneur of black women civil rights and the singer. Apart from this quotation of an icon of the past, artists with a black identity from the present are also quoted in Lemonade. These female artists are mostly channelled as part of bigger female groups. The sisters Diaz of the musical Duo called Ibeyi are quoted in different chapters in the album. Their music reflects their black identity and embodies generational trauma and oppression of black people (Acquaye). Another singer (and actress) being quoted in the album is Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman. This 22-year old artist is considered a feminist and activist who fights for equality and diversity (Oswald; Passanante). The American contemporary R&B duo, called Chloe x Halle made up of the sisters Bailey is also quoted in Lemonade. These girls were discovered by Beyoncé and signed to her Parkwood Entertainment label. Their released album called The kids are alright embodies the healing process of self-love for the future generation (Bruner). Another celebrity featured in the album is Amandla Stenberg. This young American Actress is known for her role as “Rue” in the movie The Hunger Games and is increasingly becoming a young entrepreneur on racism in Hollywood (Murray). The youngest quoted artist is the actress Quvenzhané Wallis, who was the youngest actress ever to receive an Oscar nomination. Apart from the quoted women who are all either actresses or singers (or both), there is another black female celebrity being quoted in the album, namely the famous tennis-player Serena Williams. She is pictured walking down the stairs and dancing next to the singing Beyoncé. Serena Williams is, in contrast to the other celebrities, given a prominent role in the album in which her sexuality is emphasized, breaking with the more traditional roles the rest of the artists in the album. By having the famous tennis player performing femininity, the intersection of success, blackness and femininity is performed. Apart from Serena Williams who has a different role than the rest of the quoted personas, the female celebrities are pictured as being part of a bigger group of rather anonymous women in the story of the album. They are not given a prominent role but are portrayed as average women on the background of the story Beyoncé is telling.
17 There does not seem to be a big difference between the role of the artists and the non- famous channelled black women in the album when looking at the amount of time they are given in the album or in the relevance (in the story line) of the activities they are pictured doing in the album. Either they are pictured doing agricultural activities like collecting tomatoes from the yard and bringing it to a hut, cutting up vegetables, or they are pictured performing neutral actions like eating together at a table in a garden, standing beside a tree or as part of a small group of women or attending a performance on a wooden stage by Beyoncé in the woods. Seemingly, their presence in the album seems to be of another sort of importance than their artistic talents considering that there is almost none attention drawn to the fact that these women are artists. The only distinction that is made in the album between the other females that are bit playing in the album is when in the end of the film when Beyoncé sits along the quoted artists on a veranda (fig. 4). The presence of the young black female group in the visuals creates a communalizing effect of the album. Even though Beyoncé tells what seems to be her own story, she has a group of similar looking women supporting what she’s doing/saying which gives the viewer the feeling that she might not only be speaking for herself. This group, being joined by successful black icons, enforces the factor of authorization of the album on its audience. The result of their quotation is a strong representation of the new young black powerful woman. Through their quotation in the album, a reference to the possibility of social mobility in society of black females is made. With their black identity, activism and success the artists contribute to the sense of empowerment of the female black community in America. The performance of Serena Williams stands for this and more; by performing femininity in a sensual way she represents her imago as a strong fighter woman underlining her feminine body. By quoting celebrity women as part of the group that Beyoncé seems to either represent or speak to, she creates the sense that there is a strong female community backing her up in her story. The celebrity women create an activist and empowering statement simply by ‘being there’.
18 Recognition Where quotation of black female icons functions in addressing and empowering the black female group in Lemonade, the effect of remembrance does so as well, yet on a broader level in its focus on the acknowledgement of the history of suffering of the entire black population. A mixture of historic references channels throughout the album, with as a result that there is an atmosphere of “history” created without clearly referring to a specific era. A clear reference is made to the history of injustice from the white population towards the African American population when in the chapter ‘Anger’, a voice speaks: “the most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman”. (00:13:35-00:13:50) This quote can be identified to be from one of the speeches of Malcolm X (1925-1965), the leader of the ‘Nation of Islam’, a political and religious group that fought for the equal rights of black people. The speech was given on May 22nd in Los Angeles 2. Malcolm X calls in this speech for unification of the black population in the struggle against white supremacy. Before and after the piece from the speech that was used for Lemonade, Malcolm X was raising awareness among black people of having to protect black women from white men; this part was not put in the feminist album as it can be considered to inhabit a patriarchal message. Supporting the fragment of the speech in the album, footage is shown of different anonymous individual black women of various ages on the streets. These cuts give the viewer an impression of the reality of the non-status of black women in America living in a no- space; the streets. Combining the voice of Malcolm X with these images of the present, this scene represents the rupture of history in the present of black people. Beyoncé seems to not only quote elements of the past, but also rewrite and ‘change’ the history of the black population in her album. The history of African Americans is one of oppression by the white population in America. In the period between the beginning of the 17th century and 1865 the white population held the African American population as slaves to work in plantations and/or at home as maids (Baptist). When in 1865 the slavery was officially abolished with the end of the Civil War, it was still only the beginning of the struggle for equality for the black population in America. The period of Reconstruction followed, multiple states passed laws permitting
2 Link to full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpr6PK-Cz3c
19 black people to have equal access to public spaces and in 1875 the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations was accepted (Kousser). However, in 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court took a step back by ruling that Congress had no authority to regulate individuals’ discriminatory behaviour (Kousser). Ever since, African-Americans have been fighting against racism in society. In 1964 and in 1965 the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act institutionalized formal equality (Kousser). However, on a non-institutional level, racial equality is still an unfinished journey in a society where the history of slavery keeps rupturing the present. Lemonade partly addresses this history through quotations of the past like the one we have discussed in the previous paragraph, and partly pictures a different history. The scenes in Lemonade are situated in the past, a period where the black population was (explicitly) oppressed by the white supremacy due to slavery and its heritage. In the chapters ‘Intuition’ and ‘Redemption’, the white dresses worn by the black females share resemblance with the clothing the elite used to wear in the 17th century. The fit of the costume with an African print that Beyoncé is wearing in the introduction of the text and during some cuts of the chapter ‘Emptiness’, is similar to the gowns white women would wear in the 18th century in America. Most African American people wore clothes their owners would give them (White). Sometimes they made clothes themselves, from the fabric they were given by their masters. These clothes were plain and simple; neither were they detailed nor multi-layered like most of the dresses the black females in Lemonade are wearing, as there was little fabric that was supposed to provide their clothes for a few years (White 154). Therefore, when taking into consideration the historical context in which Beyoncé situates some of the scenes in the album, it becomes clear that the black population is presented as wealthier and with a higher status- position than was possible in that period. There is a mixture of history and illusion in the album, where black women can be displayed as wealthy women, wearing beautiful dresses living in houses with a royal interior; something that in reality was not possible. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon argues that the black people aim for recognition by the white people. His notion of recognition is grounded in the Hegelian idea that the sense of Self is both based on the dialectic of recognition, which holds that one needs the exterior recognition to be able to create a sense of self (216-217). Fanon argues that because of the white dominance, the black people search for this recognition through the white world. By imitating the dominant language and manners, there is a
20 search for the recognition the black people have not yet received from the white people (217-218) (this is where the title of his book comes from). Yet, when applying this theory of ‘the white mask on a black skin’ proposed by Frantz Fanon to the album, it is interesting to see that while the black women in this album could be seen as appropriating ‘the white culture’ of a certain era, it is also possible to turn this vision of Fanon around and state that -instead of white masks on a black skin- a mixture of cultures is presented wherein the black culture seems to dominate the narrative. Through the multitude of black women as characters, the absence of white women and the African details in the make-up and/or in the interiors of their royal houses, there seems to be a dominant tone of the oppressed culture, making it the dominant culture in the album. Although the struggle is addressed in which black people have resided for the last decades, a sense of certain supremacy of the oppressed population and overcoming of this past shows itself through the commodities associated with high status positions that are appropriated by the black characters in the album. The entanglement of an oppressed culture with the white culture is shown when in the chapter ‘Resurrection’ a girl with a Native American garb walks around a set up dining table within a house with an elite interior, holding and playing a tambourine. This scene seems to offer a new mix of the two cultures; that of an oppressed culture and the dominant culture. In this mixture, the oppressed latter seems to be taken over by a culture that has been silenced in reality. An example of the mixture of African culture with the white culture is manifested through the make-up in the album that is made by the Nigerian artist Laolu Senbanjo in multiple chapters (fig. 2.). The artist calls his art “Afromysterics”, a term that means “the mystery of the African thought pattern”. The makeup carries points to African themes and traditions (Lara). In the chapter ‘Apathy’ the makeup is applied to a group of girls who perform choreography in the bus, providing the African heritage to merge with the new Western civilization African people are living in. This mixture of the western culture with an African stamp on it is seen through different forms in the album. Apart from these references to cultural mixtures projected upon styling, and performances, one of the women that is quoted in different occasions of the album embodies this merging of cultures; The woman is Winnie Harlow (fig. 1.), a model that broke through with her participation to the program America’s Next Top Model. Winnie Harlow has a skin condition called ‘Vitiligo’ which causes her to develop pale white patches on her skin (Dear). Her body is an embodiment for a process of hybrid merging
21 of cultures, her body being that of a black woman while her skin contains both black and white colours. Rather than an appropriation of the white culture like Fanon argues in his work, I would then argue that Lemonade proposes a mixture of cultures wherein the oppressed cultures can rupture and are given room and valuation, something that in reality still has to be realized. The mixture of oppressed culture and Western privileges could be seen as a new culture emerging out of the hybrid position of the artist and the artists that are channelled in the album, something that coincides with the third space proposed by Bhabha being ‘a space for new initiatives’ (Rutherford).
Resistance As we’ve seen, Lemonade creates a space where new initiatives are formed. This is also expressed through the album’s providing of a platform for explicit political activism. Multiple scholars have remarked the political content of the visuals and its call to communal action (Caramica; Perrott et al.; Vernallis). However, the political engagements of the album are not given fully justice to in these analyses. In “Beyoncé’s Lemonade, she dreams in both worlds” Holly Rogers argues that the first attempt at political action is manifested in the chapter ‘Sorry’. She explains how in this scene an evocation to communal action is made through the military character of the clothing and the van the women stand in front of: “multiple Beyoncés, or she and many others like her, march upward through grass—an audiovisual nod to Beyoncé’s overlaid vocal tracks, and the long swatches of marching in the film’s second half. “Sorry” ‘s closing bell-sounds, melded with the music-box playing Swan Lake, could be heard as gamelan, music nearly always performed collectively. [..] This is the first, perhaps unsuccessful, attempt at collective political action. (I interpret the gamelan-like sounds as a hearing of and calling out to other women.)”. Even though I agree with the observation of the mentioned scene containing a call for political activism, I would like to problematize the scholar’s argument on two notions. Firstly, considering that the evocation of collective action is picked up upon I would argue that the attempt may be subtle, but is rather successful in its effect. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I would argue that the scene mentioned in the previous quote is not the first engagement with political activism in Lemonade, as the scholars claim. In my analysis I stumble upon an evocation of collective resistance in the two chapters before this scene.
22 In Lemonade there are multiple subtle references being made to political issues, in particular to the violence of and resistance to police. The first call for resistance can be found in the chapter ‘Denial’, at the end of the song ‘Hold up’, when Beyoncé breaks (rather unexpectedly) a security camera after walking through a romanticized ghetto (fig. 5). In the following chapter called ‘Anger’, the quotation of the speech by the political activist Malcolm X already points towards a political engagement with the oppression of the black population in history within the album. The scene that Rogers addresses as the first attempt of the album (situated in the fourth chapter called ‘Apathy’) is the third evocation towards to collective stand that takes place in Lemonade. It is in the last video of the album, after the credits, where the political statement of the album becomes the most explicit. The video called ‘Formation’ is situated in New Orleans and opens with a quoted question by ‘Messy Mya’, a character in the New Orleans Comedy scene who was murdered at the age of 22. There are different ways of understanding the quote; You can hear the sentence “What happened at the New Wil’ins”, a phrase that according to Zandria Robinson encourages us to “hear as a question about the comedian’s unsolved murder”, but it can also understood as “What happened after New Orleans”, a question that turns to the history of the city regarding black folks and the South and the future it awaits. Robinson argues in her article that: “They also give us the most audacious commands to slay regardless, even if we are taken. We are thus propelled into the life and death, future-present-past the video conjures.” This play with time that is experienced in the video is of the most importance in the album’s call for collective action. The video is a clear demonstration of black living in pain, injustice and devastation with its origin in the past, but surrounding black people in America in the present. Cuts of police jackets and police cars make references to the role of the state in this reality and Beyoncé is pictured in the midst of the devastation caused by the storm Katrina on a police car in the middle of a flood. The location of the video is crucial as it is made clear this is in New Orleans, a city that carries a history of being one of the biggest plantations of slavery in America 3. Through the quotation of the voice of Messy Mya, but also with the use of the clothing that again resembles the clothing that was worn by
3 New Orleans was one of the biggest centers of slave trading in America. When the civil rights movement institutionalized the equality of black people to the white people, a social segregation was still kept between the two groups, resulting in a significant residential segregation between black people and white people although within little physical space. This makes it a city where the slavery’s history still shows itself in the isolation of the black population (Spain).
23 white supremacy decades ago, the rootedness in the past of the album is one of the major indications of the album’s positioning as a reaction to the violence of the past. The past is never really left behind and Formation wants its viewer to really realize that. Even the place of the video in the entire album, after the credits: when it is already ended but it comes back, seems to illustrate this point. By situating the scenes of the video in the midst of the devastations caused by Katrina, a wake of a storm that may have passed but still left its marks on the present is symbolized. The future is also addressed in this video, as it is the only video in the entire album where a somewhat futuristic styling is applied for one of the scenes making the viewer aware of the fact that there is an unknown chapter laying in front of us that still can be influenced. The multiple choreographic formations of Beyoncé and the women dancing with her create a sense of a collective black women movement. The end of the song also plays with this ‘formation’ that has been spoken of earlier in the chapter, in a more explicit political way: a little black boy is pictured dancing (a dance called ‘locking’) in front of a group of police officers standing in formation with blockade armours. At the end of the video the child puts his arms up in a surrendering manner. In response, the police officers do this as well and a sense of reconciliation between the two groups represented in the album is created: a symbol for a breaking out of the violence of the police towards the black population. After this there is a quick (vaguely shown) cut to an image of a wall on which is written with graffiti: “STOP SHOOTING US”. The reference to the state police and the objection to this violence in the video, calls for political awareness and action. Through the emphasis on the formation and the play with time through quotation and remembrance, a claim for change in the future is made by its call for collective action. The quotations and formations in Lemonade indicate a resistance from the black population towards the dominant structures. Frantz Fanon discusses in The Wretched of the Earth possibilities for the black people to break out of the dominance by the white supremacy. Although he does not favour violence as a tool for collective catharsis, as it is violence that has caused the pain of the black population, he argues that the native’s violence is an all-inclusive and national action that unifies the people through and in which the colonized can find freedom. Fanon states that “The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity. [..] The development of violence
24 among the colonized people will be proportionate to the violence exercised by the threatened colonial regime.” (87). This ‘balance’ of violence is a way for the black people to create the “new man”, one with a decolonized mind. When looking at Lemonade and especially at the video ‘Formation’, this calling upon resistance through collective action is given form through quotations of the past and references to formations and police, which symbolize the state-institutions. Situating the album in its historical context shows how the focus on the police as a target of resistance closely encounters those experiences of the black people in America at the time the album was made. The reference to the violence of the police is made when in the chapter ‘Resurrection’ the mothers of the black men, who were shot and killed by the police, are shown holding a picture of their sons (fig. 6.). The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown are pictured and given small parts in the other sections of the album, like in chapter ‘Hope’ when Beyoncé sings for them and the women sit in the first row. In the years before the album was produced, manifestations arose against racial violence by the state and its vigilantes. Out of this grew the international movement ‘Black Lives Matter’, a movement originating in the African American population made to defend the rights of the black people in the United States and started after the court let George Zimmerman walk after shooting and killing the innocent Trayvon Marting. The name of the movement resonates the ‘non-human’ category, which Alexander Weheliye proposes in the analysis of racializing assemblages, while at the same time shows how this group attempts to raise from this no-space. Whereas Fanon states that black people tried to find their recognition in white culture and the only way out this cycle of frustration was through violence, this album exposes an alternative way of creating a sense of possible liberation. By channelling black successful female celebrities in the album, the intersectionality of being a woman with a hybrid identity is shown as a possible strength and the cohesion of this oppressed group is being enforced. Through the appropriation of white culture by black characters in the visuals, it would seem that the cycle of looking for recognition Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks continues; However, by having the oppressed culture entangle with the white dominant culture in the album, a mixture of cultures is created. This process could be demonstrated with the concept of the third space, a space wherein multiple new perspectives are formed through the process of hybridity (Rutherford). By quoting black people and icons and creating social cohesion, looking back on history,
25 changing it and taking a stand towards racial injustice in the text of the album, Lemonade creates through recognition of violence a resistance to this violence, but without having to use the tool of the same physical violence that has put the black population in this non-status to begin with. The choice of breaking out of the cycle without using violence is symbolized with the last scene of the album when the little boy puts his arms up instead of fighting the armed police.
26 Chapter two Suffering and its possibilities in the poetry of Warsan Shire
Beyoncé introduces the poetic work of a young female artist in her album. The poetry is the backbone of the album, as it creates a storyline, connects the chapters and creates a balance of intensity of impressions. Enhancing the recognition of pain and violence of the lives of women with a black identity that are addressed in the visuals, the quoted poetry is an elementary voice to the process of recognition of the reality of black women in the album. The quoted poetry has been written by the Somali-British poetess named Warsan Shire, a woman who was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate of London in 2014 after winning the Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013 (Hess). In The New York Times, the influence of the poetry of Warsan Shire on the present world is asserted as she is portrayed as “a compelling voice on black womanhood and the African diaspora- one particularly resonant in the digital age” (Hess). The poems in Lemonade are lines derived from her original poetry and have been adapted to the album. The poetess had published her volumes named “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” in 2011 and “Her Blue Body” in 2015. In 2012, she recorded her spoken word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely)” of which lots of adaptations in Lemonade have been derived. The quoted voice of Warsan Shire creates a new layer to the album, adding to its polyphonic character. In this chapter I will analyse how the collaboration with Shire contributes to the entirety of Lemonade. The analysis will consist in looking at what is being created in the album with the quotation of the poetry. I will explore what the effect of this quotation is by analysing the themes of the poetry posed by Warsan Shire in the text and sometimes adding the effect of the collaboration with the songs and visuals. By underlining Shire’s use of metaphors as symbolizations of the female body, a proposition of a new way of looking at the female body, underlining the sorrow and disputing its objectification by men, is put forward in Lemonade. Through the notion of the female body, the poetess poses the intergenerational theme, giving way to the inescapability of the past. By focusing on the sorrow of the mother, a new constructive vision is opened in the end, showing the way women can make something out of nothing. Like the visuals, the poetry roots itself in the violence of the past that continues disrupting the present. The non-living in a reality of continuous pain and violence is
27 pictured through the perspectives of women with a black identity, inhabiting an entanglement of voices that is made possible by the use of quotation. Through addressing the leading themes in the poetry, I will show how this quoted poetry adds to the carving of a wakeful third space for young black females.
Voices The album inhabits quotation in various ways, illustrating both the richness of the concept as that of the album. To understand the importance and effect of the quoted poetry in Lemonade, it is important to dive into the concept itself. Mieke Bal’s notion of quotation is favourable to adopt as it explores various levels quotation can operate on in her article “Quoting Caravaggio”. Firstly, she distinguishes quotation manifesting itself in the literal and mimetic way, representing a “direct discourse, and literal quotation of the words and characters” (10) as is the case with the quotation of the young female black artists in the previous chapter. Secondly, Bal identifies quotation as working on an effective level, meaning that it can serve to create a certain illusionary effect. Quotation here allows multiple realities in one image, creating truth from something with no necessary facticity, through this effect. This effective quotation can be detected in Lemonade, as the entire album is based on different types of quotations, coming together and resulting in a black experience that is based on different perspectives and voices. Furthermore, Bal articulates how quotation can stand for fragmentation, plurality and ambiguity of language; "This conception of quotation turns the precise quotation of utterances into the borrowing of discursive habits, and as a result, intertextuality merges into interdiscursivity." (11) This interdiscursivity implies an ambiguity of meanings and the notion that the intention of the author is not the only thing leading to the meaning of a text. This ambiguity of language comes forward when looking at the quotation of the poetry by Warsan Shire in the album. Her poetry does not only share the black experience she proposes based on her own experiences and those of her ancestors but also –due to its adaptation to the content of the album- a black experience that coincides with the one to be represented by Beyoncé. Adapting her own voice to another, creates a mingling of voices and perspectives resulting not only in intertextuality, but also interdiscursivity as it brings two inner worlds together. This vision on quotation lies close to Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. Bakhtin argues that language is "shot through with intentions and accents" (324) and that words cannot
28 ‘forget where they come from’. Recognizing the multiplicity of voices or perspectives, the dialogic word enables different characters to share their perspectives, while still interacting with those of others and this way producing a multi-voiced discourse. Bakhtin opposes dialogism with monologism and claims that poetry is inherently monological (single-thought discourse) in which the words represent only the author’s interior world. The latter can be problematized when we look at the effect of the quotation and adaptation of poetry in a text. The character of the poetry seems to change due to its quotation within the album, making it difficult to identify its pure monological nature and causing it to share dialogic characteristics, just like Bal argues to be the case when conceptualizing quotation standing for the ambiguity of language. By the adaptation of the poetry, two voices become represented in the poetry; the voice of Warsan Shire and the voice of Beyoncé. By merging different voices and their cultures through quotation, polyphony is created that is not to be divided into parts. This coincides with the way Bal identifies quotation as “all we’ve got’. This vision on quotation means that it never returns without the burden of the excursion through the quotation. In other words: quotation as a matrix out of which a fundamental source is impossible to find. In the case of Lemonade although the sources are still identifiable, they are adapted to the function of quotation, losing part of their original structure in the process of creating something new.
The Female body The poem that is quoted in the chapter ‘Apathy’ encapsulates some central issues Warsan shire raises in her poetry in Lemonade, namely the themes of Love, Family, Death, Grief, Violence, Pain and Sorrow. She addresses these themes through emphasizing the suffering of the female body. The poem shows how the resonating voices of Warsan Shire and Beyoncé come together. The language in this poem is non- typical for Warsan shire’s poetry; words like ‘side chicks’ is not elementary for her vocabulary, nor is ‘most bomb pussy’; This language lies more closely to the ‘slang’ used in the songs by Beyoncé, illustrating how the adaptation of the poetry can sometimes be more of the expression of Beyoncé’s voice and/or experience than her own.
So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you've killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead.
29 Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted, most bomb pussy, who because of me, sleep evaded. Her shroud is loneliness. Her God is listening. Her heaven would be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes...dust to side chicks.
Using the metaphor of death of the body as an indication of the severity of the consequences of the male behaviour in the relationship, Warsan Shire presents the male as the actor of the suffering of the female’s body. The poetess defines and describes the female body with different metaphors in her poetry to show the experiences of the female body in a way that underlines the sorrow and grief that it harbours. Sánchez argues her corporal writing to suggest a re-signification of the female body by changing the shift from the male gaze to the female gaze. According to Sanchez “Shire’s poetry suggests that, quoting Barbara Kruger’s work, “the body is a battleground”, a crossroad where identity and memory are constructed” (62). In the poetry in Lemonade, Warsan Shire proposes the female body, as this ‘space of impact’ by external male actors, yet seems to be doing more than this. By positioning the female body like an object, she underlines both the objectification of the female body as –through the metaphoric material recognition of the consequences of the actions of the male- proposing the inescapability of the implications that come with the body. The experienced alienation of the body in the quoted poetry in Lemonade is often presented through the religious imagery. Warsan Shire plays with religion in a symbolic way when actually pointing to the intensity of the love that she really is speaking of and, more importantly, the pain the women suffers through this intensity. The last sentence of the poem is a direct reference to one of the common Christian prayers, turning the last ‘dust’ to ‘side chicks’.4 Religious imagery therefore fulfils a role of literary symbolism. In the second chapter of the text, called ‘Denial’, a poem of Warsan Shire uses religious imagery to describe the sacrificial pain and violence of the woman to her own body to contemplate the male and gain recognition.
I tried to change, closed my mouth more. Tried to be soft, prettier.
4 The official prayer is: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The prayer itself cannot be found in the Bible, but it is a common biblical prayer based on Genesis 3:19, Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19, and Ecclesiastes 3:20 and can be found in the Book of Common Prayer (Booty; Cummings).
30 Less... awake. Fasting for 60 days. Wore white. Abstained from mirrors. Abstained from sex. Slowly did not speak another word. In that time my hair grew past my ankles. I slept on a mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword. I levitated into the basement, I confessed my sins and was baptized in a river. Got on my knees and said, “Amen.” And said Ameen. I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I threw myself into a volcano, I I drank the blood and drank the wine. I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God. I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil. I grew thickened skin on my feet. I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the Holy Book. But still inside me coiled deep was the need to know. Are you cheating? Are you cheating on me?
The first three sentences of the quoted piece are derived from the poem “For women who are difficult to love”, one of the pieces that contribute to the spoken word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely). After the first three sentences, a period of fasting, abstinence and penalty is described. Sentences like “I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet” make evident that the period of penalty to the female body seems to be solely performed to acquire acknowledgement from a lover. Two religions are represented in the poem: Christianity and the Islam. The reference to both religions becomes vivid with the use of both of the words ‘Amen’ and ‘Ameen’, having similar meaning in both religions. The ‘fasting for 60 days’ refers both to the Islam and to Christianity, as it is exemplary for both religions to do a period of fasting. In the original poetry of Warsan Shire she often refers to the Islam; small Arabic sentences interweave with her English poetry, in the form of little prayers or Arabic sentences her relatives would say. The invocation to “Allah” comes back in multiple
31 poems, sometimes by praying or by quoting family member’s prayers 5. In the poetry in Lemonade, Islam is put more to the background to give more room to Christianity; “Allah” is changed for “God”, Beyoncé is pictured praying with her hands pressed together and when the holy book is named there is an image of the Bible shown. This results in joining to Beyoncé’s religious experience. The effect of both of the religions resonating in the poem is that there is an inclusive spiritual space constructed where both voices have become one. This religious imagery is used as a way to symbolize the living in hope accompanied with desperation, pain and violence. Through the ‘bending for both God and lover’, there is an entanglement of Religion and Love created. The drawing of a parallel between the male lover and God is also seen in the following piece from the chapter ‘Emptiness’:
God was in the room when the man said to the woman, "I love you so much. Wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in." Sometimes when he'd have her nipple in his mouth, she'd whisper, "Oh my God." That, too, is a form of worship. Her hips grind pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves, whenever he pulls out.
In this piece the worshipping of a man is put alongside worshipping a God. There is an intertextual reference to the “Song of Songs” 6 considering the alignment between sex and religion. Whereas Sánchez detected and analysed a link between manhood and war in the poetry (57), in Lemonade the connection between man and God seems to be more present than between men and war. In the end of the chapter ‘Accountability’ the juxtaposition of religion and love comes back and takes a different shape, making the man guilty of this unequal dynamic between male and female, with the following sentences:
5 In poems like “Beauty” (15), “Trying to Swim with God” (22) “Old Spice” (28-29) or “Tea With Our Grandmothers (33)” of her Volume Teaching my mother how to give birth Arabic words and sentences are cited, many times in a religious context. In the end notes of the volume there is a list given with the Arabic sentences and their meanings used throughout the volume (Shire).
6 In this biblical verse the celebration of sex between two unmarried lovers is made, which was highly unusual as a woman was not supposed to engage sexually with a man with whom she was not married to (Coogan)
32
Mother dearest, let me inherit the Earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a God? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband or your father?
In the poem it is the man that puts the woman in the lower position, by convincing her he was a “God”. Also, ‘Getting on the knees’ here has a double meaning; a sexual and a religious one. All these religious references are a way to encounter the reality of the pain and violence that strike female bodies throughout their lives. By exposing how the lover, the one beautiful thing that should keep us safe and going (like God), is also the cause of women’s pain, the continuous struggle of living in a female body is emphasized. The images that support the poem add a different layer of meaning. Whereas the poetry recognizes the struggle of womanhood, the visuals (more) explicitly point towards the battles of black women’s reality. The visuals show a focus on a day-to-day experience of the life of a black child. The scene starts with a cut of a little girl peeking through a fence. Afterwards, multiple cuts of black people on the streets follow adding to the effect of speaking of a bigger black community. Then the images refer again to the life of the little child, picturing a woman comforting her kid because of a cut in the finger, the same woman arguing with her husband and the kid that was pictured in the beginning putting her hands before her ears (fig. 7.) to not hear the discussion of –what seem to be- her parents. With the images there is no clear story told, yet emphasis is laid on different experiences engaging with a bigger story; that of the struggles of the non- being of black population in Western society. The images in the album seem to complement the words, creating something more than visualizing what is being said or the sum of poetry and images simply put together, but making these interact and creating an experience where the pain of womanhood is explicitly connected to the pain of black womanhood. This way the story of the betrayal in love, emphasized through the symbolism of religion is generalized in the album as part of the black experience. The pain of the female body is encountered with through all its different phases. Not only sex and death, but also giving birth is presented as a beautiful but painful
33 experience. Warsan Shire uses various other metaphors to describe the pain that accompanies this act. In the following poem, from the chapter ‘Hope’, the impact of giving birth on a female body is described with metaphors:
The nail technician pushes my cuticles back Turns my hand over Stretches the skin on my palm and says “I see your daughters, and their daughters” That night in a dream the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach The scar heals into a smile The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath I wake as the second girl crawls up headfirst up my throat A flower blossoming out of the hole in my face
Both happiness and pain are expressed through different metaphors. In the dream it is the male that rips the wounds open, showing the role of men as a cause of female pain. The role of the daughters is ‘bittersweet’ as the flower and the smile show the joy that giving birth to a new generation brings, yet the giving birth itself is described as painful processes. The deteriorating of the female body after each birth represents grief the body harbours. The sacrifice of the body that is pictured accompanying the act of giving birth acknowledges the suffering fate of women. The first four sentences of the poem are supported by images of women cutting fruit and afterwards the images of the women on the veranda with white dresses. The “slit in my stomach” is visualized by the camera panning through a hole in a wall, leading to a cut of a bald bare-chested woman. This woman is Paulette Leaphart, a breast cancer survivor who was followed by Documentary filmmakers in her 1000-mile walk to Washington resulting in the documentary called “Scar Story” of which the teaser was released in 2015 (Ravitz). Paulette Leaphart screamed for a cure and stands for better and affordable health care. “She wanted women without breasts to believe in their beauty and be proud of their strength. By showcasing and embracing her scars, she hoped to inspire others to do the same” (Ravitz). The cuts of Paulette are supporting the sentences “The scar heals into a smile. The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails”. The symbolic scars on the female body in the poem are visualized through the body of the breast cancer survivor, showing the visible scars that represent the physicality of the consequences of living inside a female body.
34 The male body is also referred to with metaphors. In the beginning of the album, after the musical introduction, the first chapter ‘Intuition’ is introduced by the words of Warsan Shire. Beyoncé recites the following lines:
“I tried to make a home out of you. But doors lead to trapdoors. A stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet? You remind me of my father, a magician. Able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at 3AM and lie to me. What are you hiding? The past, and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse.”
The male body here takes on the metaphoric shape of a house. By describing the body as a house with trapdoors and stairways leading to nothing, the hopeless dynamic in which the female resides in their relationships with men is recognized. Sánchez speaks of the symbolism of men in Shire’s poetry and states that men have a “complex position” in Warsan Shire’s work: “desire and death, sex and destruction are two sides of the same coin” (59). By using the words “Luck” and “Curse” in the last sentence of this poem, Shire indicates this ambiguity of the female-male relationship. The role with men shows both positive associations and negative associations throughout the poetry in the album. However, the role of the lover in Lemonade stands not as much as for its own actions as that of the father; in her poetry Warsan Shire draws continuously the connection between pain suffered from the male of the present (the partner) and the behaviour of the man of her past (the father). With the remembrance of the father when describing the behaviour of the lover, Warsan Shire quotes history in the present. The entanglement of time becomes explicit in the sentence: “The past, and the future merge to meet us here”. Having to live in the aftermath of ones past becomes vivid by the continuous remembrance of the ‘tradition of men in her blood’. This element comes back in a different form when in the sixth chapter ‘Accountability’ Beyoncé sings the song called “Daddy lessons”, a song about the advice of a father telling his daughter to run from a man that would look like him, and it is interrupted by old camera footage of the
35 father of Beyoncé talking to her when she was a little girl. The inescapability of one’s history is made clear by this reference to the role of the father in the relationship to men of the present. The images that support the poetry again seem to be stepping away from the content of the poem and to be focusing on generalizing the individual content to a bigger audience. There are multiple cuts of different women pictured during the poem; firstly of a group of women standing on the veranda and afterwards a few close ups of different individual (anonymous) women. While Beyoncé seems to be telling her own story with Shire’s words, these images of different women give the impression that her story is amplified to count for women in general. The reference to history still takes place in the visuals. During the powerful sentence “the past and future merge to meet us here”, a child is shown sitting in a doorstep. The images create, together with the words, a feeling of the nostalgic yet tragic remembrance of a childhood and the generalization of this history towards a wider perspective identifiable for all black people.
Mother’s Lemonade Apart from illustrating the sorrow and pain of women from the past and the present, Shire’s poetry seems to open up a new perspective on the future. This is done through the character of the mother in the past and her ability to create something out of nothing. As explained in the previous paragraph, the father is mostly associated with absence and lies. The mother inhabits opposed associations in the poetry with those of the father; she is mostly associated with sorrow, grief and from this a tragically developed strength. In the beginning of ‘Part 6: Accountability’ in Lemonade, the mother is the leading theme in an adaptation of the original poem ‘How to wear your mother’s lipstick’:
36 Adaptation in Lemonade: Original poem:
You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her You find the black tube inside her beauty case. face You must hide the surprise of tasting other men on your lips Where she keeps your father's old prison letters. Your mother is a woman and women like her cannot be You desperately want to look like her. contained. You find the black tube inside her beauty case, You look nothing like your mother. where she keeps your fathers old prison letters, you desperately want to look like her, You look everything like your mother. film star beauty, Film, star, beauty. you hold your hand against your throat your mother was most beautiful when sprawled out on the floor half naked and bleeding. You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick, How to wear your mother's lipstick. somewhere no one can find you You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick. your teeth look brittle against the deep red slickness you smile like an infant, your mouth is a wound Somewhere no one can find you. You look nothing like your mother You look everything like your mother You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. You call your ex-boyfriend, sit on the toilet seat and listen to the phone ring, when he picks up you say his name slow Your mother is a woman and women like her cannot be he says I thought I told you to stop calling me contained. you lick your lips, you taste like years of being alone.
The poem on the left was used for Lemonade. On the right there is the original poem from her spoken-word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely)” from which it is derived.7 Some differences between the versions are evident, like the change of the structure of the original poem: the adapted version is much shorter and starts with a sentence that does not come until the half of the original poem. Also, there is a small change in content as the ex-boyfriend that plays a role in the original is not put in the album, this seems logical as the poetry in the album holds a story that is addressed to a partner. It would probably confuse the viewer/listener if there would be an introducement of an ex-boyfriend, as this does not coincide neither with the narrative in the poetry nor with the story Beyoncé narrates in her songs. The tragic ending of the original poem is removed in the adapted quoted version in Lemonade. Coinciding with the sense of empowerment of the album, the original poem ends with “women like her cannot be contained” whereas the original poem ends with “you taste like years of being alone”. The ending of the adapted version attributes to the constructive attitude that is given to women in the album. An interesting passage is when Warsan Shire writes ‘you look nothing like your mother, you look everything like your mother’. Here the similarities and differences between the mother and the daughter are drawn, symbolizing the possible pathways of the future rooting in history.
7 The sentences that are used for the adaptation in Lemonade are marked in the original poem.
37 The agency the woman is given through the quotation of the poetry in Lemonade is to create something out of this suffering. In the poem that follows this productive attitude is asserted through the character of the grandmother. The poem is interrupted by a piece of the 90th birthday speech of the grandmother of Jay-Z.
Take one pint of water, add a half pound of sugar The juice of eight lemons, the zest of half lemon Pour the water from one jug, then into the other, several times Strain through a clean napkin Grandmother, the alchemist You spun gold out of this hard life Conjured beauty from the things left behind Found healing where it did not live Discovered the antidote in your own kitchen Broke the curse with your own two hands You passed these instructions down to your daughter Who then passed it down to her daughter
GRANDMOTHER (HATTIE): “I’ve had my ups and downs But I always find the inner strength to pull myself up I was served lemons, but I made lemonade”
My grandma said, nothing real can be threatened True love brought salvation back into me With every tear came redemption And my torturer became my remedy
In both the content of the poem as in the speech, acceptance, redemption and strength of the female ancestors come to play. The combination of the quotations of the poetry and the quotation of the voice of a relative, have a certain co-strengthening effect. The connections of past and present are again vivid in the content of the poem; the intergenerational links are explicitly addressed in ‘the instructions that are passed down from one daughter to another’, and through the quotation of grandmother Hattie. During the poem there are visual cuts of the quoted celebrities walking through the yard and eating together around a table. Also Beyoncé is shown playing with a child and brushing the hair of an elderly woman. The images in the chapter lay both focus on the celebrities creating a representation of the words that are being spoken, as on the generational links between past and present through the different generations shown interacting.
38 Together with the content of the poem and the footage of the speech, this creates a sense of women of all histories coming together in this text to share their stories. By bringing the speech of the woman who gave birth of her lover into the text, not only the blood- related women are given a voice but the story of all women seems to be addressed. Towards the end of the album, the element of the mother and grandmother come together in the 8th chapter called ‘Forgiveness’. In the poem different generations lead to a future that is open to a change in fate for women.
Baptize me now that reconciliation is possible. If we're gonna heal, let it be glorious. One thousand girls raise their arms. Do you remember being born? Are you thankful? Are the hips that cracked, the deep velvet of your mother... …and her mother...... and her mother? There is a curse that will be broken.
There is a building on suffering of the ancestors described in the poem that makes room for change. The ‘breaking of the curse’ can be interpreted both as referring to the individual love-story as the story that is proposed through the mergence of the voices; the entire black experience; thus, the change of the curse of the young female black community. The quoted poetry underlines the suffering of women through proposing the violence on the female body in metaphoric ways. Through the stories of the mother or grandmother, this image is stabilized. To identify the male as the main-actor of this pain, Warsan Shire draws on the reference to the father and on religious metaphors. Although the tragedy of the female body is clearly established through the poetry, the adaptation of the poetry seems to work towards a constructive vision on these tragic experiences, contributing to the idea of ‘making Lemonade’. The quotation of the poetry attributes to the different voices needed to acknowledge a certain black female reality. At the same time it builds on this suffering to open up a new space. Weheliye emphasizes on these possibilities inherent to suffering. He claims that suffering is not just suffering, but also creates the world as it is and as it could become. By acknowledging the sorrow of the
39 women in history and creating awareness of the suffering of black women in the present, the possibility for change is opened in Lemonade out of this suffering. In other words: this is how it has been, this is what it is now and now let’s make something new; let’s make Lemonade.
40 Chapter three Creating a wakeful third space
Building on the leading themes exposed in the previous chapters that are crucial to the black female experience that is presented in the album, I will now turn to the theories of Homi Bhabha and Christina Sharpe as a theoretical framework to demonstrate the effects of this black female experience in Lemonade in its focus on the future. Considering the shift from recognition to resistance in Lemonade and its generalization to a certain audience through the quotation with (in) the black female group, supported by the line towards possibilities inherent to female suffering in the quoted poetry, a perspective on the future for the black female population is manifested in the album. In this last chapter the analysis will turn to the utility of the concepts of hybridity and the third space and I will argue that by conversing the third space with the concept of the wake, proposed by Christina Sharpe, a more adequate and complete conceptualization is formed to describe the effects of the quotation and remembrance in this album. By putting Sharpe’s conceptualization of the wake in dialogue with the third space introduced by Bhabha, I will propose that Lemonade carves something what could be called a wakeful third space for young black females.
Revisiting the third space In her article “Warsan Shire: a feminist approach” Sánchez studies the work of Warsan Shire, focusing on the different types of feminism inhabited in her work. The poetess’ intersectional position regarding religion, migration and race is argued to give as a consequence an original and unique perspective towards current issues in society. Sánchez uses the concept of the third space in her conclusion, stating the following: “Shire’s work is located in the midst of different cultures, creating a poetical “third space”, as Homi Bhabha puts it. Thus, her poetry is itself a process of hybridity, a space which is not simply the mix of two “previous” and “original” cultures but a place where new ways of the political and poetical might arise” (62). This argument by Sanchez is not only reaffirmed, but also intensified with the analysis of the quoted adapted poetry and its mergence within Lemonade in the previous chapter. Considering that Homi Bhabha argues the third space to allow cultures to interact outside of the boundaries of cultural diversity in his definition of the third space as an in-between space that lies between the
41 known circumstances and the blurring of these lines (Rutherford), the concept exposes the possible liberation of cultural oppressions that are expressed in Lemonade. The third space is productive for the cultural analysis of the album as it demonstrates the effects of quotation within the album as a process of hybridity. While in the first chapter the visuals of Lemonade are exposed as providing a space that conjures a mixture of perspectives on the black experience wherefrom a new political argument arises, in the second chapter it comes to play how the collaboration of Warsan Shire and Beyoncé merges their perspectives into one and results in the emergence of a new perspective, making the album a process of hybridity resulting into a new position. However, the analysis has also shed light on some inaccuracies of the concept, and partly problematizes its capacity to demonstrate the album’s entirety.
Including a specific group The third space is a concept introduced by Bhabha in his aim to step away from cultural diversity and the implied oppression of cultures, pleading for cultural difference; a term that inherits the idea of employing a vision of culture in an inclusive way. It serves in providing a spatial politics of inclusion rather than exclusion that “initiates new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation.” (1-2) The album problematizes this idea of inclusiveness in creating a third space. Through art there is a space provided by and for these women, broken loose from the exclusion of society. Nevertheless, this hybrid third space is not necessarily an entirely inclusive one. The album is a text made out of different voices and images resulting in an experience that cannot be divided into parts. There are multiple black experiences represented through the different levels of quotations and remembrance, resulting the album to propose one black experience. Defending Bhabha’s statement, one could argue that in this album some aspects of culture are taken together through the visual quotation of the other artists’ persona with different backgrounds but the same characteristics in colour of skin, creating an inclusive hybrid space for these women. But there is a paradox there; by clearly addressing the black young female population an exclusion of an audience that cannot identify themselves with these characteristics can be the result. The album quotes in its visuals almost exclusively black (mostly female) people. Quoting black women in the album and underrepresenting the white population results in an -although fairly legitimate- exclusion, and interferes with the including
42 philosophy in which Bhabha contextualized the third space. As stated in the first chapter this is exactly the way, according to Frantz Fanon, for oppressed groups to find recognition. He argued for the social cohesion being necessary among black people to be able to find recognition among their own, instead of trying to seek this through ‘the white world’. He saw black unity as a way to create a collective catharsis, as a way for the oppressed black cultures that are burdened by the Western idea of cultural diversity to break out of their oppression. The album creates this: a space that opens up to different black cultures, and in this sense a hybrid process in which multiple perspectives of the black experience are entangled, leading to the liberation Bhabha argued to be one of the possible consequences of the hybrid process. Although the third space is not abandoned, we might ask ourselves then if hybridity is necessarily inclusive.
Origin in the past The terms hybridity and third space seem also to fall short in terms of the analysis of the position of history in the black experience in Lemonade. The concepts of hybridity and third space do not seem to recognize (enough) the rooting of the experiences in grief, loss and violence that are expressed in the album. The third space is proposed by Homi Bhabha to relate to, rather than to originate from, certain moments, spaces, and/or entities (210-211). He conceptualizes hybridity as the third space as an in-between space that is beyond time or location, standing for the inconclusive/non-fixed/ non- essentialist aim for ambivalence and pluralism. He claims the “importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the „third space‟ which enables other positions to emerge” (211). In Bhabha’s theorization of the third space, he argues that histories are dislocated in the third space, rather than acknowledging the direct linear relation the past has on the black people living in the present. It is here where the concept of the third space as a space of hybridity does not entirely capture the effects of quotation and remembrance in Lemonade. The process of hybridity that is caused by the quotation of voices and cultures, through the mixture of form and content, is deeply rooted in those original moments of the past from where the present position is suffering and has arisen. By drawing their experiences parallel to those of the mothers and/or grandmother, the artists trace their black experience back to the prior experienced violence by earlier generations;
43 conjuring multiple ways of violence on and grief of the female bodies, Warsan Shire proposes the generational sorrow as a defining and determining characteristic of the present. Offering the mothers of the black youth that were killed by police a platform to take a stand as a reaction to this violence, the pathways of the past show their scars. In other words, through the quotation of different voices in the album it is exactly the perspectives of the past that seem crucial for the emergence of these voices as the album is made in the wake of violence and loss. The album is a reaction to the violence in terms of speaking up and, by this, resisting/taking a stand by the silenced. By using only the concept of hybridity, these positions of the past that are elementary in the album as the origin of the black experience proposed are not given enough emphasis. The concept of the third space when describing the process of the album would not give enough attention/credit to this inescapability of the violence of the past the multiple voices are proposing. Hybridity and third space are useful concepts for the album in the sense that it is the process of conjuring different voices and perspectives into one, yet the black experience is rooted in its violence and loss to which the concept of the third space does not provide enough conceptual ground.
The wake Christina Sharpe conceptualizes the concept of the wake in her book The wake: on Blackness and being. Through this conceptualization she acknowledges the situation black people live in their day-to-day lives, while also accounting for the history of the black population leaving its marks in the determining influence it has on the construction of present realities. Sharpe expresses by her wake work the importance of “ [to] think through containment, regulation, punishment, capture, and captivity and the ways the manifold representations of blackness become the symbol, par excellence, for the less-than-human being condemned to death” (21). By analyzing imaginations of the past in black artistic expressions, she acknowledges the actuality of art to address the wake. Drawing on Fanon’s zone of non-being in and following the denial of the black population expressed in slavery and its heritage, Sharpe argues for a consciousness of the continuity in this history and how this constitutes the present conditions of spatial, legal, psychological and material dimensions of the Black (non-)being (14). Sharpe’s vision on blackness lays close/parallel to Weheliye’s;
44 “If racialization is understood not as a biological or cultural descriptor but as a conglomerate of socio-political relations that discipline humanity into full humans, not- quite-humans, and nonhumans, then blackness designates a changing system of unequal power structures that apportion and delimit which humans can lay claim to full human status and which humans cannot” (3) Like Weheliye, Sharpe exposes human categorization based on racialization and describes this Black ‘non-being’ in the wake. Sharpe uses several definitions of the wake: Firstly, she describes the wake as “the track left on the water’s surface by a ship; the disturbance caused by a body swimming or moved, in water; it is the air currents behind a body in flight; a region of disturbed flow” (3). Sharpe argues that black people live in the wake of the ship of the Western capitalistic apparatus, driven by the engine of racism. Furthermore, by identifying wakes as processes and rituals through which to perform remembrance and grief of the dead or dying, she lays emphasis on the vigilance and the work this acquires, considering her argument that when being black there is no guarantee served of being treated fairly (10). Adapting Trouillot’s vision on the past as a position, Sharpe argues that when living in the wake “the past that is not past reappears, always, to rupture the present” (9). Living in the wake is like living in the line of recoil of something, or -more specific- of a gun. Lastly, she claims the wake to be a state of wakefulness; a state of consciousness. Both the form as the content of her book, provide insights on the founding’s of the close reading in Lemonade. Sharpe draws on individual experiences in her theorization of the concept, positioning herself in the space of the wake. Doing so, she connects social dynamics working in the specific individual cases to those of all Black people in the wake. She claims that the personal gives a way to tell a story capable of engaging with the violence of living in abstraction, or as she points out later in the text: in the realm of humanity. The themes she touches upon when presenting her personal black experience, overlap significantly with the themes proposed in Lemonade, exposing the usefulness of the concept in demonstrating the black experience presented in Lemonade as a wake work. Presenting the black body as the carrier of terror, Sharpe proposes the body as “terror’s embodiment, and not the primary objects of terror’s multiple enactments; the ground of terror’s possibility globally” (15). The emphasis on the body and the suffering it drags with from both the previous generations as the present reality, is expressed in
45 the poetry of Warsan Shire with metaphors encountering the pain and violence done to the female body in distinct ways. Warsan Shire proposes in the quoted poetry the female body in metaphoric ways to express its carrying of loss, grief and sorrow. Through, for example, pointing towards the mutilation of both the own female body as that of her female ancestors, Warsan Shire underlines the importance of acknowledging the implication of sorrow female bodies carry. The emphasis on the blackness of this female body shows in the quoted black female bodies in the visuals; All women seem to represent either their own story or inhabit the role of widening of the message to the bigger audience, declaring with the quotation of their own black bodies within this narrative that it is these types of bodies that carry the violent experience represented. The concept of the wake lays emphasis on the body as the carrier of terror and demonstrates the album’s weight on the pain and violence black women have gone through and still endure because of their bodies. In her book, Sharpe addresses the black deaths caused by the police and the danger of the production of these deaths as normative to be elementary in the reality of the wake. This political theme can be traced back in the analysis of the visuals in Lemonade, like in the quotation of the mothers holding the pictured of their killed sons by the police. By addressing this violence in the album, Lemonade counter-acts this normativity in the production of these deaths Sharpe argues to be fought. Christina Sharpe also acknowledges the influence of the mother as crucial of her own living in the wake. Speaking of the strong positive character of her mother, Sharpe projects the same constructiveness in the female figure of the past as is seen in Lemonade, while the role of the father in the family is, simultaneously as in the album, that of pain and absence. This encounter with previous generations when addressing the present, shows how Sharpe’s wake encounters a past that is never truly a past, in a very similar way the album seems to account for the ongoing struggle of black femininity. The visuals in Lemonade show lots of generational layers through cuts of older black anonymous women, footage of the grandmother of Jay-Z or footage of the mother of Beyoncé on her wedding 8. By -for example- quoting a speech by Malcolm X, or briefly picturing Nina Simone’s album before Beyoncé starts playing the piano, the album acknowledges this past as crucial/ determining the place Beyoncé stands now. It is
8 Footage of the wedding of the mother of Beyoncé can be found in the chapter called ‘Redemption’
46 through these different quotations of elements of both the past and showing their existence within the present that the entanglement of time is emphasized. In the poetry of Warsan Shire this past is addressed as crucial to the present reality; by underlining the grief and pain of the body and connecting it to the experiences of the previous generations of women in the family, it recognizes the cruciality of the perception on history as a ‘past that is not past’. Death and grief are main themes in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire as well as pointed out by Sharpe as one of the main realities in the everyday lives of black people. In one of the poems, for example, the metaphor of a funeral functions as a symbolism of the consequences from betrayal in love. The theme of grief is encountered through many different ways in the poetry. In the fifth chapter of the album called ‘Emptiness’ there is a direct reference to death and grief made, a subtle parallel drawn between dreaming and dying through the metaphor of the zinc which in high amounts can be deathly, and – most importantly- the direct addressing of grief;
She sleeps all day... dreams of you in both worlds Tills the blood in and out of uterus. Wakes up smelling of zinc. Grief, sedated by orgasm. Orgasm heightened by grief.
By addressing the grief and sorrow of female bodies of the present and the past, and through different levels of quotation identifying it to a wider group of black female women, Lemonade creates in a consciousness of the important role of these concepts to the present reality of black women; something that is precisely one of the main ambitions of wake works for Sharpe. The overlap of black experience expressed in academic writing and artistic expressions coming together in Lemonade, not only confirms Sharpe’s argument (drawing on Hartman) that presenting the own black experience is presenting an example of the bigger reality for all black people living in the wake, it also shows how looking at black expressionism serves the aim of her theory and methodology: “It is my particular hope that the praxis of the wake and wake work, the theory and performance of the wake and wake work, as modes of attending to Black life and Black suffering, are imagined and performed here with enough specificity to attend to
47 the direness of the multiple and overlapping presents that we face; it is also my hope that the praxis of the wake and wake work might have enough capaciousness to travel and do work that I have not here been able to imagine or anticipate.” (2016, 22) The wake provides a concept for the acknowledgement of the direction the album seems to point at, tracing itself in the past. Due to the hybrid process of merging different representations of blackness and its focus on the past, the album can be considered to be a wake work, defined as “[a] work by Black artists, poets, writers, and thinkers is positioned against a set of quotidian catastrophic events and their reporting that together comprise what I am calling the orthography of the wake. The latter is a dysgraphia of disaster, and these disasters arrive by way of the rapid, deliberate, repetitive, and wide circulation on television and social media of Black social, material, and psychic death. This orthography makes domination in/visible and not/visceral. This orthography is an instance of what I am calling the Weather; it registers and produces the conventions of anti-blackness in the present and into the future.” (Sharpe 20-21) Although the wake demonstrates and exposes the album as a process of developing consciousness of these elements of death, grief and the female body as elementary to the black experience in a productive and enlightening way, there are some differences between the black living in the wake as Sharpe proposes it, and how the album presents the black experience. Firstly, Sharpe’s theory does not address the specificity of the suffering of the female body, something that in Lemonade is elementary. She proposes the wake as an equal reality with conditions counting for all black people, whereas Lemonade makes clear how the intersection with femininity determines the suffering. Secondly, where Sharpe’s wake thinks across class or cultural determination, Lemonade seems to inhabit some boundaries in that sense because of its form and the implicit priorities coming with this form. It speaks about being black in America, where Sharpe talks about the black being in general without the African American specificity Lemonade does seem to inhabit. Lastly, the commercial form of the album creates a possible distancing of the wake works in which Sharpe sees ways to develop consciousness of black experiences. Lemonade is still an object that is related with the big star persona Beyoncé, an artist that apart from being perceived as a feminist artist is still one of the biggest commercial artists of this time. Although Lemonade addresses multiple political themes, it does so through the main theme of love, a theme that is popular in popular culture. It is here where it becomes clear that
48 Lemonade may indeed set things in motion and create awareness, but that it is not a political manifesto, and it is important to realize this for its effects; in the end it is still a commercial cultural object with as a main goal gaining benefit. Nevertheless, a paradox can be found within this commerciality; on the one hand the implicit priority to make money over creating awareness9, can be found to be a barrier to its political effect. At the same time, one could argue that by being a commercial popular object the album truly speaks to the people, giving the black population a voice in the culture that they all consume, instead of in a museum or academic scholarships that most people do not encounter with.
Liberation Alexander Weheliye describes a possibility of liberation in pain and suffering in his theorization of habeas viscus. He asks himself if “there exists freedom (not necessarily as a commonsensically positive category, but as a way to think what it makes possible) in this pain that most definitely cannot be reduced to mere recognition based on the alleviation of injury or redressed by the laws of the liberal state, and if said freedom might lead to other forms of emancipation, which can be imagined but not (yet) described.” (14-15) This productive feature inherent to the suffering is manifested in both the concept of the wake as in the album. The album is an artistic space where from suffering a new possibility to the redefinition and repositioning in society of black women is created. It is Weheliye’s notion on freedom inherent to suffering that coincides with Sharpe’s hope in analysing the wake to create something out of consciousness: “At stake, then is to stay in this wake time toward inhabiting a blackened consciousness that would rupture the structural silences produced and facilitated by, and that produce and facilitate, Black social and physical death. For, if we are lucky, we live in the knowledge that the wake has positioned us as no-citizen. If we are lucky, the knowledge of this positioning avails us particular ways of re/seeing, re/inhabiting, and re/ imagining the world. And we might use these ways of being in the wake in our responses to terror and the varied and various ways that our Black lives are lived under occupation” (30-31)
9 An important side-note is that Lemonade is a Tidal exclusive– a way for popular artists to concur the war of streaming. On the one hand an artist shows that a consumer should pay to be able to listen to his work, on the one hand the effect of this is that the artist reaches less audience and this way loses money on the long term.
49 The album Lemonade acts as a space where black consciousness is created, producing the knowledge of black realities Sharpe expresses to be necessary when she speaks about her hope to create change through the wake. The album lays through its different layers a clear emphasis on the violence and pain done to the female bodies. Both Weheliye and Sharpe describe this importance of the body in the black being in their theorizations, something Bhabha does not account for in his conceptualization of the third space. Through the recognition of the suffering of black female bodies, Lemonade creates a clear focus on the young black female population. The concept of the wake demonstrates this specificity of the black female experience that is elementary in the album. The collaboration of artists carves a wakeful third space: a hybrid process of different merged voices that through remembrance creates consciousness of the reality of living in the wake, and new possibilities for black female-hood in the future. A new political position is made through the focus on the past that lives on in the present, re- establishing the determining effects of the histories of the black population. It is in the space of the album where recognition is shifted towards resistance, where consciousness is shifted towards change, where suffering is converted to possibility; where lemons are turned into Lemonade.
50 Conclusion
Lemonade is an artistic space that reflects the violent and painful reality of the black female population in America. By quotation of different voices as well as personas from the past and the present, a communal narrative is created that acknowledges the painful reality of the black female population and, this way, opens up a wakeful third space for black women with a focus on change in the future. The album provides a new space where women with a black identity are seen and acknowledged and in which their voices are being heard. By the album’s continuous remembrance of the past as well as - by presenting the characters with an equal status-position as the white dominant class- its projection of a different perspective on this past, the dominant white structures are resisted and an alternative reality is created. Addressing the themes of the female body, pain, grief and violence, the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire recognizes the pain women endure and gives this group a voice, while the quotation of black personas in the visuals attributes to the focus on the lives of black people, and this way attends to the neglected specificity of the black female experience. The hybrid process of putting perspectives together, exposing the conditions of the non-position of this group in society, results in a focus towards a revolution-like future; A possibility is opened for black women of breaking out of the cave of white male oppression. The different perspectives out of which the album exists are channelled through the tool of quotation, a concept that manifests itself through multiple forms in Lemonade: it is present in the visuals, through pieces of speeches and ultimately through and within the quoted work of Warsan Shire. As we’ve seen in the first and the second chapter, quotation operates on different levels; visually it works in -what Bal calls- the mimetic way, representing a “direct discourse, and literal quotation of the words and characters” (10) when the album uses the quotation of the young female black artists, positioning the young black female woman as a person that can transcend their status of non-being as well as drawing a group of (black female) viewers in as to be able to identify themselves with the content of the album. Fanon claimed that by imitating white manners, black people search for recognition through the ‘white world’. In the album, by mixing the cultures in a hybrid way a recognition on their own terms is created, a breaking out of the cycle of looking for recognition through the ‘white world’ is found and a space is created where a black culture is introduced. Another level of
51 quotation in Lemonade is its effective influence on the album, meaning that the effect of the perspectives and voices coming together creates a whole that is not to be divided into parts. The album can be seen as a polyphony of voices and personas, resulting in one black experience. Every persona and voice create an effect; the black female artists stand for the ‘we could, so you can’, whereas the speech from Malcolm X encourages to stand together and resist the injustice of the suppression of black population. With and within the poetry of Warsan shire, inhabiting her own black experience, as well as quoting that of her ancestors and adapting it to the album’s focus on possibilities inherent to suffering, the element of quotation also shows itself as inter-discursive. Lying close to Bakhtin’s dialogistic notion of language, the quotation works on different layers and creates a new one: Lemonade in its entirety as more than a sum of its ingredients. Eventually all quotation is adapted to the entirety of the album, losing part of its original utterance in the process of becoming part of Lemonade. As we’ve seen in the first chapter, the black experience is being communalized by quotation in the visuals, and explicitly addresses the black female population. Through images of women standing together, a sense of female empowerment is created, enforced by the quotation of certain black icons like Serena Williams. By adding footage of day-to-day realities of the African American population, this group is put in a spotlight whereas in the daily lives this group lives in an unrecognized no-zone. By addressing the state violence through the quotation of the mothers of the young victims that were shot dead by the police holding their photographs, an acknowledgement of the violent realities and a call to resistance is made. An even more explicit stand is taken towards these happenings when the images show a duel between a little black boy and an army of armed police officers, where the black boy ends up winning by using his dance to un- weapon the police. In the second chapter, the analysis of the quoted words by Warsan Shire has shown that also here violence is a leading theme in the represented black experience, manifested through the penalties, sorrow and pain of the female body. While addressing the pain endured of the female body of the present, a direct connection between this present pain is laid with the pain suffered (and overcome) by the previous female generations. The reference to previous generations is also manifested in the visuals; by either quoting black icons from the past like Nina Simone, situating the characters in historic settings or by showing lots of different generations in the images, Lemonade draws the attention continuously back to the history with the tool of
52 remembrance often expressed through different types of quotations, connecting history to the reality of the present. As Sharpe argues, by acknowledging the influence of ‘the past that is never past’ on the conditions of the present status of non-being of black population and their continuing reality of living closer to death than to life, a new possibility is being created for changing the (re)production of the structures that reproduce these conditions. Therefore, the album can only partly be demonstrated by what Bhabha calls a third space; the third space accounts for the hybrid process the album itself creates, an open-ended process where perspectives can merge and out of which new perspectives can emerge. Although the concept is useful in lots of ways to demonstrate the effects of quotation in the album, as we’ve seen in the first chapter, it seems to fall short in the demonstration of the album on other aspects, as has been discussed in the third chapter of the project. Firstly, when it comes to Bhabha’s aim of inclusiveness, the album shows that its inclusivity inhabits a consequent exclusivity. By clearly pointing to the young black female, the visuals permit this group to identify with the content, making the identification with the album difficult for people that do not share these characteristics with the quoted characters. Secondly, the concept of the third space does not acknowledge enough the inescapability of the violence that the album underlines. Through multiple references to this violent reality, the album anchors the violence/conditions of the present in the violence of the past. Sharpe’s notion of the wake addresses the repetition of the production of dynamics that provoke the continuously living among violence and closeness to death of the black population. The poetry of Warsan Shire proposes the female body in metaphoric ways acknowledging the pain, grief, sorrow and violence it carries, manifesting what Sharpe’s calls the ‘body becoming a carrier of terror’. By drawing a parallel between the other sex with God, Warsan Shire proposes love as a religion and indicates the women’s role as sacrificial and suffering of this dynamic. In the remembrance of the sorrow of her mother, the emotional absence of the father and the repetition of this dynamic in her relation with her lover, Warsan Shire exposes the cycle of lives of black women; a constant repetition of the influence of the past on the present. Whereas the original poetry of Warsan Shire is more catastrophic, maybe less leading to a constructive future, the adaptation in the album points more clearly towards a possibility of change. Building on the violence and pain of the past and the present, the
53 poetry clearly represents, along with the visuals, the mother as a strong character in the story, to make something positive out of the negative. Lemonade has, despite its continuous reflection on the suffering and painful realities of black females of the past and present, a clear focus on the possibilities that are inherent to this suffering. The album leads to a new possibility for the black female population, a ‘breaking of the curse’ like Warsan Shire poses in her poetry. This aim can only be reached through what Sharpe stresses with the wake, and what Lemonade does both with the tools of remembrance and quotation: a reflection on the continuity of the violence of black realities, and the cruciality of the acknowledgement of black history. To estimate the album’s capacity in the effect of what this synergy’s capacity of reaching its aim to create a change of social conditions is, one has to take its commercial form into consideration. An important paradox lies within the commerciality of the production. As stated in the introduction, the album seems on a first view to talk about the love life of the artist. It is through closer engagements with the visuals (as well as the poetry) that one can detect the album’s expression of the communal black female experience. This exposes the prioritization of benefit inherent to a commercial album (after all, love ‘sells’), putting the black female experience on the background with an automatic consequence for the creation of awareness. Notwithstanding, it is due to the commercial form of the album that the non-commercial perspectives that are channelled through quotation and remembrance reach a wide range of audience. It could then also be argued that the album could transcend the implicated limitations inherent to the commerciality of the album and put, in turn, its commercial form to use, resulting in previously unheard voices and unseen perspectives to be witnessed by a big audience. The black experience that is represented in the visuals and the poetry can best be demonstrated by the concept of the wake, a concept that accounts for the album’s positioning within a habitat of violence that can be traced back to the past, manifested in the present, and demonstrates the direction the album points towards. It is the combination of the third space and the wake that demonstrates what the effect of quotation and remembrance creates within the album. The album creates recognition of the violence and inhabits a call for resistance, by taking a stand and allowing the silenced to have a platform where their voices can be assembled and they are able to ‘speak up’ and change their reality in the future. According to Sharpe, through the recognition of the implications of living in the wake, a redefinition of what it means in
54 this society to be black could be put in process. Lemonade is in this sense a ‘wake work’: a work that underlines the conditions of the black female population in the past and in the present and creates consciousness to be able to realize this aim. The focus, even though there is lots of ‘looking back’ on history, is continuously on the future and the possibility of changing this future. The recognition in the album of the pain and violence done to the black female body creates a stand towards the violence to the black population and this opens up a new space up for this group of women. Where these women had no place to speak, the quotation and remembrance in the album creates a synergy of voices from the past and the present, opening up new political perspectives and possibilities in the future. The real lemonade made in and by this album is the possibility of creating a new position of black females in society, but, as Sharpe states wisely, only ‘if we’re lucky’.
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60 Appendix: Figures
Fig. 1. Winnie Harlow in a still from Lemonade, Billboard, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 25 April 2016, https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7341846/model-winnie-harlow-lemonade- looks-shoes-beyonce
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Fig 2. Still from Lemonade, Afrinow, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 26 April 2016, http://www.afrinow.com/beyonce-features-laolu-senbanjos-body-art-lemonade/
Fig. 3. Still from Lemonade, Rolling Stone, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 28 April, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/how-beyonces-lemonade-exposes-inner- lives-of-black-women-20160428
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Fig. 4. Still from Lemonade, Thrillist, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 24 April 2016, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/beyonce-lemonade-movie- references-connections-and-secrets
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Fig. 5. Still from Lemonade, Thrillist, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 24 April, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/beyonce-lemonade-movie- references-connections-and-secrets
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Fig. 6. Still from Lemonade, Thrillist, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 24 April, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/beyonce-lemonade-movie- references-connections-and-secrets
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Fig. 7. Still from Lemonade, Thrillist, Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment, 24 April, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/beyonce-lemonade-movie- references-connections-and-secrets
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