UNIVERSITY of CHICHESTER Department of Dance Bruk Out
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UNIVERSITY OF CHICHESTER Department of Dance Bruk Out Feminism in the Intercultural Dancehall Queen Scene by Celena Luz Monteiro, BA (Hons), MA (dist) Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2020 UNIVERSITY OF CHICHESTER ABSTRACT DEPARTMENT OF DANCE Dance Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy BRUK OUT FEMINISM IN THE INTERCULTURAL DANCEHALL QUEEN SCENE by Celena Luz Monteiro i The focus of this thesis is the intercultural Dancehall Queen (DHQ) scene, as manifested between Jamaica and Europe, within the broader culture of dancehall. Dancehall is a performance culture that first developed as a resistant expression toward a postcolonial Jamaican climate in the late 1970s (Cooper, 2004). According to several dancehall scholars including Carolyn Cooper, dancehall articulates the condition of a working-class black Jamaican population. As such, much of the academic research on dancehall to date has focused on its relationship to its Jamaican socioeconomic and cultural context. Dancehall has also been found to be relevant to women outside Jamaica (Bakare- Yusuf, 2006b), but very little of the literature looks specifically at this dimension. This thesis sets out to examine the practices of Jamaican and European women in dancehall from an intercultural perspective, looking at the connectivities and tensions within this diversely positioned collective. The research, which used a reflexive physical/digital multi-sited ethnographic methodology, offers a model for conducting research into intercultural black feminist phenomena that span transnational sites and virtual/physical embodiment and connectivity. The methodology recognises the ethnographic encounter as a performative space between researcher and participant, and develops accountable strategies for reading silence and embodied expressivity, in dialogue with verbal, textual and visual research materials in intercultural research settings. It reveals that in this study juxtapositions between hypervisibility and silence by certain black Jamaican and black European dancers amount to a decolonial articulation of the right to opacity (Glissant, 1990). The study finds that the women in the Jamaican/European DHQ scene engage in various forms of creative, embodied and digital labour practices in the construction of their dancehall identities. It argues that this labour is underscored by a black epistemology centred on the vernacular Jamaican notion of bruk out, which put simply means to break out. The research argues that bruk out is performatively enacted within DHQ performances that engage black feminist Caribbean aesthetics that centre on the pleasure taken in performative dares that break social respectability rules. The study subsequently introduces the concept of ‘bruk out feminism’, which it argues is a performative world view that focuses on the expressivity of pleasure and pain through the construction of digital visual cultures, forms of materialist self-determination and decolonial self-preservation. The research studies how these cultural specificities are negotiated in the intercultural exchanges between white and black, Jamaican and European, dancers. It argues that reflexive interculturalism, which centralises and empowers the practices of black women in dancehall and uses exchange, friction and dialogue to de-centre a privileged position of whiteness, enables forms of coalitional solidarity to take shape. It concludes that the scene reflects an agonistic (Mouffé, 2012) status quo, where exploitative and socially progressive predilections co-exist. ii Contents ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..i Contents …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..iii DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP………………………………………………………………………………………………………….v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..vi Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......1 Chapter 1: Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..14 1.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....14 1.2 Black Feminism ...…………………………………………………………………………….…………………………….. 18 1.3 Overview of Dancehall Literature …………………….……….........................................................24 1.4 Decolonising Black Caribbean Women’s Performance …………………….……………………………….27 1.5 Readings of Female Dancehall Movement Aesthetics……………………………………………………...33 1.6 Dancehall in the World: Dance Studies, Race and Intercultural Performance …..….............35 1.7 Digital and Virtual Dimensions……………………………………………………………………………….………..38 1.8 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…….43 Chapter 2: Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………..46 2.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….46 2.2 Self-Reflexive Ethnography………………………………………………………………………………………….……47 2.3 Dialogical Embodied Methods ……………………………………………………………………………………......50 2.4 Accountable Positionality…………………………………………………………………………………………………54 2.5 Language………………………..………………………………………………………………………………………………..57 2.6 Multi-Sited Ethnography ……………………………………………………………………………………………...….57 2.7 Choosing Field Sites……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…58 2.7.1 Vienna………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..58 2.7.2 Online…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………59 2.7.3 Jamaica…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..63 2.7.4 London……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….64 2.8 Observations an Fieldnotes………………………………………………………………………….…………………..65 2.9 Case Studies………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………….…….67 2.10 Conducting Interviews: Techniques and Attributes……………………………………………….………..67 2.11 Writing Up: Listening to Data and Interpreting Silence …………………………………………..…..….71 2.12 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..75 Chapter 3: The Dancehall Network…………………………………………………………………………………………….…….77 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….......77 3.2 Space, Flows of Influence, and Desire …………………………………….………………………………………..80 3.3 Case Studies: Flava, Talent, Dancehall Queen Fraise and Dancehall Queen Katie …….…….….83 3.4 Mediated Consumption of the Jamaican Dancehall Body……………………………………………….…86 3.5 Racialised Dancehall Queen Interactivity and Online Visual Cultures…..……..…………………...88 3.6 Embodying Network Connectivity………………………………………………………………………………..…101 3.7 Reflexive Interculturalism……………………………………………………………………………………….….….106 iii 3.8 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….112 Chapter 4: The Dancehall Queen …………………………………………………………………………………………….….….115 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….…...115 4.2 Becoming a Dancehall Queen……………………………………………………………………………………..….119 4.3 Adornment and World-Making……………………………………………………………………………………...120 4.4 Performative Masquerade……………………………………………………………………………………………..124 4.5 Dancehall Queens Online ……..……..………………………...........................................................125 4.6 Dancehall Queen Celebrities and Commercial ‘Success’.…………………………………………….….129 4.7 Dancehall Queen Competitions…………………………………………………………………………………..….131 4.8 Resistance and Processes of Re-Positioning and Disregarding…………………………………………134 4.9 Bruk Out…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………136 4.10 Living as a Dancehall Queen and Strategies for Unmasking………………………………………….138 4.11 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….140 Chapter 5: Bruk Out Feminism and Interculturalism……………………………………………………………………….142 5.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………142 5.2 Pleasure and Politics……………………………………………………………………………………………………...144 5.3 Interculturalism and the Bruk Out Dancehall Queen Scene…………………………..………….……..152 5.4 Bruk Out Feminism, Intercultural Dancehall Queens and Commercial Capitalism ………....157 5.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..158 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..160 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..167 Textual Sources ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………167 Recorded Audiovisual Sources……………………………………………….…………………………………………….178 Interviews and Public Talks……………………………………………..……………………………………………………179 Websites …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…180 Performances……………..…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…181 Personal Correspondence……………………………………………………....…………………………………………..181 iv DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I, Celena Luz Monteiro, declare that the thesis entitled ‘Bruk Out Feminism in the Intercultural Dancehall Queen Scene’ and the work presented in the thesis are both my own, and have been generated by me as the result of my own original research. I confirm that: • this work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University; • where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated; • where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; • where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; • I have acknowledged all main sources of help; • where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself; • none of this work has been published before submission, or [delete as appropriate] parts of this work have been published as: [please list references] Signed: ………. Date:……………06/01/2020 v Acknowledgements