"All That You Can't Leave behind": Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe Author(s): Daphne A. Brooks Source: Meridians , 2008, Vol. 8, No. 1, Representin': Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music (2008), pp. 180-204 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/40338916 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Meridians This content downloaded from 161.23.84.10 on Sat, 15 Aug 2020 15:27:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAPHNE A. BROOKS "All That You Can't Leave Behind" Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Summation in the Age of Catastrophe Abstract This essay explores the critical work o/Bey once's second solo recording, and places it in conversation with yet another under-theorized yet equally dissonant R&B performance by her "hip-hop soul queen" contemporary Mary J. Blige. In relation to both Beyonce"s and BUge's work, I examine the politics of black women's pop music culture in relation to the Gulf Coast catastrophe and the extreme marginalization o/black women in American sociopolitical culture.