Exit the Matrix, Enter the System: Capitalizing on Black Culture to Create and Sustain Community Institutions in Post-Katrina New Orleans. by Ronni Brooks Armstead/Fari Nzinga Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Orin Starn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Bayo Holsey ___________________________ Valerie Lambert ___________________________ Richard J. Powell Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 ABSTRACT Exit the matrix, Enter the System: Capitalizing on Black Culture to Create and Sustain Community Institutions in post-Katrina New Orleans. by Ronni Brooks Armstead/Fari Nzinga Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Orin Starn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Bayo Holsey ___________________________ Valerie Lambert ___________________________ Richard J. Powell An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Ronni Brooks Armstead/Fari Nzinga 2013 Abstract After the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Fall of 2005, millions of dollars of Northern philanthropic aid have poured into the Gulf Coast, as have volunteers, rebuilding professionals, and NGO workers. Subsequently, New Orleans has witnessed an explosion of NGOs and Social Enterprises, all intent on rebuilding the city and “doing good” for its residents. However, it was not simply the opening of the economic floodgates that has drawn so many outsiders to the city, it was also the threat to New Orleans’ mythic exceptionalism as the so-called “Creole Capital,” which has spurred so many willing foot soldiers to action. Drawing on ethnographic material gleaned from participant observation, interviews, and some archival research, this dissertation attempts to demystify the social and cultural forces shaping New Orleans’ ongoing process of rebuilding and recovery. Special attention is paid to the role of the arts and of aesthetics as political tools, and forms of capital available to Black actors. Illuminating the political and economic contexts within which the work of community building takes place reveals both the possibilities and the limitations which face Black New Orleanians, embedded in this dynamic landscape. Attending to external forces as well as internal relationships, it becomes clear that Black artist-activists see institution-building as a way to 1) build upon some of the only forms of capital available to Black New Orleanians – that is, social and cultural capital; 2) organize Black communities and begin to exercise some forms of Black Power; and 3) to sustain local social movements. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, who has shown me through her own fearless brilliance that academic research and pedagogy, relationship and community building, and liberation struggle are all interrelated and ongoing. It is to your standard of excellence, that I hope this dissertation rises. v Contents List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... xi Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Adventures in Anthropological Methods ............................................................................ 3 The importance of interrogating myths ............................................................................... 8 Tropicalizing New Orleans, mythologizing the place ...................................................... 10 Demystifying the instrumentalization of culture .............................................................. 19 Exploring institutional and interpersonal dynamics: a chapter by chapter breakdown .... 27 Reviewing the literature on Blackness, the ghetto, and the Katrina experience ............................ 31 Theoretical Understandings of Blackness ......................................................................... 33 Ghetto stories .................................................................................................................... 45 Un-natural disasters .......................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 70 Historical discourse as myth-making ............................................................................................. 72 Racial and cultural politics of Creole identity .................................................................. 78 New Orleans’ shifting racial hierarchy ............................................................................. 83 Making myth out of the 1811 Slave Revolt ...................................................................... 86 Historical discourse enters the academe: the Tulane Symposium .................................... 95 Historical discourse and poetic license: ‘Rumours of War’ ........................................... 101 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 109 A survey of New Orleans’ late 20th century Black-led social movements ................................. 112 Institutional limits and political possibilities .................................................................. 114 That great tributary of resistance, the Civil Rights Movement ....................................... 120 The Civil Rights Movementʼs ʻold guardʼ: The NAACP………………………………127 The Civil Rights Movementʼs ʻyoung Turksʼ: CORE………………………………….134 A ‘Great Awakening’: the post-Civil Rights era and the rise of Black Power ............... 141 Dissipating movements and the ‘new’ Black politics ..................................................... 146 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 152 Contemporary constellations of movement and money, actors and activists .............................. 155 Art and activism: a reciprocal relation? .......................................................................... 157 vi The Free Southern Theater.............................................................................................. 162 Junebug Productions, Inc. ............................................................................................... 170 Post-Katrina NGOs and philanthropy ............................................................................. 183 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 199 Conscious community building as cultural organizing strategy .................................................. 202 The post-Katrina NGO landscape and Black women’s place within it .......................... 203 Social entrepreneurialism as a form of Black feminist movement ................................. 210 The Ashé Cultural Arts Center ....................................................................................... 212 The Gris Gris Lab ........................................................................................................... 225 The Community Book Center ......................................................................................... 233 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 240 LMAAH: Visualizing Black culture, consciousness, and community ........................................ 244 Museums, and the way we see things ............................................................................. 246 Organizational predecessors to the Louisiana Museum for African American History . 257 Louisiana Museum for African American History (LMAAH) ....................................... 261 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 275 Reflections ................................................................................................................................... 277 The more things change, the more they stay the same .................................................... 278 A note on violence .......................................................................................................... 282 The problem of the twenty-first century ......................................................................... 287 References .................................................................................................................................... 289 Biography……………………………………………………………………………………….314