White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing
White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing
This chapter theorizes Black body aesthetics through the lens of the white gaze, which is parasitic upon the construction of the Black body as ersatz, disgusting, and ontologically problematic. The white gaze is an historical achievement, a site of lived sedimentation of white power and privilege that perpetuates violence upon Black bodies. As such, the white gaze is contingent, and the relational ontology it assumes is not historically inexorable, but undoable. Through contemporary incidents of violence by white police (and their proxies), this chapter shows that white gazing presupposes a fundamental site of what is called “suturing,” an embodied white practice that involves fleeing the ways in which we are, in these terms, un-sutured: an important ontological claim about human persons. It argues that white people must develop specific socio-ontological un-suturing practices, ones that refuse to cover over the festering reality of white lies and white attempts at self-mastery.
Keywords: suture, un-suture, whiteness, white gaze, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis, Eric Harris
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
