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    Black and White Landscapes: Topographies of Disorientation in the Works of Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine


    Gander, Catherine (2020) Black and White Landscapes: Topographies of Disorientation in the Works of Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine. Journal of American Studies, 54 (3). pp. 517-540. ISSN 0021-8758

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    Abstract

    n this essay, I explore how the contemporary black female artists Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine work with photography and text to develop what I call, after the famous American landscape photography exhibition, a new, anticolonial, topographics. Connecting the geographical and anatomical meanings of the word “topography,” I approach their works via the phenomenology of Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon, tracing how the two artists decentre and throw into relief what Ahmed terms “whiteness as orientation.” Enacting an affective, visual politics of discomfort and disorientation, Weems and Rankine, this essay contends, open new terrain from which to encounter the American landscape in visual, corporeal, and phenomenological terms.
    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: Black and White Landscapes; Topographies; Disorientation; Carrie Mae Weems; Claudia Rankine;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English
    Item ID: 15864
    Identification Number: 10.1017/S002187581900094X
    Depositing User: Catherine Gander
    Date Deposited: 25 Apr 2022 12:01
    Journal or Publication Title: Journal of American Studies
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies
    Refereed: Yes
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/15864
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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