L. Richardson
Working at the ambivalence of race: ethnomimesis and the cancellation of St Paul's Carnival
Richardson, L.
Authors
Abstract
The ambivalence of race is taken as a starting point in exploring the cancellation of the 2012 St Paul's Carnival, an African-Caribbean arts event in Bristol, England. That race is unstable, that it can be done and undone, has long been a focus of scholarship in social and cultural geography and beyond. This article asks instead how such a fragile state is maintained and with what implications. This necessitates regarding racial ambivalence as an activity; a condition that has to be worked at to be sustained. Ethnomimesis is used to frame these operations of racial ambivalence. Ethnomimesis is the way in which we encounter, stereotype and recognise cultural practices for ourselves and manifest them to others. It demonstrates how different configurations of race are precariously held between the creative possibilities and contingencies of situated cultural practices. Three moments of cancellation are narrated to show how ethnomimetic processes work through multiple formulations of race. This racial ambivalence is central to Carnival's failure. The organisers attempted to produce a performance of African-Caribbean culture that simultaneously denied the histories of racism that motivated the event. Ethnomimesis exposes how the racial ambivalence emergent in these cultural practices both opens and closes the possibilities to belong.
Citation
Richardson, L. (2013). Working at the ambivalence of race: ethnomimesis and the cancellation of St Paul's Carnival. Social and Cultural Geography, 14(6), 710-730. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.813059
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Jul 16, 2013 |
Publication Date | Sep 1, 2013 |
Deposit Date | May 15, 2013 |
Publicly Available Date | Jul 19, 2013 |
Journal | Social and Cultural Geography |
Print ISSN | 1464-9365 |
Electronic ISSN | 1470-1197 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 14 |
Issue | 6 |
Pages | 710-730 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.813059 |
Keywords | Race, Ethnomimesis, Belonging, Carnival, Community, Multiculturalism. |
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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Social & Cultural Geography on 16/07/2013, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14649365.2013.813059.
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