Overview
- Addresses the growing use of the word "ratchet" in American popular media over the past several years, but illustrates how similar terms and coded phrases can be reflective of shifts in American culture more broadly
- Offers rich academic analysis while maintaining an approachable, readable style that engages critically with the term at the center of the study
- Research draws from deep ethnographic data collected over the course of four years
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book enters as a corrective to the tendency to trivialize and (mis)appropriate African American language practices. The word ratchet has entered into a wider (whiter) American discourse the same way that many words in African American English have—through hip-hop and social media. Generally, ratchet refers to behaviors and cultural expressions of Black people that sit outside of normative, middle-class respectable codes of conduct. Ratchet can function both as a tool for critiquing bad Black behavior, and as a tool for resisting the notion that there are such things as “good” and “bad” behavior in the first place. This book takes seriously the way ratchet operates in the everyday lives of middle-class and upwardly mobile Black Queer women in Washington, DC who, because of their sexuality, are situated outside of the norms of (Black) respectability. The book introduces the concept of “ratchet/boojie cultural politics” which draws from a rich bodyof Black intellectual traditions which interrogate the debates concerning what is and is not “acceptable” Black (middle-class) behavior. Placing issues of non-normative sexuality at the center of the conversation about notions of propriety within normative modes of Black middle-class behavior, this book discusses what it means for Black Queer women’s bodies to be present within ratchet/boojie cultural projects, asking what Black Queer women’s increasing visibility does for the everyday experiences of Black queer people more broadly.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Nikki Lane is an independent, interdisciplinary scholar trained as a Cultural and Linguistic Anthropologist currently teaching courses in the Critical Race, Gender & Cultural Studies Collaborative at American University in Washington, DC.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Black Queer Work of Ratchet
Book Subtitle: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)Politics of Respectability
Authors: Nikki Lane
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23319-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-23318-1Published: 09 December 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-23321-1Published: 25 December 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-23319-8Published: 27 November 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 168
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Cultural Anthropology, African American Culture, Gender Studies, Linguistic Anthropology, Media and Communication