"Colored people's time": Praxis and temporality in the stand-up performances of Richard Pryor and Jackie "Moms" Mabley
Item
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Title
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"Colored people's time": Praxis and temporality in the stand-up performances of Richard Pryor and Jackie "Moms" Mabley
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:48d6167f2953:10851
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identifier
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10730
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Creator
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Welcome, H. Alexander,
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Contributor
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Charles W. Smith
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Ethnic studies | American studies | Black studies | African American studies | Philosophy | Performing arts | Black Existentialism | Comedy | Frantz Fanon | Jackie "Moms" Mabley | Richard Pryor | Temporality
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Abstract
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Oppression can be interpreted as a process through which specific groups are created and subordinated for the purpose of mediating, and in so alleviating, the alienation of privileged groups. As oppression operates on many levels---e.g. the social, the economic, the psychological, the bodily, and in the academy---it leads to the development of a number of issues. Oppression can be conceptualized in terms of temporality. Those who are oppressed are atemporal: this atemporality is phenomenological in that oppressed groups feel as though they are socially and psychologically fixed. The oppressed internalize and reiterate their own oppression, oppression that the academy also perpetuates. While these dynamics call traditional methods of inquiry into question, comedic discourse bypasses these problems. Group laughter---based in relief, incongruity, or superiority---reflects a collective consciousness. More importantly, as a group these various types of laughter are indicative of psyches beholden to and free of the ideological constraints of oppression. Audio recordings of the stand-up performances of two of the U.S.'s most gifted and influential stand-up comedians---Richard Pryor and Jackie "Moms" Mabley---constitute rich cultural artifacts reflective of popular attitudes about black oppression and freedom.;This dissertation examines explicit and implicit theoretical articulations of oppression and freedom. Using the black existentialist writings of Frantz Fanon as a theoretical framework; my dissertation, a discourse analysis of the stand-up comedic performances of Moms Mabley and Richard Pryor, locates both Mabley and Pryor within the school of thought that frames oppression as a process defined by the phenomenal fixity of the subordinated. Part of the richness of Mabley and Pryor's comedy is that as the performers alternate between positions of subordination and positions of privilege they are able to detail how various types of oppression---those based on race, sex, gender, and nationality---are suffered, enforced, and transcended. For these comedians the transcendence of oppression is equated with a phenomenal residence in the present. This mode can be achieved by the appropriation---sometimes active, at other times passive---of violence, and praxis grounded in care. Overall, Pryor and Mabley argue that embracing all of one's possibilities of agency is the key to freedom.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
