Situating ambiguity: Dominican identity formations.
Item
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Title
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Situating ambiguity: Dominican identity formations.
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Identifier
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AAI9986308
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identifier
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9986308
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Creator
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Candelario, Ginetta E. B.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Robert Alford
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Date
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2000
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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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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies | Women's Studies | Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines Dominican identity formations and displays in various cultural sites from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Foreign travel narratives, history texts, museum exhibits and beauty culture are analyzed utilizing sociological, feminist, post-colonial, post-structuralist, cultural studies, and critical race theories. Research methods include ethnography, ethnomethodology, oral history interviewing and content analysis.;I argue that 19th century Dominican identity formations were fostered by the emergent Dominican state in the context of U.S. imperialism and concerns over Haiti. Dominicans were narrativized as "the whites of the land" as much by U.S. travel writers and government agents as by the local Dominican elite. Trujillo most effectively institutionalized that formulation during the 20th century, again in the context of U.S. geo-political interests in the Caribbean. Trujillo's legacy found its late 20th century public history expression in the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, which favors a heavily indigenist representation of Dominican identity.;Dominican communities in New York City and Washington, D.C. engage their national history together with their local socio-racial contexts in the United States. If in the United States skin is the primary marker of race, for Dominicans it is hair. In New York City, therefore, Dominican women's hair culture practices affirm their Hispanic identity, while at the same time reconfiguring that hispanicity to include greater evidence of African descent, and challenging local race semiotics. In Washington, D.C. Dominicans have affirmed their membership in the larger African American, Latin American, and (Afro)-Latino communities simultaneously, as their participation in the Anacostia Museum's The Black Mosaic exhibit illustrated.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
