Graduation Year
2024
Date of Submission
4-2024
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Film Studies
Second Department
Literature
Reader 1
James Morrison
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Georgia McGovern
Abstract
Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.
I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines and imagine Black women crossing them. Notably, white women, by imagining themselves into narratives of victimhood, weaponize white male rage/violence against Black men. Through the usage of the “racial imaginary”, white people have the choice to either narrow their ideas of Black people, thus creating stereotypes such as the ‘Angry Black Woman’, or expand them, thus subverting biases. Thus, the ‘racial imaginary’ is not only a Postmodern weapon for white people to reinforce racial stereotypes and reduce Blackness to a singular narrative through fiction and mass media. It is also a potential tool for deconstructing stereotypes and imagining Blackness as multi-faceted. I emphasize the importance of seeing the imagination, not as ahistorical or post-racial, but as an enraged realm of possibility that lies somewhere between reality and fantasy. This liminal realm of radical possibility comes from a place of ‘Lordean Rage’ because of its metabolizing, peripheral nature.
Recommended Citation
McGovern, Georgia, "‘Poetry is Not a Luxury’, Rage Should Not be a Privilege: The Potential Power of the ‘Racial Imaginary’" (2024). CMC Senior Theses. 3598.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/3598
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Visual Studies Commons
