Coleman's Politics, and her Prosthetics

I am fascinated by the way Beth Coleman restates the concept race is an outward expression of the self, turning this statement on its head and pointing it towards an entirely different end—yes, race is an outward expression of the self, but precisely in the sense of a deliberate extension, “not a trait but a tool” (184).

Maybe it’s because the precise way she uses terminology is a bit new to me and to our discussion of race/technology as a class, but some of Coleman’s rhetoric seemed to slide into ambiguous phrasing, evoking other ideological constructions of the US in a way that felt problematic to me. Coleman characterizes race as enabling a state of “mobility…not without its risks,” pointing out that “being in flux can be much riskier than ‘knowing one’s place, even if that place represents the lowest level of society,” (184). To me, this characterization of the way race as a technology both enables and destabilizes one’s position in society reflected a tired, quintessentially (conservative) American justification for a faulty capitalist system, a position often invoked specially to discount the ethical imperative to aid poor and minority citizens. Coleman calls for us to “act courageously when faced with oppression—our own or somebody else’s,” (181). In light of such a basic ethical call to responsibility, one which I would say the US government already claims to heed, Coleman’s formulation of the inherent “riskiness” to the “fluidity” of race (and subject positioning) seems to me to be an invocation of the classic catch on the other side of the capitalist’s coin.

I’m also interested in what Fanon would say about Coleman’s characterization of race as a “prosthesis,” and her repeated use of the blind man’s cane as an example of the way race is used as a tool, considering Fanon’s anecdote in which he vehemently refuses to claim his blackness in the same way as the cripple does his injury (194). Coleman’s “prosthesis” to me seems to be in direct conversation with Fanon’s anecdote; instead of the amputee’s stump, should we claim the peg-leg as akin to blackness? Does Coleman tacitly accept blackness (not just race in general) as an amputation in some way? I don't really think so--it is clear from Coleman's argument that we are instead meant to think through the human as more "supplemental" than we ever originally thought--"amputating" not just the black but the category of the whole human altogether. (Where does “self” begin and end in this formulation?) Still, I think the echo of Fanon's terminology in Coleman's engagement with ideas of "prosthesis" has a powerful resonance.

Also, check out this artist, Nikki S. Lee. She's a Korean-born photographer who "passes" herself off and poses herself in staged scenes as different ethnic and sociopolitical identities (a la Cindy Sherman), pretty cool/relevant I would say.