John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040504
- eISBN:
- 9780252098949
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040504.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
This chapter explores various efforts to “sell” neighborhoods as well as the construction and destruction of community through commodification. Using as examples Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park and ...
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This chapter explores various efforts to “sell” neighborhoods as well as the construction and destruction of community through commodification. Using as examples Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park and Halsted North (Boys Town) in Lakeview, it shows how particular ethnicities or lifestyles have been appropriated by cities and capital to be commodified and consumed. It also considers how some residents benefit while others confront the daily realities of continuous displacement and impoverishment created by the commodification process. While forces within Paseo Boricua and Halsted North carved out differential spaces, the chapter argues that commodification has transformed them into spaces for sale and what they represent—gayness and Puerto Ricanness. These cases illustrate the openings, dynamics, and contradictions involved in neighborhood change.Less
This chapter explores various efforts to “sell” neighborhoods as well as the construction and destruction of community through commodification. Using as examples Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park and Halsted North (Boys Town) in Lakeview, it shows how particular ethnicities or lifestyles have been appropriated by cities and capital to be commodified and consumed. It also considers how some residents benefit while others confront the daily realities of continuous displacement and impoverishment created by the commodification process. While forces within Paseo Boricua and Halsted North carved out differential spaces, the chapter argues that commodification has transformed them into spaces for sale and what they represent—gayness and Puerto Ricanness. These cases illustrate the openings, dynamics, and contradictions involved in neighborhood change.
James Smalls
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748646401
- eISBN:
- 9780748684410
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748646401.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter recovers the legacy and the person of Senegalese dancer and model Féral Benga, who became a focus for black and white artists in the 1920s and 1930s. It addresses the manner in which ...
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This chapter recovers the legacy and the person of Senegalese dancer and model Féral Benga, who became a focus for black and white artists in the 1920s and 1930s. It addresses the manner in which visual depictions of Benga's body allowed for a combined racial and gay liberatory presence and space within the aesthetic, political and cultural dimensions of modernism's racial hierarchization and alleged closet. It argues that Benga's corporeality functioned to centre ‘blackness’ and ‘gayness’ as embodied aesthetic and political categories. As well, that body highlights the tendency within primitivism and surrealism — the two dominant modern movements in which Benga's body appears — to exploit and marginalise racial difference simultaneously. These images and the homoeroticism that informs them force a reconsideration of what is historically conceived of as avant-gardist practice.Less
This chapter recovers the legacy and the person of Senegalese dancer and model Féral Benga, who became a focus for black and white artists in the 1920s and 1930s. It addresses the manner in which visual depictions of Benga's body allowed for a combined racial and gay liberatory presence and space within the aesthetic, political and cultural dimensions of modernism's racial hierarchization and alleged closet. It argues that Benga's corporeality functioned to centre ‘blackness’ and ‘gayness’ as embodied aesthetic and political categories. As well, that body highlights the tendency within primitivism and surrealism — the two dominant modern movements in which Benga's body appears — to exploit and marginalise racial difference simultaneously. These images and the homoeroticism that informs them force a reconsideration of what is historically conceived of as avant-gardist practice.
