
Nobody Is Supposed to Know
Black Sexuality on the Down Low
C. Riley Snorton(Author)
University of Minnesota Press
Published on 14. March 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
216 pages
978-0-8166-7797-9 (ISBN)
Description
Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the "down low"-black men who have sex with men as well as women and do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual-has exploded in news media and popular culture, from the Oprah Winfrey Show to R & B singer R. Kelly's hip hopera Trapped in the Closet. Most down-low stories are morality tales in which black men are either predators who risk infecting their unsuspecting female partners with HIV or victims of a pathological black culture that repudiates openly gay identities. In both cases, down-low narratives depict black men as sexually dangerous, duplicitous, promiscuous, and contaminated.
In Nobody Is Supposed to Know, C. Riley Snorton traces the emergence and circulation of the down low in contemporary media and popular culture to show how these portrayals reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. Reworking Eve Sedgwick's notion of the "glass closet," Snorton advances a new theory of such representations in which black sexuality is marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle and speculation. Through close readings of news, music, movies, television, and gossip blogs, Nobody Is Supposed to Know explores the contemporary genealogy, meaning, and functions of the down low.
Snorton examines how the down low links blackness and queerness in the popular imagination and how the down low is just one example of how media and popular culture surveil and police black sexuality. Looking at figures such as Ma Rainey, Bishop Eddie L. Long, J. L. King, and Will Smith, he ultimately contends that down-low narratives reveal the limits of current understandings of black sexuality.
In Nobody Is Supposed to Know, C. Riley Snorton traces the emergence and circulation of the down low in contemporary media and popular culture to show how these portrayals reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. Reworking Eve Sedgwick's notion of the "glass closet," Snorton advances a new theory of such representations in which black sexuality is marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle and speculation. Through close readings of news, music, movies, television, and gossip blogs, Nobody Is Supposed to Know explores the contemporary genealogy, meaning, and functions of the down low.
Snorton examines how the down low links blackness and queerness in the popular imagination and how the down low is just one example of how media and popular culture surveil and police black sexuality. Looking at figures such as Ma Rainey, Bishop Eddie L. Long, J. L. King, and Will Smith, he ultimately contends that down-low narratives reveal the limits of current understandings of black sexuality.
Reviews / Votes
"C. Riley Snorton has written a stunning new chapter in queer theory. This book magnificently extends Eve K. Sedgwick's concept of the closet to grapple with race, sex, and secrecy. Building on concepts like the 'glass closet' and examining the dynamics and geographies of the down low, Snorton makes the startling claim that the down low is not a set of hidden practices but that it actually constitutes the staging of the conditions of Black representability. This is a very important book and it will have an immediate impact on the study of race and sexuality." -Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer Art of Failure"Informative and absorbing."-Qualitative Sociology
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Minnesota
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
1
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8166-7797-9 (9780816677979)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
C. Riley Snorton is assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.
Content
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Transpositions1. Down Low Genealogies2. Trapped in the Epistemological Closet3. Black Sexual Syncretism4. Rumor Has ItConclusion: Down Low Diasporas
NotesIndex
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Transpositions1. Down Low Genealogies2. Trapped in the Epistemological Closet3. Black Sexual Syncretism4. Rumor Has ItConclusion: Down Low Diasporas
NotesIndex