Tavia Nyong'o Racial Kitsch and Black Performance - Ferris State ...

Figure 11:Courtesy Aisha Bastiaans, copyright 1999.
may I call it his invulnerability?—in the face of racist kitsch, recapitulates
the economy of pleasure I have been discussing, but in a way
that should produce self-recognition in us rather than another round
of scapegoating.
Although Diawara’s wish to “begin enjoying the humor” again reminds
us of Maltin’s position regarding Our Gang,I want to suggest
that it can have a different implication. I have repeatedly suggested
that oppositional spectatorship to the figure of racist kitsch cannot
overcome its ability to reproduce scapegoating, because these practices
of opposition inevitably reinscribe the object as a target for hatred and
scorn, and in doing so, draw other people into the suffering orbit of
the ceramic doll (see Figure 11), other people whose punishments can
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