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

Figure 1: Courtesy Aisha Bastiaans, copyright 1999.
supremacy, is simply to laugh at the object. A more contemporary and
oppositional tactic might be to destroy the object physically and thus
end the intolerable question of its significance. In this vein, some recent
critics have objected strongly to the curating or creating of racist
kitsch, even with an oppositional gaze or intent. In different ways, two
recent critics of “black memorabilia” reject the possibility that such an
oppositional curating or creative practice could succeed. Racist kitsch
is simply “visual terrorism,” Robin Chandler observes, and Michael
Harris, agreeing, suggests that because such kitsch “is linked to, and a
product of, white imagination,” the “attempt to invert and reconstruct
another’s dreams inevitably keeps one tied to and preoccupied with
that other rather than the self.” 4
Such criticism amounts to a theoretical destruction of the kitsch object:
it attempts to imagine or invent a discursive and cultural space in
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