In Virtual Defense of Harriet Tubman: Exploring the Role of Social Media in Responses to Stigma

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. RGC and Media Representations

Abstract

This paper explores issues of representation, race and gender through an analysis of All Def Digital’s production and release of a “Harriet Tubman Sextape”. Writing in the genre of analytic autoethnography (Anderson 2006), I bring reflections on my own experience (as an African-American woman) learning about, viewing and reacting to the video in dialogue with content analysis of over 200 comments written by signers of the petition. I develop the concept of "spiritual reflexivity" (Roof 1999) by exploring how my engagement with Christian mysticism, Hinduism and Buddhism shaped my emotional experience of feeling gendered and racialized offense and rage at the portrayal of Tubman. In so doing, the paper 1) introduces a theorization of stigmatization as a “symbolic attack” 2) demonstrates how spirituality can shape how an individual interprets and responds to symbolic attacks and 3) emphasizes the role of the internet in providing opportunities for the co-production of meanings and collective responses to stigmatization.

Author

• Crystal Marie Fleming, State University of New York-Stony Brook