My Woman She Don’t Treat Me Right: Black Feminism Standpoints and the Gendering of Infrapolitics in American Blues Music

• In Event: Top Papers of the African American Communication and Culture Division

Abstract

This essay examines the gender politics of infrapolitical protest in American blues music. Working from a Black feminist perspective, it interrogates a lyrical code in the blues that substitutes what is often a misogynistic antagonism with women for a critique of institutionalized, white racism. This code, an example of the resistant practice James Scott calls “infrapolitics,” can be problematized for the ways in which it attacks a system of racial oppression with one based on gender.

Author

• Roger Gatchet, University of Texas, Austin