Gendered, post-diasporic mobilities and the politics of blackness in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016)

Journal article


Scafe, S (2019). Gendered, post-diasporic mobilities and the politics of blackness in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016). Caribbean Review of Gender Studies. 13, pp. 93-120.
AuthorsScafe, S
Abstract

Zadie Smith’s novel Swing Time (2016) traverses the geographies and
temporalities of the Black Atlantic, unsettling conventional definitions of a black
African diaspora, and restlessly interrogating easy gestures of identification and
belonging. In my analysis of Smith’s text, I argue that these interconnected
spaces and the characters’ uneasy and shifting identities are representative of
post-diasporic communities and subjectivities. The novel’s representations of
female friendships, mother-daughter relationships, and professional relationships
between women, however, demonstrate that experiences of diaspora/postdiaspora are complicated by issues of gender. Forms of black dance and
African diasporic music represent the novel’s concerns with mobility and stillness;
dance is used by its young female characters as a “diasporic resource” (Nassy
Brown 2005, 42), a means of negotiating and contesting existing structures of
gender, class and culture.

Year2019
JournalCaribbean Review of Gender Studies
Journal citation13, pp. 93-120
PublisherThe University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
ISSN1995-1108
Web address (URL)https://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/june2019/index.asp
Publication dates
Print13 Jun 2019
Publication process dates
Accepted13 May 2019
Deposited19 Feb 2020
Accepted author manuscript
License
File Access Level
Open
Permalink -

https://openresearch.lsbu.ac.uk/item/89156

  • 214
    total views
  • 82
    total downloads
  • 6
    views this month
  • 2
    downloads this month

Export as

Related outputs

Reading intersections of race, class and gender in fiction by black British women writers.
Scafe, S. (2022). Reading intersections of race, class and gender in fiction by black British women writers. in: The Race and Gender Reader Routledge. pp. 1-19
Daring to tilt worlds: the fiction of Irenosen Okojie.
Scafe, S. (2021). Daring to tilt worlds: the fiction of Irenosen Okojie. in: Women Writers and Experimental Narrative Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-12
African-Caribbean women interrogating diaspora/post-diaspora
Scafe, S. and Dunn, L. (2020). African-Caribbean women interrogating diaspora/post-diaspora. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal. 13 (2), pp. 127-133. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2020.1740471
Black women subjects in auto/ biographical discourse
Scafe, S (2016). Black women subjects in auto/ biographical discourse. in: Osborne, D (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945-2010) Cambridge University Press (CUP). pp. 144-158
Re-mapping women's testimonies into networked subjectivities: The Quipu Project
Maraschin, D and Scafe, S (2016). Re-mapping women's testimonies into networked subjectivities: The Quipu Project. in: Takhar, Shaminder (ed.) Gender and Race Matter: Global Perspectives on Being a Woman Emerald.