The Feel of Life: Resonance, Race, and Representation

Authors

  • Herman Gray University of California Santa Cruz

Keywords:

affect, Blackness, feelings, new media, race, resonance

Abstract

This article uses examples of the viral circulation of the images of Black people in the new media ecology of television news and YouTube to suggest that the feelings these images evoke exceed the legibility of their semiotic meaning and the promise of their political efficacy. The article uses this condition of excess in the politics of meaning to suggest that the platforms though which the images of Blacks gather, focus, and habituate points of identification (and disidentification) and perception might complement the continuing conceptual emphasis on racial meaning with a conception of media as a cultural technology for generating and circulating racial feelings and feelings about race.

Author Biography

Herman Gray, University of California Santa Cruz

ProfessorDepartment of Sociology831 459-2831

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Published

2015-04-15

Issue

Vol. 9 (2015)

Section

Articles

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