Christopher House, Pre-Doctoral Diversity Fellow in the Department of Communication Studies (H&S), will speak at 12:10pm on Thursday, December 8th in Clark Lounge. The title of his presentation is “Mammy’s Cookie Jar: The Commodification of Black Pain”. In the presentation, House will examine the ethicality of the commodification of racial pain using the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, Dr. David Pilgrim, founder and Curator, as a case study.
House argues that although Pilgrim’s intention for creating a racist museum is commendable in that he aims to use “items of intolerance to teach tolerance,” one could nevertheless clearly make the case that the commodification of pain through supply and demand of racist memorabilia is arguably a reterritorialization of a line of flight or way of escape from the ubiquitous presence of Empire, as discussed in Michael Hart and Antonio Negri’s influential work, Empire. House maintains that the practice of buying and selling racist, e.g. "sambo," "Coon," "Pickanny," "Mammie" and "Uncle" caricatures invariably work to reproduce the very economic systems of gross misrepresentations that victims of such economies have sought to destroy.
The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. All members of the campus community are invited to attend. Please bring a bag lunch and join us in Clark Lounge, Campus Center, at 12:10 p.m.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20111202085957813