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Full-Text Articles in History
Desire And Disaster In New Orleans: Tourism, Race, And Historical Memory, Lynnell Thomas
Desire And Disaster In New Orleans: Tourism, Race, And Historical Memory, Lynnell Thomas
Lynnell Thomas
Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture—jazz, cuisine, dance—while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourist websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. …
New Orleans Unveiled: Fanon And A Reconceptualization Of The Performative, Lynnell Thomas
New Orleans Unveiled: Fanon And A Reconceptualization Of The Performative, Lynnell Thomas
Lynnell Thomas
This article examines Frantz Fanon's "Algeria Unveiled" as a reconceptualization of J. L. Austin's theory of the performative. Austin, whose examples of the performative all assume an equal, if not harmonious, relationship, overlooks instances of incompatibility and inequality. Fanon's post-colonial framework, in contrast, illustrates the markedly different types of intentions, uptake, and conventions which inform the speech act in cases of extreme inequality. In these cases, the powerless and seemingly voiceless use tacitly agreed upon conventions inappropriately to attain what they would not be able to have otherwise. Fanon's notion of the performative is used to explore the performative resistance …
“'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives", Lynnell L. Thomas
“'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives", Lynnell L. Thomas
Lynnell Thomas
This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.
“‘The City I Used To...Visit’: Tourist New Orleans And The Racialized Response To Hurricane Katrina”, Lynnell Thomas
“‘The City I Used To...Visit’: Tourist New Orleans And The Racialized Response To Hurricane Katrina”, Lynnell Thomas
Lynnell Thomas
This article explores the connections between New Orleans’s late 20th-century tourism representations and the mainstream media coverage and national images of the city immediately following Hurricane Katrina. It pays particular attention to the ways that race and class are employed in both instances to create and perpetuate a distorted sense of place that ignore the historical and contemporary realities of the city’s African American population.