Beyond the Gaze: Dark Sousveillance as Subversion in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “On Monday of Last Week”
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story, “On Monday of Last Week,” explores the intricate intersections of race, gender, and class through Kamara, a black Nigerian immigrant who babysits for Josh, a child of Neil and Tracy’s multiracial family. This article first analyzes the ways in which racializing surveillance and gender norms reinforce Kamara’s role as the Other within the ostensibly multicultural ideal. Positioned as a repository of black Africanness and black motherhood, Kamara is bound by racializing and gendering structures that overdetermine her position as a black African nanny-mammy. Using Simone Browne’s “dark sousveillance” as a theoretical lens, this paper dissects Kamara’s intersectional subjections and explores the transformative potential embedded in her being as the invisible but present “dark matter” discussed by Howard Winant. The examination of the possibility of dark sousveillance extends to another black female character Tracy. Her “willful absence” offers insights into alternative forms and notions of black motherhood, suggesting the possibility of subversion against normative roles. Kamara’s queer desire for Tracy further enriches the discourse on dark sousveillance, unveiling the force of erotic resistance that allows for the exploration of the multiplicity of blackness and subjectivity. However, this paper also highlights the contingent nature of these tactics; they may not radicalize the system fully and immediately. Nevertheless, within its limitations and constraints, this paper sees the nuanced dynamics of dark sousveillance and its strategic opacity in the narrative as a tool of resistance and empowerment for racialized and gendered subjects in countering racializing surveillance.
Abstract
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story, “On Monday of Last Week,” explores the intricate intersections of race, gender, and class through Kamara, a black Nigerian immigrant who babysits for Josh, a child of Neil and Tracy’s multiracial family. This article first analyzes the ways in which racializing surveillance and gender norms reinforce Kamara’s role as the Other within the ostensibly multicultural ideal. Positioned as a repository of black Africanness and black motherhood, Kamara is bound by racializing and gendering structures that overdetermine her position as a black African nanny-mammy. Using Simone Browne’s “dark sousveillance” as a theoretical lens, this paper dissects Kamara’s intersectional subjections and explores the transformative potential embedded in her being as the invisible but present “dark matter” discussed by Howard Winant. The examination of the possibility of dark sousveillance extends to another black female character Tracy. Her “willful absence” offers insights into alternative forms and notions of black motherhood, suggesting the possibility of subversion against normative roles. Kamara’s queer desire for Tracy further enriches the discourse on dark sousveillance, unveiling the force of erotic resistance that allows for the exploration of the multiplicity of blackness and subjectivity. However, this paper also highlights the contingent nature of these tactics; they may not radicalize the system fully and immediately. Nevertheless, within its limitations and constraints, this paper sees the nuanced dynamics of dark sousveillance and its strategic opacity in the narrative as a tool of resistance and empowerment for racialized and gendered subjects in countering racializing surveillance.
참고문헌 (20)
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