While Whitey's on the Moon
Fabricating Authenticity - Jason W.M. Ellsworth
Annie Rose O'Brien [+]
Catawba College
Annie Rose O’Brien is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her work considers race, religion, and public memory in the Southern US through the contemporary memorialization of lynching murder victims and the defacement, removal, destruction, and—more recently—the re-installation of Confederate monuments. She explores how subaltern memory is unearthed in order to contest dominant symbols, narratives, and mythologies of the nation-state, as well as the colonial logics which continue to belie its actions. Her work emphasizes white claims of supremacy as part of a
project of spatial domination which seeks to sacralize whiteness through public history, ritual acts, and visual and material culture.
Description
Building on Ramey’s argument, O’Brien draws on a couple of examples to explore the practical effects of our language—particularly that of authentic American identity—in maintaining power structures that oppress marginalized communities. O’Brien argues that our histories and narratives of identity are not neutral and require thoughtful and critical engagement to better understand how certain narratives are authorized and others are delegitimized.