Second Skin Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface

by Cheng, Anne Anlin

• ISBN13: 9780195387056
• ISBN10: 0195387058
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Through the figure of Josephine Baker, Second Skin tells the story of an unexpected yet enduring intimacy between the invention of a modernist style and the theatricalization of black skin at the turn of the twentieth century. Stepping outside of the platitudes surrounding this iconic figure, Anne Anlin Cheng argues that Baker's famous nakedness must be understood within larger philosophic and aesthetic debates about, and desire for, 'pure surface' that crystallized at the convergence of modern art, architecture, machinery, and philosophy. Through Cheng's analysis, Baker emerges as a central artist whose work engages with and impacts various modes of modernist display such as film, photography, art, and even the modern house.

Author Biography

Anne Cheng is Professor of American Literature, Princeton University and the author of The Melancholy of Race: Assimilation, Psychoanalysis, and Hidden Grief (Oxford University Press).

Table of Contents

Her Own Skin	p. 1
In the Museum	p. 17
Skins, Tattoos, and the Lure of the Surface	p. 23
What Bananas Say	p. 35
Housing Baker, Dressing Loos	p. 49
Radiant Bodies, Dark Cities	p. 83
The Women with the Golden Skin	p. 101
All That Glitters Is Not Gold (or, Dirty Professors)	p. 133
Ethical Looking	p. 165
Back to the Museum	p. 173
List of Illustrations	p. 179
Notes	p. 183
Works Citied	p. 211
Index	p. 223
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