Beneath the surface : a transnational history of skin lighteners /

Beneath the surface : a transnational history of skin lighteners /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Thomas, Lynn M., author.
Imprint:	Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.
Description:	xii, 352 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	Theory in forms Theory in forms.
Subject:	Colorism -- South Africa. Human skin color -- Social aspects -- South Africa. Human skin color -- Economic aspects -- South Africa. Racism -- South Africa. Race relations. Colorism. Human skin color -- Social aspects. Race relations. Racism. South Africa.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12002240

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781478005384 1478005386 9781478006428 1478006420 9781478007050
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"BENEATH THE SURFACE explores the use of skin lighteners within South Africa, and across Africa and the diaspora. While skin color has been a marker of difference from the precolonial era to the post-Apartheid, postcolonial present, Lynn Thomas emphasizes the varied ways in which differences in skin color, tone, and texture became tied to regimes of value in white-dominant societies. However, Thomas does not dismiss skin lighteners as merely the adherence to an imposed valuation of white skin; instead, she tracks the remarkable development of social and political formations that shaped the appeal of a social object that lightened skin. Thomas builds a framework for assessing objects as part of an aesthetic and technological infrastructure that works through and with consumer capitalism to generate new forms of aesthetic beauty and establish skin tone as a marker for respectability and modernity transnationally. Through showcasing these multivocal desires for lighter skin, Thomas reintroduces the context of black entrepreneurship and consumerism within both national and international markets and creates space for understanding skin lightening as a productive site for both political and aesthetic struggle against a global racial order."--Provided by publisher.
Other form:	Online version: Thomas, Lynn M, 1967- Beneath the surface. Durham : 2020 9781478007050

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Call Number:	GN197 .S524 2020
c.1	Available Loan period: standard loan Scan and Deliver Request for Pickup Need help? - Ask a Librarian