Please join STS/CSIS for a colloquium event with Dr. Anjali Vats

Marking Disidentification: Race, Corporeality, and Resistance in Trademark Law

When: Thursday, March 2nd, 12-2 pm

Where: Sociology Boardroom (Social Science and Humanities Building Room 1291)

Spread the word and join us.

We will have pizza!

Abstract:

This essay considers two case studies—Andy Warhol’s Mammy and Marshawn Lynch’s Beast Mode®—through the analytic lens of disidentification in order to theorize how embodied resistance reifies and remakes race and gender identities in trademark law. It develops two subcategories of José Esteban Muñoz’s classic term: prosopopeic disidentification, which gives face and voice to the mythic figure of the mammy; and (de)propertizing disidentification, which refuses white ownership of black bodies while asserting the right of the individual in monetizing corporeal acts. It concludes that disidentification is an important but imperfect means for people of color to intervene in processes of racial formation by reimagining the boundaries of race, gender, and law as well as dominant monopolies on memory and property.

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Dr. Anjali Vats is Visiting Law Professor, UC Davis School of Law; Assistant Professor of Communication and African and African Diaspora Studies, Boston College; and Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School (By Courtesy)