Kelsie, Amber
(2020)
‘I Know Who You Are’: Antiblackness in the Speculative Rhetorics of Genetic Genealogy.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Drawing on the theoretical frameworks provided by afropessimism, Black feminist new materialism, and rhetoric and media studies, this dissertation investigates the racial meaning-making at work in the speculative rhetorics of genetic genealogy. Genetic genealogy imaginaries are invested in a world-making project that mirrors the speculative maneuvers of biotechnology writ large. Blackness is understood as a “communicative medium” for the inscription of the Humanist drama of value in the production of technoscientific imaginaries. Genetic genealogy discourse figured in the popular HBO series Watchmen and AncestryDNA advertisements are examined as rhetorical mediations of nature and life that appropriate and (mis)recognize Blackness. This dissertation argues that genetic genealogy invests and arrests Blackness through motifs of loss and recovery, and through an incorporative logic of neoliberal multiculturalism. Rhetorical operations of structural adjustment found in this study neither simply forefront a color-conscious politic nor a post-racial one. Instead, these operations are indicative of a racialized command that one assent to deracialization in order to enter the drama of Human value.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
8 June 2020 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
9 April 2020 |
| Approval Date: |
8 June 2020 |
| Submission Date: |
1 May 2020 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
172 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Communication: Rhetoric and Communication |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Antiblackness, Black Studies, Afropessimism, Black feminist new materialism, genealogy, genetics, rhetoric, media studies |
| Date Deposited: |
08 Jun 2020 16:30 |
| Last Modified: |
10 May 2021 16:08 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/38855 |
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