[...]... section of Cultural Moves Because of the pervasiveness and prominence of this relationship in the media, there is increasing cultural and social traffic across the discursive borders of race and technology, identity, and information Despite the quickening pace of this traffic between technology and cultural identity, many of the exchanges still center on questions of privacy and access, and on the growing... margins) of the mainstream; (2) to designate those practices that operate outside of and beyond the institutional and aesthetic orbit of dominant cultural centers of power and authority like the Lincoln Center, PBS, and the New York Times The concept of the jazz left then serves as an alternative point of entry for exploring the cultural politics surrounding the practice, recognition, and reproduction of jazz;... stage in the cultural logic of capitalism, while others see it as an expression of ongoing changes in the conception and operation of the nation, and, perhaps just as importantly, in the role of culture and representation in the production of the nation.7 My chief assertion is that American commercial television networks are no longer the primary sites of mass-mediated theater and performance of the nation,... enactments of cultural politics that sacrifice neither culture nor politics but appreciate the necessity and the imperative of maneuver and tactic in black cultural politics If it is to continue to move effectively and productively, contemporary black cultural politics must get beyond the nostalgic paradigms and moral panics about representation, inclusion, and the threats of technology (and their impact... has been central to the visibility, circulation, and legitimization of black cultural production in the national life and public culture of the United States.10 I am especially interested, then, in the insights these complex conditions of production and representation offer for understanding the contemporary politics of black cultural production, the shifts in cultural imagination and desire, as well... (especially in the genre of hip-hop) and image makers (especially music videographers) have commented on the centrality of race to the operation of the criminal justice system and the law Through vernacular practices of the street, these culture workers seek to articulate their experience of themselves as racial(ized) subjects of the state In the representation of crime the discursive alliance between the criminal... depends on the production of the black body as the site of pleasure and adoration, fear, and menace In crime discourse in the 1980s, the black male (youthful) body signified menace and the loss of civility in the public sphere This narrative of loss was expressed most explicitly by media and politicians, through the steady expansion of the coercive arm of the state (e.g., prison and police) and the privatization... economy structure and mediate these meanings In the context of globalization and the new cultural logic of difference, media and television provide the examples with which I critically engage long-standing assumptions about media politics, surely one of the most hallowed and enduring sites of cultural maneuver in black cultural politics This quarrel in turn leads me to questions of aesthetics and visibility,... issues of cultural authenticity and identity) Indeed, rather than moral panics and entrenched cultural fundamentalism, the chapters in Cultural Moves encourage vibrant black cultural maneuvers and practices that see, imagine, and engage the world differently, in all of its complexity and myriad possibilities pa rt i Strategies chapter 1 The New Conditions of Black Cultural Production At the start of the. .. through the art of Kara Walker, whose works and the cultural moves they enact disturb conventional thinking about black visibility in late-twentieth-century America My interests in Walker and other artist of her generation are not just with questions of aesthetic judgments and their relationship to cultural politics As with the case of Marsalis and the Lincoln Center, my interest in the debates and reactions . Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles 15. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation, by Herman S. Gray Cultural Moves African Americans and the Politics of Representation Herman. operate outside of and beyond the institutional and aesthetic orbit of dominant cultural centers of power and authority like the Lincoln Center, PBS, and the New York Times. The concept of the jazz left then. lack of one) between new technologies and the cul- tural politics of identity animates the final section of Cultural Moves. Because of the pervasiveness and prominence of this relationship in the media,