Abstract This essay brings a critical and contextual focus to W.E.B. Du Bois’ youth by exploring how the young Du Bois used dress and comportment to pass as a dandy in order to negotiate and refuse norms of race and class during the Belle Époque period. Photographs of a young Du Bois from his family’s photo album are both the archive and the expository engine that drives our inquiry. I argue that before Du Bois became a “race man,” he was acculturated into the intellectual discourses of Aestheticism and assimilated himself to the modes of dress and behavior befitting German and English traditions of the well-dressed dandy. I argue that Du Bois’ idea of double consciousness owes much to the way he understands dandyism’s theoretical and cultural machinations of self-respect, self-governance, and intellectual attainment. I draw upon the critical theory of the Bildung to posit that in lieu of a comprehensive autobiography of Du Bois, we must read the poses of the photographic portraits in order to elicit the clearest understanding of how Du Bois’ posing references a conscious passing between burgeoning constructions of private, public, white, black, male, and female space in an effort to position his body and his intellectual becoming as a model of attainment for other men of color at the turn of the century.

中文翻译：

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“基础与开始”：WEB Du Bois 扮成花花公子

摘要 本文通过探讨年轻的杜波依斯在美好年代期间如何利用衣着和举止作为花花公子来谈判和拒绝种族和阶级规范，从而为WEB杜波依斯的青年带来了批判性和语境性的关注。杜波依斯家族相册中年轻的杜波依斯的照片既是档案，也是推动我们探究的引擎。我认为，在杜波依斯成为“种族男人”之前，他已经融入了审美主义的知识话语中，并且将自己融入了符合德国和英国传统的衣冠楚楚的花花公子的着装和行为模式。我认为，杜波依斯的双重意识思想很大程度上归功于他对自尊、自治和智力成就的花花公子的理论和文化阴谋的理解方式。