ABSTRACT

This article explores the socio-materiality of Black hair care practice as an affective surface through which we can understand Black women’s experiences of intimacy and belonging. Texture of hair has often been overlooked in the examination of racialized presentation, even as shade or skin colour has been over-determined. By paying attention to the centrality of touch in negotiating grooming practices in Black hair care, a multi-layered appreciation of the material entanglements in Black intimacies can be explored. Hair is more than part of the body, it is both highly visible, as well as intensely personal and political in terms of the ways it is worn and seen by the observer. Drawing on a sensory ethnography of Afro hair salons in the UK and biographical narrative analysis, this article explores Black women’s relationships with their hair in everyday life, alongside a parallel reading of the classic text “Cassie’s hair” by Susan Bordo. This layering of narratives allows for a new form of listening to emerge, an attunement that forefronts the habitual practices of hair dressing and hair making as ways of “becoming black”. In every twist, braid and weave, these biographies highlight the intimate entanglements by which the ambivalence of black belonging is negotiated. Touch in particular, both nurturing and hostile, represents an important socio-cultural ritual through which collective belonging is experienced: evoking memories of inter-generational and transnational intimacies with black communities in another time and another place. This paper offers a novel way of reimagining the role of affect in understanding collective intimacies and sustaining black identity in diasporic contexts.

摘要

本文探讨了作为情感表面的黑发护理实践的社会物质性，通过它我们可以了解黑人女性的亲密和归属体验。在种族化表现的检查中，头发的质地经常被忽视，即使阴影或肤色已经被过度确定。通过在黑色头发护理中协商美容实践中关注触摸的中心性，可以探索对黑色亲密关系中物质纠缠的多层次理解。头发不仅仅是身体的一部分，它不仅是高度可见的，而且在观察者佩戴和观察头发的方式方面也具有强烈的个人和政治色彩。借鉴英国非裔美发沙龙的感官民族志和传记叙事分析，本文探讨了黑人女性在日常生活中与头发的关系，同时平行阅读了 Susan Bordo 的经典文本“Cassie's hair”。这种分层的叙事允许出现一种新的聆听形式，一种将美发和头发制作的习惯性做法作为“变黑”的方式。在每一次扭曲、编织和编织中，这些传记都强调了协商黑人归属的矛盾心理的亲密纠缠。尤其是抚慰和敌意，代表了一种重要的社会文化仪式，通过这种仪式体验集体归属感：唤起人们对在另一个时间和另一个地方与黑人社区的代际和跨国亲密关系的记忆。