Discursive encounters: dance, inscription, and modern identities in interwar Paris

Abstract

Although scholars have studied the impact of black cultures upon French identities and interwar culture, the more fundamental relationship between black dance and the articulation of modern French, African diasporic, and American identities awaits critical treatment. Through an examination of references to the black entertainer Josephine Baker in journalism by Martinican intellectual Jane Nardal, French dance critic Andre Levinson, and American poet e. e. cummings, this article explores their ‘discursive encounters’ with black dance, which provides a language for these writers, artists, and intellectuals to grapple with their own modern subjectivities.