Identities

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the problem of difference in art history and visual studies-with a specific emphasis on the field's intellectual fixation with the ideologically overdetermined black body. In response to this problem, my research looks at with two primary issues: the field's antipathy for difference, despite its stated commitments to diversity and equity; and its often objectifying scholarly treatment of racialized blackness, which has become overrepresented as the subject of intellectual inquiry for many progressive and left-leaning scholars. The contradiction implicit here is evidenced in the increasing prevalence of blackness as a form of social symbolism (in representation), which contrasts with the stunning lack of black scholars in the field itself. As a result, the intellectual and bureaucratic rhetorics of diversity have had an indelible impact on the ethics of art history and visual studies, yet they have not meaningfully intervened into the erasures and forms of racial marginalization that continue to segregate the field.