Exposing the lemons that made Lemonade
How the black female experience represented in the visual album ‘Lemonade’
carves a wakeful third space
Master thesis in Comparative Cultural Analysis Laura Boog
10615148
Supervisor: Kasia Mika University of Amsterdam June 13th, 2018
Contents
Introduction 5
Situating the project in its fields 9 Feminism and black feminism 9
Black studies 10
Postcolonial trauma theory 11
Chapter one:
How the visual album Lemonade creates
unity, recognition and resistance 13
History 13
Third space 14
The Female Group 16
Recognition 19
Resistance 22
Chapter two:
Suffering and its possibilities
in the poetry of Warsan Shire 27
Voices 28
The Female Body 29
Mother’s Lemonade 36
Chapter three:
Creating a wakeful third space 41
Revisiting the third space 41
Including a specific group 42
Origin in the past 43
The wake 44
Liberation 49
Conclusion 51
Bibliography 56
“FOR THOSE WHO HAVE DIED RECENTLY [..]
FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN THE PAST THAT IS NOT YET PAST [..]
FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN [..]
FOR ALL BLACK PEOPLE WHO, STILL, INSIST LIFE AND BEING INTO THE WAKE, [..]
FOR MY MOTHER [..]
AGAIN. AND ALWAYS.”
(Sharpe 2016)
Fig. 1. Winnie Harlow in a still from Lemonade. Billboard. Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment.
Abstract
According to black feminist scholars, the specificity of the realities of the black female group has been neglected and should gain more recognition, considering that their suffering inhabits both the suffering as a woman as well as that of being a black woman. Frantz Fanon argued in Black Skin, White Masks that the under-recognition of the black population has as a result that it hopes to find recognition ‘through the white world’, and that the black population should start to redefine themselves on their own terms. The idea of acknowledgement of the realities of suppressed groups and enabling silenced groups to express their realities on their own terms, rules different academic fields. This project will contain an analysis of the black experience presented in the visual album by Beyoncé, in which the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire plays a significant role as the leading narrative of the album. It is positioned within these discourses as it exposes how a collaboration of black female artists propose their black experience,
acknowledging the pain of a bigger group in the population and creating an opportunity of change in the future. Through the tools of quotation and remembrance there is a synergy of personas, voices and perspectives created in the album, of which the effects to the entirety of the album will be exposed and explained. The album’s shift from recognition to resistance will be anchored in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s vision on history as a perspective, Christina Sharpe’s notion of a past that is never past. The close-reading of the visual album is two folded; the visual album will be analyzed with a clear focus on the themes addressed in the visuals as well as the quoted poetry by Warsan Shire will be thematically analyzed, the leading themes of the black experiences represented are brought to light. By putting the concepts of the third space by Homi Bhabha and the wake by Christina Sharpe in conversation with each-other, the effects of this synergy will be demonstrated.
Introduction
My best friend has a Dutch passport, an Iraqi background and her soul -I would say- lies in a space somewhere in-between. On the nights I went to her house this last year, there was always a moment she would propose to watch the videos of the album Lemonade (2016) together. Although I had never considered myself to be a huge fan of Beyoncé, I enjoyed seeing my friend feel empowered by the videos. I believe that in these videos she found a space she somehow could identify with, and I felt honoured she wanted me to enter that space with her.
This project will contain an analysis of the visual album of Beyoncé, an album whose production was kept a secret until a few weeks before its launch in April 2016, when Beyoncé announced the (soon-to-be) release on Twitter. Although the popular press received Lemonade as an autobiographic album in which Beyoncé comments on her marriage with Jay-Z (Vernallis), scholars received and discussed Lemonade as an album that inhabits both a black empowerment message as well as a feminist message (Massie; Caramica). Neither one group or the other is wrong in this case; due to the album’s ambivalence in aesthetic form, it provides a space where multiple storylines work through and along each other. By containing multiple forms of aesthetics including music, film footage (both fictive as well as real footage of Beyoncé’s personal life) and poetry written by Warsan Shire, the visual album provides a multi-layered space for a multi-layered content. Carol Vernallis explains how form can influence the working together of different stories: “Music videos can develop several visual and aural threads, each containing motifs and meanings. Because each thread is connected to distinct musical gestures, timbres, and song sections, none needs to win out or be annihilated” (Vernallis). Lemonade is at once concerned with the pain resulting from betrayal in love whilst at the same time it addresses the reality of being a woman and the history of black racism (Perrott et al.). The engagement between audio and visuals in Lemonade provides a format in which more than one story can be told; what may seem an
autobiographic film on a first view, when more closely encountered with, turns out to contain a black experience that speaks of violence and injustice to the black female population. This experience is represented by the quotation of various voices and perspectives, resulting in the album becoming a platform for the personas pictured in the frame, the artists that have collaborated to its production and its viewers (Vernallis).
Whilst the lyrics of the songs provide the album with the popular theme of love and betrayal, inhabiting the commercial character of the album and the signature of the individuality of the story of Beyoncé, it is in the images supporting the songs and the poetic passages between the songs where the opportunity is being taken to tell a different story. Holly Rogers states that “Lemonade’s hybrid form moves us affectively and encourages critical reflection. Bell hooks might claim that a viewer would not perceive these moments on first viewings, but music videos are intended to be watched many, many times” (Perrott et al.). Like Rogers points out, it is by closely encountering with the visuals that the album exposes itself as addressing themes that go further than the individual story of Beyoncé and represent a communal black experience (Perrott; Pareles).
An important voice addressing the black female experience in the album can be found in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire. The poetry written by the Somali-British female artist is the backbone of Lemonade that connects the different sections -consisting out of songs and/or other footage- to each other, creating a balanced aesthetics. The poetry, read by Beyoncé’s voice, has a captivating effect and draws the viewers further in the story (Vernallis). The importance of the poetess’ work for the entirety of the album is made clear, when in the credits of the album Warsan Shire is named as one of the first names credited for “Film Adaptation and Poetry”. Until the mentioning of her in the credits, her name remains anonymous. Apart from attributing to Lemonade’s varied form, the poetry is elementary to the album’s focus on oppressive social structures through addressing the psychological and socio-cultural implications of black womanhood. In ““Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” A feminist approach to Warsan Shire’s poetry”, Mayte Cantero Sanchez analyses the original poetry of Warsan Shire and argues that the poetess addresses in her poetry different kinds of violence associated with war, migration, trauma and patriarchal dynamics (57). She proposes the poetry of Warsan Shire to contain feministic views and looks for explanations of the themes addressed in the background of the writer. In the quoted poetry in Lemonade, the overarching theme seems to be ‘betrayal in love’, yet other themes are addressed through this notion of love; the poetry embodies the sorrow of the female body with a clear notion of violence and grief. The poems also address the role of the father as absent and the character of the mother as strengthened despite her pain. Therefore, I
will analyse the themes in the poetry and look at what it creates together with the images in the album as the second part of the project.
The concepts of Quotation and Remembrance will be used as a red line through my analysis, as it is through these tools that the perspectives attributing to the black female experience are introduced in the album. For this reason, I will analyse the black experience of the album by mostly focusing on the visuals in the album and the poetry where these tools are at work, and put the lyrics of the songs on the background as it solely contains the individual voice of Beyoncé speaking of love. As pointed out earlier, the album is more than a story; it is a synergy of perspectives and threads, in which quotation is used to introduce, connect and sometimes merge multiple personas and voices. I will use the concept of quotation to expose which personas are quoted in the album, how the personas are quoted and what effect is created with their quotation in the album. In the analysis of the visuals this will mean that I will mostly look at who the channelled female artists are, and how they are being pictured in the album. By
attending to the anonymous figures in the visual cuts, their contribution to the
communalization of the black experience in the album will be demonstrated. I will turn to the quoted poetry by Warsan Shire in the second chapter. To understand what its quotation brings to the entirety of the album I will draw on a more profound
theorization of the concept of quotation by applying the text ‘Quoting Caravaggio’ by Mieke Bal in which Bal elaborates on the different possible levels of quotation.
Apart from addressing quoted personas and voices from the present, Lemonade provides a space where perspectives of different generations construct part of the
narrative. Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn speak repetitively of the importance of this remembrance when she talks about the feminist duty of rewriting history; they claim remembrance to be a feminist issue as it is the female narrative that has been neglected in the past and present. The focus on history by giving voice to the black women of the past that until now have not been able to speak up and be heard, comes back on multiple levels in the album which makes it a crucial element in the black experience of the
Lemonade. The element of remembrance of history in the album can be seen as both a quotation of the past into the present, and the other way around by changing the conversation about the past in the present. Vernallis describes this relationship of time in Lemonade as follows: “Two overlapping genres-music video and experimental film-provide Lemonade with a means to hold the past, present, and future together.” Through
remembrance and quotation, a narrative resulting out of the merging of perspectives of the past and the present is constructed.
The question of what the effects of quotation and remembrance in Lemonade can create for the future will repetitively be addressed throughout the analysis. To answer this question, I will draw on, and challenge, the third space by Homi Bhabha, putting it in conversation with the concept of the wake by Christina Sharpe. This brings me to the research questions I will answer with the analysis of (mainly) the visuals of the album and the poetry: ‘How is the black female experience manifested through quotation and remembrance in Beyoncé’s visual album ‘Lemonade’, and how does this create a wakeful third space?’
In an interview, Bhabha defines the concept of the third space as a process of hybridity that "displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives. The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (Rutherford). Therefore, I will draw on the third space in demonstrating the new space the artists of Lemonade are a part of and create. I will problematize and turn to the concept of the wake proposed by Christina Sharpe for the demonstration of the specificity of the album in its shift from recognition to resistance in Lemonade. Building on the leading themes in the visuals and the poetry of the album that will come out of the analysis in the first two chapters, these two concepts will be put in conversation with each other, providing a framework that demonstrates the album and its effect.
This analysis aims to add insights to the discourse of the feminist field and especially the discourse of the specificity of black feminism. The growing voice of women with a migratory background in contemporary society shows how there has been a new space created by and for these women. In the album there is not only a shift from the male to female narrative being made, there is a shift made towards the
perspectives of black females on the past, the present and the future. The analysis of the themes in the album can give insights on the current conversation and the feelings of this group of women with a black identity. I will show how the album, through quoting and merging silenced perspectives and communalizing these, creates a new space for women with a black identity.
Situating the project in its fields
The location of the project within the academic field is an embodiment of the
intersectionality the content and form of the album breathes. Touching upon discussions inherent to feminist discourse, black studies, postcolonial studies and trauma theory, Lemonade shows how the experience within the album speaks to different debates that, on their own, intersect with some of the discussions in the other fields as well.
Feminism and Black Feminism
The work of Beyoncé frequently seems to contain a female empowerment message, which is why many consider her to be a feminist artist (Caramica). Feminist discourse has the political aim of constructing alternative meanings to those that we have grown accustomed to (Godard). Feminist film theorists, for example, have argued that by developing films with a different aesthetics and construction, the male gaze that dominates traditional narrative film could be changed for a new female gaze (Mulvey; Lesage). This fighting against the dominant narrative by proposing alternative ways of construction, is important to take into account in the project, considering that Lemonade introduces multiple quoted black female perspectives generating it into one black
female narrative.
One of feminist’s main goals is that women, by gaining a bigger role/voice in society, will break out of the male oppression. One way of doing this is by
acknowledging history from a woman’s perspective. Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn call this development a feminization of male meta-narratives and state that by rewriting male storylines, insights on the role of the women in society can be gained (147). They claim that remembrance is a feminist issue; a duty in which all women should have a responsibility. According to the black feminist discourse, white feminists have neglected this specificity of the history of black women (Carby; Springer; Hudson-Weems). Clenora Hudson-Weems even argues that the terminology of black feminism should not be used as a label and that a new construct should be proposed: “While Africana women do, in fact, have some legitimate concerns regarding Africana men, these concerns must be addressed within the context of African culture. Problems must not be resolved using an alien framework, i.e. feminism, but must be resolved from within an endemic theoretical construct- Africana Womanism.” (27) Feminist perspectives of black women are
elementary for the field’s accuracy in representation of all women (Hudson-Weems 26). The album can both be positioned within the feminist discourse, providing an
alternative form that gives women the platform to stand up and this way to break out of the male narratives, as it speaks to the debate within the black feminist discourse, drawing attention to the neglected specificity of the black female struggle the field is concerned with.
Black studies
The album Lemonade looks back on history from a black female point of view and shares in this sense aims with the feminist field. According to the article “The Black studies Movement” by Darlene Clarke Hine, Black studies shared this goal of developing an oppositional consciousness to the dominant one, which would lead to the liberation of the black population (Hine 17). This battle with dominant Western paradigms is one that has to be fought through the development of a new black consciousness
commenced in the rise of consciousness around 1960, which was set in motion by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (Ziegler). Ama Mazama argues in “Afrocentric Paradigm” that “we [black people] do not exist on our own terms but on borrowed, European ones.” (387) As a reaction to this cultural oppression, scholars of Black studies have tried to create a new Afrocentric paradigm. The term ‘Afrocentricity’, introduced by Molefi Kete Asante, is a concept that is found elementary in this process (Mazama). The epistemological African centeredness would provide a tool to recognize and dislocate the structures that oppress the back population (Asante; Mazama).
An important theorist for this line of thought has been Frantz Fanon, whose work set (part of) the base for Black studies. Fanon wrote his first book Black skin, White masks in 1952, in which he claims that a way black population deals with its under-recognition is adapting itself to dominant life manners in the hope to find under-recognition ‘through the white world’, and that the black population should start to redefine
themselves on their own terms; an idea that now rules the field of Black studies. Tendayi Sithole speaks of the relevance of Fanon’s uncovering of the disturbing subjection by white supremacy and claims Fanon’s emphasis on how the past is present and the present is past is crucial in recognizing the status of non-humanity of the black population (2). This recognition of the past is also one of the central themes in black feminist discourse. The project exposes the centrality in Lemonade of the recognition of
the entanglement of history with the present to manifest the possible liberation for black women.
Postcolonial trauma theory
The work of Frantz Fanon has also influenced Postcolonial Studies, a field that picks up on some of the questions proposed by Black studies. In the International Journal of Science and Research, Mondal explains how “on the one hand, the postcolonial field acknowledges that the material realities and modes of representation common to colonialism are still very much with us today [..] But on the other hand, it asserts the promise, the possibility, and the continuing necessity of change (McLeod cited in Mondal 2965)”. In attending to the suffering of non-western groups, an engagement of
postcolonialism with theories on trauma initiated the process of the decolonization of trauma theory (Andermahr 1).
The foundation of traditional trauma theory lies in Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytic notion of trauma (Zwarg). Freud stated that through reiterating trauma, people can re-gain control over it (Luckhurst). Freud’s notion on trauma has had a big influence on different academic fields; W.E.B. Du Bois’conceptualization of “the double-consciousness” of black people is anchored in Freud’s psychoanalytic study of trauma and persists in “framing the psychological issue of trauma as a social situation, one that is deeply cultural and relational in its conception” (Zwarg 11). Also in the feminist discourse trauma theory has been used, for example it was used by Reina Van der Wiel as a framework for her study on how female artists like Jeanette Winterson and Frida Kahlo reiterated their trauma through artistic work (Van der Wiel). However, in the last decades the field of trauma theory has received multiple critiques by theorists on its limitations (Visser 251), resulting in a scholarship that concentrates on the process of decolonizing trauma theory.
In his book Postcolonial witnessing: trauma out of bounds, Stef Craps states that trauma theory fails to provide an adequate conceptualization of trauma for non-western sufferings (2012: 3). Like scholars of the feminist field and Black studies, Craps contends that postcolonial trauma-theory should provide an acknowledgement of trauma of non-western or minority groups ‘on their own terms’ (2012: 5). Explaining that traditional trauma studies have been focusing on individual distress, as a manifestation of its Western perspective, Craps states in his works that the notion of trauma as catastrophic
events that interrupt individual lives should be changed to “ongoing, everyday forms of violence and oppression affecting subordinate groups” (2010: 54).
By reiterating their grief and trauma in Lemonade, the artists communalize their own experience to a shared black experience. The project embodies the shift from individual to collective notion of trauma, which Craps describes as an important step away from dominant ‘white Christian male’ paradigms (2010: 55). Craps argues that decolonized trauma theory has the possibility of attributing to “understandings of postcolonial literature that bear witness to the suffering engendered by racial or
colonial oppression” (2012: 5). This thesis project can attribute to the knowledge of the experiences of these groups in its analysis of the black female suffering, expressed on their own terms. Craps states that by enabling theorists “to recognize and attend to the sufferings of people around the world, an inclusive and culturally sensitive trauma theory can expose situations of injustice [..] and open up ways to imagine a different global culture” (2012: 8). The project opens up this imagination of a different future in its analysis of the black experiences presented in the album and will turn to, as well as interrogate, concepts provided by Christina Sharpe and Homi Bhabha in doing so. Post colonialist Homi K. Bhabha aims with his proposition of the third space to theorize an in-between space where new positions and political perspectives can emerge. Christina Sharpe argues in In the wake: of blackness and being that for dominant oppressive structures to be changed, a recognition of the suffering and non-status of black people is of great importance, a black condition that she calls ‘the wake’. The project will expose how Lemonade can attribute to the recognition of the past while possibly changing the future; in other words, how the album carves a wakeful third space for black women in America.
I will mostly draw on theories of Fanon and Bhabha when exposing what role the element of quotation and remembrance have in the presentation of the black female experience in the visual album in the first part of the project. In the second chapter I will expose what themes are elementary in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire and how the collaboration of the artists merges into one narrative. I will end the chapter by
introducing the concept of the wake. Then, in the third chapter, I will turn back to the concept of the third space and put it in conversation with the wake, exposing with this combination the totality of the synergy of the black female experience presented in the album.
Chapter one
How the visual album creates unity, recognition and resistance
The text of Lemonade is made out of different chapters, each inhabiting a song
accompanied with poetry. The chapters can be seen as multiple music videos following each other without a direct relationship with the content rest of the videos. Their
autonomy within the album is accentuated by the -each time different- use of costumes, use of certain colours and décor. Before the start of the sequence of chapters there is an unnamed fragment in the text, which could be seen as an introduction to the text of the album. Chronologically the list of chapters is: Intuition, Denial, Anger, Empathy,
Emptiness, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness, Resurrection, Hope and Redemption. After the credits a chapter called ‘Information’ is added, which could be compared to a ‘bonus’ song of a music album. Every segment lasts approximately five minutes. The names of the chapters seem to be linked to the themes of the songs, which are mostly about betrayal in love and are dedicated to Beyoncé’s husband known as ‘Jay-Z’, but can also be interpreted in context of the process of the black experience Beyoncé proposes through the visuals.
Although the videos do not seem to provide one explicit story line, there is still a story being told in these videos: that of the black female experience. Therefore, the focus in the analysis of the visual album will lie on exploring the leading themes that I come across while close reading the visuals of the album to expose what this experience inhabits. The lyrics of the songs by Beyoncé will be put on the background in the analysis, as it is namely in the visuals where I find that the black experience is most being represented, although when relevant in the acknowledgement of the black female experience the audio will be taken into account. Main themes that will be encountered with in this analysis are the female group, recognition and resistance in the illustration of how the album creates the movement from living in a ‘no-space’ to a ‘third space’.
History
The element of remembrance/history is important to further emphasize on, before starting with the close reading of the object. Michel-Rolph Trouillot sees history as a perspective/position on which power-dynamics (either consciously or unconsciously) can play their parts. As a consequence of an inequality in selection of historic
information, Trouillot argues that there are groups in society that have been silenced (52-53). He argues that by giving voice to the silenced, new visions and perspectives can be gained regarding history. This ‘taking position’ towards history, by giving voice to the unheard, is something Lemonade seems to do in various chapter of the album; Lemonade takes position within/towards the past by giving a voice and role to a specific group of people and with this resisting the dominant narrative that until now has put their voices to silence. It does so through reference to an epoch through settings and costumes but also through the literal quotation of black female voices and faces from the past. The element of accounting to unheard history is something that gains attention in the feminist discourse, considering the dominance of male meta-narratives (Weder). Hazel Carby states that the specificity of black history (or as she states ‘her’ story) has been neglected and that black women not only pose the struggle of being a woman but also that of being a black woman. She argues that this difference in position between white females and black females has not received enough recognition in the feminist field and that this should change. Active in the field of Black Diaspora studies, Christina Sharpe emphasizes on the specificity of the lives of black people in her book In the wake: On blackness and being. She defines blackness as a continuous struggle of living in a no-space that is characterized by death and violence. For her conceptualization she draws on Trouillot’s notion of past as a position and his claim that therefore the past can never be past. With this argument Sharpe argues that for black people in the wake, “the past always reappears to rupture the present” (9). This perspective on the past is crucial to this project, as it exposes the album to take a certain position within the past and this is, of course, only possible if one assumes the possibility of doing so.
Third space
Coming from a post colonialist point of view, Homi Bhabha acknowledges the
problematic of the oppression of certain cultures by others. He sees a problem within the idea of cultural diversity, as it inhabits a containment of it; “A transparent norm is constituted, a norm given by the host society or dominant culture, which says that 'these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid'. This is what I mean by a creation of cultural diversity and a containment of cultural difference” (Rutherford). Bhabha also sees the problem of existing racism in societies where this multiculturalist paradigm is recognized. Bhabha states that “This is because the
universalism that paradoxically permits diversity, masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests” (Rutherford). The theorist then proposes a view of cultural difference with as a main value inclusivity instead of the exclusive cultural diversity and introduces a new vision on the concept of hybridity and his own concept of third space. Bhabha argues all cultures are in a process of hybridity, as there is no essentialism of an original. To clarify the latter, Bhabha takes the example of the translation and explains how translating is ‘imitating’ the symbolic meaning-giving process in one language to another
(Rutherford). The same happens with hybridity in culture: it bears the traces of feeling and practices which inform it, so that it puts together the traces of certain other
meanings or discourses. To Bhabha, “hybridity is not about tracing two ‘original’ moments from where the third emerges, but it is about a third space from where other positions can emerge” (Rutherford). This third space displaces histories that constitute it, while setting up new structures of authority and political initiatives. Drawing on this theorization by Bhabha, using his concepts of ‘hybridity’ and ‘the third space’, I will demonstrate how Lemonade creates this third space for the people categorized as ‘nonhumans’. The album not only creates a stance within and towards the past, but also attempts to do the same towards the future rooted in a shared history. To this notion I will come back in my third chapter where I will apply the concept of the wake. In this chapter I will concentrate on the images and turn to theories of Fanon and the concept of third space to expose what I see happening. With Trouillot’s notion on history as a perspective, I will show how this album takes a stand towards the past and the present, creating a new space for hybrid female identities in society through the elements of quotation and history/remembrance.
Summarizing, I will start by showing how quotation works together with the element of the female group, exposing the way this adds to the communalization of the album. Turning to theories of Fanon in the analysis of how quotation and remembrance create the recognition of history of black population in the album I will expose how the album provides a hybrid space wherein history can not only be addressed, but also be changed. Building on these founding’s, I will then turn to the third space in the
The Female Group
In the visuals of Lemonade, the group of black women plays a significant role. The first chapter of the text, called ‘Intuition’, opens with a cut of multiple black women standing on a veranda. In this scene, the women are similarly dressed (they are wearing white dresses) and have a black skin, which is even more accentuated by the colour of the dress and the close-up on this contrast when the camera focuses in on the skin of one of the women. The actions of the women are minimal; they are standing with almost no movements, look forward while ignoring the camera and have a serious look on their faces. This imaging of a group in a ‘formation’ is also manifested in the chapter ‘Anger’, which starts with majorettes performing on the road. Firstly, a group of male majorettes is briefly shown in this chapter; afterwards the group of the majorette women is
pictured dancing their choreography on the road. The element of the group also emerges in the chapter called ‘Apathy’, where a small group of black women is filmed while they dance together with the sleeves of their dresses tied to one another’s. In this scene the women are dancing without music on the artist’s voice, which gives the setting a surrealistic sphere. The focus in this scene is clearly on the group and not on the
individual. Because of the tied sleeves, the group seems like an organism that functions organically and, most importantly, together. These are all examples of the form the concept of the group can be taken in this album. The similarity of styling and physical features of the women when there is a group shown in the album creates a feeling of unity and togetherness that the women seem to be representing.
Beyoncé is often pictured as part of the female group yet is always standing out in some sort of way (fig. 3.). She is wearing either a different outfit, is standing in the centre of the group or she is performing for the group of females. This way the viewer is given the sense that Beyoncé is speaking about, to or for the group that is pictured in the album.
The concept of the female group is manifested through different forms: in majorette formations, female street crews/dancing crews, groups of cooking females, or women working on the land. The anonymous women in the album are mostly young black females1. The clothing of the women is either the same or similar, which makes it clear
1 Only two times in the album there is a white girl pictured. They are both on the background, never in the camera’s
focus. In the lyrics there is one time a (negative) mentioning of a white woman, when Beyoncé sings: “Better call Becky with the good hair”.
that they belong together and the viewer should see them as a unity. The group represents the young black female group in society.
Multiple quotations of female artists can be found in the visuals of Lemonade. Beyoncé quotes Nina Simone through an image of her EP just before Beyoncé starts playing on a piano on the floor in the chapter ‘Forgiveness’, creating an association between the big entrepreneur of black women civil rights and the singer. Apart from this quotation of an icon of the past, artists with a black identity from the present are also quoted in Lemonade. These female artists are mostly channelled as part of bigger female groups. The sisters Diaz of the musical Duo called Ibeyi are quoted in different chapters in the album. Their music reflects their black identity and embodies generational trauma and oppression of black people (Acquaye). Another singer (and actress) being quoted in the album is Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman. This 22-year old artist is considered a feminist and activist who fights for equality and diversity (Oswald; Passanante). The American contemporary R&B duo, called Chloe x Halle made up of the sisters Bailey is also quoted in Lemonade. These girls were discovered by Beyoncé and signed to her Parkwood Entertainment label. Their released album called The kids are alright embodies the healing process of self-love for the future generation (Bruner). Another celebrity featured in the album is Amandla Stenberg. This young American Actress is known for her role as “Rue” in the movie The Hunger Games and is increasingly
becoming a young entrepreneur on racism in Hollywood (Murray). The youngest quoted artist is the actress Quvenzhané Wallis, who was the youngest actress ever to receive an Oscar nomination. Apart from the quoted women who are all either actresses or singers (or both), there is another black female celebrity being quoted in the album, namely the famous tennis-player Serena Williams. She is pictured walking down the stairs and dancing next to the singing Beyoncé. Serena Williams is, in contrast to the other celebrities, given a prominent role in the album in which her sexuality is emphasized, breaking with the more traditional roles the rest of the artists in the album. By having the famous tennis player performing femininity, the intersection of success, blackness and femininity is performed.
Apart from Serena Williams who has a different role than the rest of the quoted personas, the female celebrities are pictured as being part of a bigger group of rather anonymous women in the story of the album. They are not given a prominent role but are portrayed as average women on the background of the story Beyoncé is telling.
There does not seem to be a big difference between the role of the artists and the non-famous channelled black women in the album when looking at the amount of time they are given in the album or in the relevance (in the story line) of the activities they are pictured doing in the album. Either they are pictured doing agricultural activities like collecting tomatoes from the yard and bringing it to a hut, cutting up vegetables, or they are pictured performing neutral actions like eating together at a table in a garden, standing beside a tree or as part of a small group of women or attending a performance on a wooden stage by Beyoncé in the woods. Seemingly, their presence in the album seems to be of another sort of importance than their artistic talents considering that there is almost none attention drawn to the fact that these women are artists. The only distinction that is made in the album between the other females that are bit playing in the album is when in the end of the film when Beyoncé sits along the quoted artists on a veranda (fig. 4).
The presence of the young black female group in the visuals creates a
communalizing effect of the album. Even though Beyoncé tells what seems to be her own story, she has a group of similar looking women supporting what she’s doing/saying which gives the viewer the feeling that she might not only be speaking for herself. This group, being joined by successful black icons, enforces the factor of authorization of the album on its audience. The result of their quotation is a strong representation of the new young black powerful woman. Through their quotation in the album, a reference to the possibility of social mobility in society of black females is made. With their black
identity, activism and success the artists contribute to the sense of empowerment of the female black community in America. The performance of Serena Williams stands for this and more; by performing femininity in a sensual way she represents her imago as a strong fighter woman underlining her feminine body. By quoting celebrity women as part of the group that Beyoncé seems to either represent or speak to, she creates the sense that there is a strong female community backing her up in her story. The celebrity women create an activist and empowering statement simply by ‘being there’.
Recognition
Where quotation of black female icons functions in addressing and empowering the black female group in Lemonade, the effect of remembrance does so as well, yet on a broader level in its focus on the acknowledgement of the history of suffering of the entire black population. A mixture of historic references channels throughout the album, with as a result that there is an atmosphere of “history” created without clearly referring to a specific era. A clear reference is made to the history of injustice from the white population towards the African American population when in the chapter ‘Anger’, a voice speaks: “the most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman”. (00:13:35-00:13:50) This quote can be identified to be from one of the speeches of Malcolm X (1925-1965), the leader of the ‘Nation of Islam’, a political and religious group that fought for the equal rights of black people. The speech was given on May 22nd in Los Angeles 2. Malcolm X calls in this speech for unification of the
black population in the struggle against white supremacy. Before and after the piece from the speech that was used for Lemonade, Malcolm X was raising awareness among black people of having to protect black women from white men; this part was not put in the feminist album as it can be considered to inhabit a patriarchal message. Supporting the fragment of the speech in the album, footage is shown of different anonymous individual black women of various ages on the streets. These cuts give the viewer an impression of the reality of the non-status of black women in America living in a no-space; the streets. Combining the voice of Malcolm X with these images of the present, this scene represents the rupture of history in the present of black people.
Beyoncé seems to not only quote elements of the past, but also rewrite and ‘change’ the history of the black population in her album. The history of African Americans is one of oppression by the white population in America. In the period between the beginning of the 17th century and 1865 the white population held the
African American population as slaves to work in plantations and/or at home as maids (Baptist). When in 1865 the slavery was officially abolished with the end of the Civil War, it was still only the beginning of the struggle for equality for the black population in America. The period of Reconstruction followed, multiple states passed laws permitting
black people to have equal access to public spaces and in 1875 the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations was accepted (Kousser). However, in 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court took a step back by ruling that Congress had no authority to regulate individuals’ discriminatory behaviour (Kousser). Ever since, African-Americans have been fighting against racism in society. In 1964 and in 1965 the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act institutionalized formal equality (Kousser). However, on a non-institutional level, racial equality is still an unfinished journey in a society where the history of slavery keeps rupturing the present.
Lemonade partly addresses this history through quotations of the past like the one we have discussed in the previous paragraph, and partly pictures a different history. The scenes in Lemonade are situated in the past, a period where the black population was (explicitly) oppressed by the white supremacy due to slavery and its heritage. In the chapters ‘Intuition’ and ‘Redemption’, the white dresses worn by the black females share resemblance with the clothing the elite used to wear in the 17th century. The fit of the
costume with an African print that Beyoncé is wearing in the introduction of the text and during some cuts of the chapter ‘Emptiness’, is similar to the gowns white women would wear in the 18th century in America. Most African American people wore clothes their
owners would give them (White). Sometimes they made clothes themselves, from the fabric they were given by their masters. These clothes were plain and simple; neither were they detailed nor multi-layered like most of the dresses the black females in Lemonade are wearing, as there was little fabric that was supposed to provide their clothes for a few years (White 154). Therefore, when taking into consideration the historical context in which Beyoncé situates some of the scenes in the album, it becomes clear that the black population is presented as wealthier and with a higher
status-position than was possible in that period. There is a mixture of history and illusion in the album, where black women can be displayed as wealthy women, wearing beautiful dresses living in houses with a royal interior; something that in reality was not possible.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon argues that the black people aim for recognition by the white people. His notion of recognition is grounded in the Hegelian idea that the sense of Self is both based on the dialectic of recognition, which holds that one needs the exterior recognition to be able to create a sense of self (216-217). Fanon argues that because of the white dominance, the black people search for this recognition through the white world. By imitating the dominant language and manners, there is a
search for the recognition the black people have not yet received from the white people (217-218) (this is where the title of his book comes from). Yet, when applying this theory of ‘the white mask on a black skin’ proposed by Frantz Fanon to the album, it is interesting to see that while the black women in this album could be seen as
appropriating ‘the white culture’ of a certain era, it is also possible to turn this vision of Fanon around and state that -instead of white masks on a black skin- a mixture of cultures is presented wherein the black culture seems to dominate the narrative. Through the multitude of black women as characters, the absence of white women and the African details in the make-up and/or in the interiors of their royal houses, there seems to be a dominant tone of the oppressed culture, making it the dominant culture in the album. Although the struggle is addressed in which black people have resided for the last decades, a sense of certain supremacy of the oppressed population and overcoming of this past shows itself through the commodities associated with high status positions that are appropriated by the black characters in the album. The entanglement of an oppressed culture with the white culture is shown when in the chapter ‘Resurrection’ a girl with a Native American garb walks around a set up dining table within a house with an elite interior, holding and playing a tambourine. This scene seems to offer a new mix of the two cultures; that of an oppressed culture and the dominant culture. In this mixture, the oppressed latter seems to be taken over by a culture that has been silenced in reality. An example of the mixture of African culture with the white culture is
manifested through the make-up in the album that is made by the Nigerian artist Laolu Senbanjo in multiple chapters (fig. 2.). The artist calls his art “Afromysterics”, a term that means “the mystery of the African thought pattern”. The makeup carries points to
African themes and traditions (Lara). In the chapter ‘Apathy’ the makeup is applied to a group of girls who perform choreography in the bus, providing the African heritage to merge with the new Western civilization African people are living in. This mixture of the western culture with an African stamp on it is seen through different forms in the album. Apart from these references to cultural mixtures projected upon styling, and
performances, one of the women that is quoted in different occasions of the album embodies this merging of cultures; The woman is Winnie Harlow (fig. 1.), a model that broke through with her participation to the program America’s Next Top Model. Winnie Harlow has a skin condition called ‘Vitiligo’ which causes her to develop pale white patches on her skin (Dear). Her body is an embodiment for a process of hybrid merging
of cultures, her body being that of a black woman while her skin contains both black and white colours.
Rather than an appropriation of the white culture like Fanon argues in his work, I would then argue that Lemonade proposes a mixture of cultures wherein the oppressed cultures can rupture and are given room and valuation, something that in reality still has to be realized. The mixture of oppressed culture and Western privileges could be seen as a new culture emerging out of the hybrid position of the artist and the artists that are channelled in the album, something that coincides with the third space proposed by Bhabha being ‘a space for new initiatives’ (Rutherford).
Resistance
As we’ve seen, Lemonade creates a space where new initiatives are formed. This is also expressed through the album’s providing of a platform for explicit political activism. Multiple scholars have remarked the political content of the visuals and its call to communal action (Caramica; Perrott et al.; Vernallis). However, the political
engagements of the album are not given fully justice to in these analyses. In “Beyoncé’s Lemonade, she dreams in both worlds” Holly Rogers argues that the first attempt at political action is manifested in the chapter ‘Sorry’. She explains how in this scene an evocation to communal action is made through the military character of the clothing and the van the women stand in front of: “multiple Beyoncés, or she and many others like her, march upward through grass—an audiovisual nod to Beyoncé’s overlaid vocal tracks, and the long swatches of marching in the film’s second half. “Sorry” ‘s closing bell-sounds, melded with the music-box playing Swan Lake, could be heard as gamelan, music nearly always performed collectively. [..] This is the first, perhaps unsuccessful, attempt at collective political action. (I interpret the gamelan-like sounds as a hearing of and calling out to other women.)”. Even though I agree with the observation of the mentioned scene containing a call for political activism, I would like to problematize the scholar’s argument on two notions. Firstly, considering that the evocation of collective action is picked up upon I would argue that the attempt may be subtle, but is rather successful in its effect. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I would argue that the scene mentioned in the previous quote is not the first engagement with political
activism in Lemonade, as the scholars claim. In my analysis I stumble upon an evocation of collective resistance in the two chapters before this scene.
In Lemonade there are multiple subtle references being made to political issues, in particular to the violence of and resistance to police. The first call for resistance can be found in the chapter ‘Denial’, at the end of the song ‘Hold up’, when Beyoncé breaks (rather unexpectedly) a security camera after walking through a romanticized ghetto (fig. 5). In the following chapter called ‘Anger’, the quotation of the speech by the political activist Malcolm X already points towards a political engagement with the oppression of the black population in history within the album. The scene that Rogers addresses as the first attempt of the album (situated in the fourth chapter called
‘Apathy’) is the third evocation towards to collective stand that takes place in Lemonade. It is in the last video of the album, after the credits, where the political statement of the album becomes the most explicit. The video called ‘Formation’ is situated in New Orleans and opens with a quoted question by ‘Messy Mya’, a character in the New Orleans Comedy scene who was murdered at the age of 22. There are different ways of understanding the quote; You can hear the sentence “What happened at the New Wil’ins”, a phrase that according to Zandria Robinson encourages us to “hear as a question about the comedian’s unsolved murder”, but it can also understood as “What happened after New Orleans”, a question that turns to the history of the city regarding black folks and the South and the future it awaits. Robinson argues in her article that: “They also give us the most audacious commands to slay regardless, even if we are taken. We are thus propelled into the life and death, future-present-past the video conjures.” This play with time that is experienced in the video is of the most importance in the album’s call for collective action. The video is a clear demonstration of black living in pain, injustice and devastation with its origin in the past, but surrounding black people in America in the present. Cuts of police jackets and police cars make references to the role of the state in this reality and Beyoncé is pictured in the midst of the devastation caused by the storm Katrina on a police car in the middle of a flood. The location of the video is crucial as it is made clear this is in New Orleans, a city that carries a history of being one of the biggest plantations of slavery in America 3. Through the quotation of the voice of Messy Mya, but
also with the use of the clothing that again resembles the clothing that was worn by
3New Orleans was one of the biggest centers of slave trading in America. When the civil rights movement
institutionalized the equality of black people to the white people, a social segregation was still kept between the two groups, resulting in a significant residential segregation between black people and white people although within little physical space. This makes it a city where the slavery’s history still shows itself in the isolation of the black population (Spain).
white supremacy decades ago, the rootedness in the past of the album is one of the major indications of the album’s positioning as a reaction to the violence of the past. The past is never really left behind and Formation wants its viewer to really realize that. Even the place of the video in the entire album, after the credits: when it is already ended but it comes back, seems to illustrate this point. By situating the scenes of the video in the midst of the devastations caused by Katrina, a wake of a storm that may have passed but still left its marks on the present is symbolized. The future is also addressed in this video, as it is the only video in the entire album where a somewhat futuristic styling is applied for one of the scenes making the viewer aware of the fact that there is an unknown chapter laying in front of us that still can be influenced.
The multiple choreographic formations of Beyoncé and the women dancing with her create a sense of a collective black women movement. The end of the song also plays with this ‘formation’ that has been spoken of earlier in the chapter, in a more explicit political way: a little black boy is pictured dancing (a dance called ‘locking’) in front of a group of police officers standing in formation with blockade armours. At the end of the video the child puts his arms up in a surrendering manner. In response, the police officers do this as well and a sense of reconciliation between the two groups
represented in the album is created: a symbol for a breaking out of the violence of the police towards the black population. After this there is a quick (vaguely shown) cut to an image of a wall on which is written with graffiti: “STOP SHOOTING US”. The reference to the state police and the objection to this violence in the video, calls for political
awareness and action. Through the emphasis on the formation and the play with time through quotation and remembrance, a claim for change in the future is made by its call for collective action.
The quotations and formations in Lemonade indicate a resistance from the black population towards the dominant structures. Frantz Fanon discusses in The Wretched of the Earth possibilities for the black people to break out of the dominance by the white supremacy. Although he does not favour violence as a tool for collective catharsis, as it is violence that has caused the pain of the black population, he argues that the native’s violence is an all-inclusive and national action that unifies the people through and in which the colonized can find freedom. Fanon states that “The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity. [..] The development of violence
among the colonized people will be proportionate to the violence exercised by the threatened colonial regime.” (87). This ‘balance’ of violence is a way for the black people to create the “new man”, one with a decolonized mind. When looking at Lemonade and especially at the video ‘Formation’, this calling upon resistance through collective action is given form through quotations of the past and references to formations and police, which symbolize the state-institutions.
Situating the album in its historical context shows how the focus on the police as a target of resistance closely encounters those experiences of the black people in
America at the time the album was made. The reference to the violence of the police is made when in the chapter ‘Resurrection’ the mothers of the black men, who were shot and killed by the police, are shown holding a picture of their sons (fig. 6.). The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown are pictured and given small parts in the other sections of the album, like in chapter ‘Hope’ when Beyoncé sings for them and the women sit in the first row. In the years before the album was produced,
manifestations arose against racial violence by the state and its vigilantes. Out of this grew the international movement ‘Black Lives Matter’, a movement originating in the African American population made to defend the rights of the black people in the United States and started after the court let George Zimmerman walk after shooting and killing the innocent Trayvon Marting. The name of the movement resonates the ‘non-human’ category, which Alexander Weheliye proposes in the analysis of racializing assemblages, while at the same time shows how this group attempts to raise from this no-space.
Whereas Fanon states that black people tried to find their recognition in white culture and the only way out this cycle of frustration was through violence, this album exposes an alternative way of creating a sense of possible liberation. By channelling black successful female celebrities in the album, the intersectionality of being a woman with a hybrid identity is shown as a possible strength and the cohesion of this oppressed group is being enforced. Through the appropriation of white culture by black characters in the visuals, it would seem that the cycle of looking for recognition Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks continues; However, by having the oppressed culture entangle with the white dominant culture in the album, a mixture of cultures is created. This process could be demonstrated with the concept of the third space, a space wherein multiple new perspectives are formed through the process of hybridity (Rutherford). By quoting black people and icons and creating social cohesion, looking back on history,
changing it and taking a stand towards racial injustice in the text of the album, Lemonade creates through recognition of violence a resistance to this violence, but without having to use the tool of the same physical violence that has put the black population in this non-status to begin with. The choice of breaking out of the cycle without using violence is symbolized with the last scene of the album when the little boy puts his arms up instead of fighting the armed police.
Chapter two
Suffering and its possibilities in the poetry of Warsan Shire
Beyoncé introduces the poetic work of a young female artist in her album. The poetry is the backbone of the album, as it creates a storyline, connects the chapters and creates a balance of intensity of impressions. Enhancing the recognition of pain and violence of the lives of women with a black identity that are addressed in the visuals, the quoted poetry is an elementary voice to the process of recognition of the reality of black women in the album. The quoted poetry has been written by the Somali-British poetess named Warsan Shire, a woman who was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate of London in 2014 after winning the Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013 (Hess). In The New York Times, the influence of the poetry of Warsan Shire on the present world is asserted as she is portrayed as “a compelling voice on black womanhood and the African diaspora- one particularly resonant in the digital age” (Hess). The poems in Lemonade are lines derived from her original poetry and have been adapted to the album. The poetess had published her volumes named “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” in 2011 and “Her Blue Body” in 2015. In 2012, she recorded her spoken word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely)” of which lots of adaptations in Lemonade have been derived.
The quoted voice of Warsan Shire creates a new layer to the album, adding to its polyphonic character. In this chapter I will analyse how the collaboration with Shire contributes to the entirety of Lemonade. The analysis will consist in looking at what is being created in the album with the quotation of the poetry. I will explore what the effect of this quotation is by analysing the themes of the poetry posed by Warsan Shire in the text and sometimes adding the effect of the collaboration with the songs and visuals. By underlining Shire’s use of metaphors as symbolizations of the female body, a proposition of a new way of looking at the female body, underlining the sorrow and disputing its objectification by men, is put forward in Lemonade. Through the notion of the female body, the poetess poses the intergenerational theme, giving way to the inescapability of the past. By focusing on the sorrow of the mother, a new constructive vision is opened in the end, showing the way women can make something out of
nothing. Like the visuals, the poetry roots itself in the violence of the past that continues disrupting the present. The non-living in a reality of continuous pain and violence is
pictured through the perspectives of women with a black identity, inhabiting an entanglement of voices that is made possible by the use of quotation. Through
addressing the leading themes in the poetry, I will show how this quoted poetry adds to the carving of a wakeful third space for young black females.
Voices
The album inhabits quotation in various ways, illustrating both the richness of the concept as that of the album. To understand the importance and effect of the quoted poetry in Lemonade, it is important to dive into the concept itself. Mieke Bal’s notion of quotation is favourable to adopt as it explores various levels quotation can operate on in her article “Quoting Caravaggio”. Firstly, she distinguishes quotation manifesting itself in the literal and mimetic way, representing a “direct discourse, and literal quotation of the words and characters” (10) as is the case with the quotation of the young female black artists in the previous chapter. Secondly, Bal identifies quotation as working on an effective level, meaning that it can serve to create a certain illusionary effect. Quotation here allows multiple realities in one image, creating truth from something with no necessary facticity, through this effect. This effective quotation can be detected in
Lemonade, as the entire album is based on different types of quotations, coming together and resulting in a black experience that is based on different perspectives and voices. Furthermore, Bal articulates how quotation can stand for fragmentation, plurality and ambiguity of language; "This conception of quotation turns the precise quotation of utterances into the borrowing of discursive habits, and as a result, intertextuality merges into interdiscursivity." (11) This interdiscursivity implies an ambiguity of meanings and the notion that the intention of the author is not the only thing leading to the meaning of a text. This ambiguity of language comes forward when looking at the quotation of the poetry by Warsan Shire in the album. Her poetry does not only share the black experience she proposes based on her own experiences and those of her ancestors but also –due to its adaptation to the content of the album- a black experience that coincides with the one to be represented by Beyoncé. Adapting her own voice to another, creates a mingling of voices and perspectives resulting not only in
intertextuality, but also interdiscursivity as it brings two inner worlds together. This vision on quotation lies close to Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. Bakhtin argues that language is "shot through with intentions and accents" (324) and that words cannot
‘forget where they come from’. Recognizing the multiplicity of voices or perspectives, the dialogic word enables different characters to share their perspectives, while still interacting with those of others and this way producing a multi-voiced discourse. Bakhtin opposes dialogism with monologism and claims that poetry is inherently monological (single-thought discourse) in which the words represent only the author’s interior world. The latter can be problematized when we look at the effect of the
quotation and adaptation of poetry in a text. The character of the poetry seems to change due to its quotation within the album, making it difficult to identify its pure monological nature and causing it to share dialogic characteristics, just like Bal argues to be the case when conceptualizing quotation standing for the ambiguity of language. By the adaptation of the poetry, two voices become represented in the poetry; the voice of Warsan Shire and the voice of Beyoncé. By merging different voices and their cultures through quotation, polyphony is created that is not to be divided into parts. This coincides with the way Bal identifies quotation as “all we’ve got’. This vision on
quotation means that it never returns without the burden of the excursion through the quotation. In other words: quotation as a matrix out of which a fundamental source is impossible to find. In the case of Lemonade although the sources are still identifiable, they are adapted to the function of quotation, losing part of their original structure in the process of creating something new.
The Female body
The poem that is quoted in the chapter ‘Apathy’ encapsulates some central issues Warsan shire raises in her poetry in Lemonade, namely the themes of Love, Family, Death, Grief, Violence, Pain and Sorrow. She addresses these themes through emphasizing the suffering of the female body. The poem shows how the resonating voices of Warsan Shire and Beyoncé come together. The language in this poem is non-typical for Warsan shire’s poetry; words like ‘side chicks’ is not elementary for her vocabulary, nor is ‘most bomb pussy’; This language lies more closely to the ‘slang’ used in the songs by Beyoncé, illustrating how the adaptation of the poetry can sometimes be more of the expression of Beyoncé’s voice and/or experience than her own.
So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you've killed me?
Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead.
Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted, most bomb pussy, who because of me, sleep evaded. Her shroud is loneliness.
Her God is listening.
Her heaven would be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes...dust to side chicks.
Using the metaphor of death of the body as an indication of the severity of the
consequences of the male behaviour in the relationship, Warsan Shire presents the male as the actor of the suffering of the female’s body. The poetess defines and describes the female body with different metaphors in her poetry to show the experiences of the female body in a way that underlines the sorrow and grief that it harbours. Sánchez argues her corporal writing to suggest a re-signification of the female body by changing the shift from the male gaze to the female gaze. According to Sanchez “Shire’s poetry suggests that, quoting Barbara Kruger’s work, “the body is a battleground”, a crossroad where identity and memory are constructed” (62). In the poetry in Lemonade, Warsan Shire proposes the female body, as this ‘space of impact’ by external male actors, yet seems to be doing more than this. By positioning the female body like an object, she underlines both the objectification of the female body as –through the metaphoric material recognition of the consequences of the actions of the male- proposing the inescapability of the implications that come with the body.
The experienced alienation of the body in the quoted poetry in Lemonade is often presented through the religious imagery. Warsan Shire plays with religion in a symbolic way when actually pointing to the intensity of the love that she really is speaking of and, more importantly, the pain the women suffers through this intensity. The last sentence of the poem is a direct reference to one of the common Christian prayers, turning the last ‘dust’ to ‘side chicks’.4 Religious imagery therefore fulfils a role of literary
symbolism. In the second chapter of the text, called ‘Denial’, a poem of Warsan Shire uses religious imagery to describe the sacrificial pain and violence of the woman to her own body to contemplate the male and gain recognition.
I tried to change, closed my mouth more. Tried to be soft, prettier.
4The official prayer is: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The prayer itself cannot be found in the Bible, but it is
a common biblical prayer based on Genesis 3:19, Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19, and Ecclesiastes 3:20 and can be found in the Book of Common Prayer (Booty; Cummings).
Less... awake. Fasting for 60 days.
Wore white. Abstained from mirrors.
Abstained from sex. Slowly did not speak another word. In that time my hair grew past my ankles. I slept on a mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword.
I levitated into the basement, I confessed my sins and was baptized in a river.
Got on my knees and said, “Amen.” And said Ameen.
I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I threw myself into a volcano, I
I drank the blood and drank the wine. I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God.
I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil. I grew thickened skin on my feet. I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with
pages from the Holy Book.
But still inside me coiled deep was the need to know. Are you cheating? Are you cheating on me?
The first three sentences of the quoted piece are derived from the poem “For women who are difficult to love”, one of the pieces that contribute to the spoken word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely). After the first three sentences, a period of fasting, abstinence and penalty is described. Sentences like “I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet” make evident that the period of penalty to the female body seems to be solely performed to acquire acknowledgement from a lover.
Two religions are represented in the poem: Christianity and the Islam. The reference to both religions becomes vivid with the use of both of the words ‘Amen’ and ‘Ameen’, having similar meaning in both religions. The ‘fasting for 60 days’ refers both to the Islam and to Christianity, as it is exemplary for both religions to do a period of
fasting. In the original poetry of Warsan Shire she often refers to the Islam; small Arabic sentences interweave with her English poetry, in the form of little prayers or Arabic sentences her relatives would say. The invocation to “Allah” comes back in multiple
