Black masculine identities are performed and perpetually reinvented

Evidence

Claire Alexander shows in her book The Art of Being Black (1996) that black masculine identities are not an echo of unifying cultural essence but are performed and created within situational, normative, and local arenas “necessarily incomplete, in a state of constant flux and reinvention, engaged in a continual process of’becoming’” (Alexander, 1996:199). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3007

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines performed identity as distinct from essential cultural identity — identity as process rather than substance.
• XREF: Resonates with Butler’s performativity and Appiah’s identity-as-process; also echoes the ‘becoming’ language used across diaspora studies.