Week One Journal Prompt In chapter 6 of Houston Baker’s seminal book Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Baker suggests that we can think about the history of black resistance, especially black resistance through black expressive texts, as falling in one of two categories. Black resistance, Baker suggests (via a curious appeal to natural history), deploys as either a “mastery of form” or a “deformation of mastery.”
Considering our reflection on the term “ontology” and its relationship to blackness and performance and performative presentations of self and in deference to the at least poetic resonance between Baker’s emphasis on form, formation, and deformation and the title of Beyonce’s 2016 track and subsequent music video “Formation,” this week’s prompt invites you to examine the music video “Formation” via the lens of Baker’s ideas of “mastery of form” and “deformation of mastery.”
To what extent are one or more of these concepts applicable to the performance of/in the music video “Formation”? You may wish to begin your journal contemplation with a straightforward distinguish and identify exercise. Distinguish between the various performance and/or performative aspects at play in the video. Identify aspects you believe might constitute a “mastery of form” and aspects you believe might constitute a “deformation of mastery.” Make note of why you view the particular aspects as you do. Once you’ve done this initial work, you should think about honing your examination on one or two aspects of the video. What about these aspects (how they are deployed and to what end) makes you associate them with either “mastery of form” or “deformation of mastery”? What is the significance of thinking about this particular aspect of the video as a mastery of form or a deformation mastery? Note: In thinking about the significance, it will be helpful to elaborate on the nature of the form that’s being mastered and/or the nature of the mastery that has been deformed.