Forschung

Postdoc Project:
“‘To give these thousands of youngsters a constructive childhood:’ The discourse on proxy adoptions in the United States, 1945-1957.”

Synopsis of Dissertation: 
for a review of the dissertation, 
http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/10497

"From Cocoa Slavery to Chocolate City: Chocolate as a Racial Signifier in the Constructions of Blackness":

What does chocolate have to do with the United States, specifically with African-American culture? Why does it seem to be utterly logical and “natural” for many people (not only in the U.S., but globally) to equate chocolate with Blackness? Why is chocolate such a popular metaphor in the constructions of Blackness in various registers of (popular) culture? Why has the advertising industry portrayed Black bodies to promote a sweet treat, and what has this to do with cocoa as a historically colonial commodity? Apparently, chocolate and Blackness act like a myth. The power of such a myth is that it goes without saying, seems “natural” and self-evident; it appears to be in no need of deciphering or demystifying. In this manuscript I explore why that myth is so powerful, why it seems to be so “natural” and so convincing to use chocolate in reference to Blackness.
In a nutshell, my dissertation “From Cocoa Slavery to Chocolate City: Chocolate as a Racial Signifier in the Constructions of Blackness” has four different focal points: first the modes of production of chocolate, i.e., the economic realities of the cocoa business and the material connection of Blackness and chocolate. Second the semantics of chocolate, i.e., its imaginary potential, how chocolate is constructed and construed, what people usually associate with it, and who consumes it. Third, it analyses the iconography of chocolate and its visual representation in advertisements. Finally, my concern is the usage of chocolate as a racial signifier; it shows how Blackness is constructed, performed, and construed; how it is thus literally made visible and discernible to various audiences. While the usage is often self-referential and emancipatory in the African-American context, chocolate is perceived as a derogatory expression by Afro-Germans without any self-affirmative appeal. Looking at both contexts allows me to detect who the agents of that usage were at what times, and what different—even conflicting—notions of Blackness the chocolate signifier produced in the African Diaspora.