NOT A PIECE OF CAKE: ETHICS, AESTHETICS, &

CHRIS BROWN & RIHANNA PROBLEM

by Robin James in aesthetics, Chris Brown, domestic
violence, ethics, feminism, feminist, gender,race, Rihanna
Its too close for comfortSo If you must falter be wise (Disturbia; written by Brown, performed by Rihanna)
The recent ink (or, more often, binary code) spilled over Chris Brown (sometimes in relation to Rihanna) raises
a lot of interesting philosophical problems about aesthetics, ethics, gender, and race. I want to examine some of
these problems here. These questions require the tools of both black/WOC feminism, and philosophical
aestheticstwo things that arent really often combined. But, Ill try to do some of that below.
I want to emphasize that Im not going to tell anyone what s/he ought to do. Im really trying to avoid positioning
myself as the omniscient academic who swoops down and saves the day by telling everyone what the correct
position/view is. In this case especially, there is no correct position. What I do want to accomplish in this post is
to trouble what is commonly being offered as the correct stance one ought to take re: Breezy & RiRi. Ones
moral outrage at this series of incidents is just being used as a performance of ones own moral
superiority: we are [ethical, feminist, etc.] because we recognize theyare not. But, as my wonderful Ethics Bowl
students say, ethics is a dirty business: the most fair and philosophically accurate assessments of a situation
often refuse resolution into neat and tidy right/wrong or yes/no dichotomies, so the best we can do is distribute
the dirt as fairly as possibleincluding and especially to ourselves as critics/analysts/philosophers/etc. So, lets
get dirty, as Xtina might have said about ten years ago:
Ambiguity, or, The Issues, Theirs and Ours
The outrage over Chris Browns performance at the 2012 Grammys, and his subsequently publicized new
collaborations with Rihanna, has extended beyond the feminist blogosphere and into the mainstream media
(e.g., on Wednesday 2/22, Donnie Deutsch (a rich white dude if there ever was one) was on NBCs Today
Show moralizing about how women should relate to abusive partners). People condemn Browns domestic
violence against former girlfriend Rihanna, what appears to be a quick temper/anger management problem,
and general bad attitude. Middle-class white mainstream audiences take it for granted that Brown is a bad man,
that Rihanna should not appear with him on any recordings. The widespread acceptance and taken-forgrantedness Chris Brown as boogeyman-du-jour strikes me asproblematic. Is Breezy sometimes a jerk in
public? Sure. Should we condemn his, and all, domestic violence? Absolutely. But should Brown be prohibited
from performing on television? Should Rihanna be effectively prohibited from making new work with a former
collaborator? Should we never take pleasure in any of Browns works or performances? These questions
require more nuanced responses. As music critics such as Ann Powers and John Caramancia have pointed
out, the underlying questions refuse reduction to yes/no binaries. These questions undermine all-or-nothing
responses, and theres no morally or politically pure position we can, in good faith, take. Theres no uniformly,
cohesively right or good answer, response, or position available here; those responses that attempt pure
outrage, uncomplicated judgment, and simple yes/no conclusions misconstrue the issues at best, and are racist
and/or sexist at worst. People are so intensely and continuously fascinated with this case because the issues
trouble any attempts at self-righteous ascription of blame or prescription of action. To do the issues justice, we
critics, fans, observers, and scholars have to implicate ourselves in the same messy, complicitious milieu as
Brown and Fenty (Rihannas legal name is Robyn Fenty). So we are so attracted to the issues in the case
because it begs us to confront our own issueswith racism and sexism, with aesthetics, and with ethics.
In the rest of the post, Im going to unpack individual issues/questions.
1.

Why do mainstream audiences, who are usually mildly to vehemently misogynist, suddenly care so

much about domestic violence?

In my Feminist Theory class earlier this week we were talking about how 20th century advances in civil rights
are often granted because these advances further US national projects otherwise unrelated to civil rights for
oppressed groups. For example, at the same time the Irish were beginning to be considered white, women
were granted the right to vote; these two phenomena coincide nicely with the first world war, when the US is
attempting to cast itself as more progressive and democratic than the Kaiser/Germany/Eastern Europe.
Similarly, as Nell Painter points out in her book The History of White People, WWII saw significant advances for
women and especially African-Americansall because the US was interested in contrasting itself, as a racially
egalitarian democracy, to racist/fascist Nazi Germany. Now, as Jasbir Puar has argued, we treat the project of
gay and lesbian civil rights as evidence of our cultural/political superiority over Muslims and other traditional
societies. So, theres a long tradition of white patriarchy using women and people of color as pawns; so-called
feminist or anti-racist projects are not at all motivated by concern for women or people of color, but are rather
about furthering white patriarchys projects, about making white (men) look better with respect to other groups,
feel better about themselves, etc. This is FINO or ARINO: feminism-/anti-racism-in-name-only. This is not really
about Brown or Rihanna, but white people using brown people, and brown women, as instruments or mediums
for white moral and political posturing. Critics get to position themselves as morally/politically superior to fans, to
black men, to women of color, and to women generally. Its about white patriarchal paternalism.
(a) So, while there is evidence to suggest that Chris Brown is an immature asshole, Chris Brown fills the role
of the stereotypically scary, violent black man. Chris Brown is the current representation/figurehead of
hundreds of years of cultural baggage; hes the current incarnation of the black boogeyman role/figure. Hes
not just guilty of one action, but his very being or essence is fixed as the violent black man. [Resonances
w/Fanon are intentional] Thus, its somewhat inaccurate to try to just talk about Brown himself, and the
specificities of his case. Regardless of the individual named Chris Browns actual guilt, the adequacy of his
penance, etc., Chris Brown is the currently fashionable signifier for cultural anxieties about black masculinity.
(b) These anxieties about black masculinity motivate the saving brown women from brown men excuse. In
other words, white feminists and white patriarchs use this excuse to justify their paternalism towards Rihanna,
and their condemnation of Brown. While this excuse claims to be motivated by concern for brown women, it
isnt: in reality, it denies brown womens self determination, and assumes that only whites can adequately save
these supposedly poor, ignorant fools. As Yolo Akili puts it:
Let me say this: she is a grown woman. She can make her own choices. Perhaps before we step up to
condemn her choice, we might pause to consider the undertones of this discourse that denies Rihanna
her right to forgive or engage Chris after his transgressions. It seems to have a strikingly similar
undertone to the idea that as a woman, she is not intelligent enough to make up her own mind. And we
all know where that logic has led us to, dont we?[1]
If we actually want to respect Rihanna, and not further deny her agency, we need to recognize that shes a
complex person who has had to make some very fraught and difficult decisions. She chose what she considers
to be the least bad or most tolerable options from among a seriously shitty field. These are not one-sided
issues, and there is no simple, neatly good or praiseworthy response to them. Losses will have to be cut,
and we shouldnt begrudge Rihanna her prerogative to decide which compromises she finds least
compromising to her. Heres an example of one such question, where the compromise should be chosen by
Rihanna, not for her:
2.

Brown and Rihanna were collaborators on their musicprior to the DV incident (e.g., Disturbia was written
by Brown & performed by Rihanna), and regardless of the status of their romantic relationship, they had a
productive working relationship. Should she sever the professional relationship?

There are reasons to sever and not to sever the professional relationship. She might dislike him as a person.
She might not want to damage her brand by association with hisBreezys career needs the boost from RiRi

more than the other way around. She is one of the most bankable pop artists today, whereas CBs career has
severely suffered post-DV incedent. She might like his songwriting more than she dislikes him as a person. She
might be able to compartmentalize, and have a productive working relationship in spite of any personal feelings
towards (or against) him. She may want to earn as much money as she can now, for some future use
(retirement, charity, who knows). Or, she may just think Brown is a gifted artist, and working with him expands
her artistic chops, which she finds inherently valuable. So, there are numerous pros and cons. But she
shouldnt have to reduce her professional life to her personal life, nor should she have to be a simple, monodimensional person. We let male artists get away with lots of bad choicesand cite these bad choices as
evidence of their genius! We dont tell Daniel Barenboeim (a renowned Jewish pianist and conductor) that he
cant ever play or program Wagner. Sure, he might get criticized for it, but hes not scolded and told he ought to
know better.
3.

But obviously feminists should condemn those womens claims that they wanted Brown to beat
them, right?

Theres at least two things to consider here: (a) the saving brown women from brown men excuse (again); and
(b) the limited scope of what counts as agency or resistance. Ive talked about (a) above; we need to avoid
paternalisms that assume women dont know whats best for themselves and need to be rescued by white,
middle-class feminists or FINOs. As Gayatri Spivak explains, Imperialisms image as the establisher of good
society is marked by the espousal of the woman as objectof protection from her own kind. But (b) is not getting
much coverage in any of the discussions Ive seen online. In the same essay that Gayatri Spivak coins the
saving brown women from brown men phrase (Can the Subaltern Speak?), she argues that mainstream
Western feminists have a limited, and culturally-specific conception of what counts as agency and
resistance. (J Halberstam discusses this also in The Queer Art of Failure).
In fact, making subaltern womens agency and resistance fit hegemonic models of agency and resistance in
fact further oppresses these womenit further denies their agency and assimilates them to hegemony.[2]It
demands that they resist and act in ways we hegemonic feminists and FINOs deem appropriate, and that we
are the only competent judges of this. Subaltern womens resistance to intersecting hegemonies often refuses
easy or clear reduction to hegemonic termsit makes sense that counter-hegemonic practices are
unintelligible to hegemonic notions of agency and resistance, right? There are at least two contending versions
of freedom, as Spivak puts it, and we need to allow that women resisting multiple, interlocking oppressions
might need different models of agency and opposition than those derived from single-oppression models. So
Im suggesting that we compare the Breezy can beat me any day! tweets to Spivaks example of bride-burning
in colonial India. Rihanna and the tweeters may not be the passive victims mainstream feminist and FINO
media portrays them as being. The oppressed, Spivak argues, under socialized capital, have no necessarily
unmediated access to correct resistance. So lets at least acknowledge that Rihanna and the tweeters may be
exercising complex forms of resistance that hegemonic frameworks dont even register as such.
4.

Should feminists stop listening to (and liking) Breezys music (& performances)?

In The Queer Art of Failure, Judith Jack Halberstam observes that most Americans (and maybe Westerners in
general) cannot tolerate the linking of our desires to politics that disturb us (153). This desire for the purity of
our own desires, tastes, and preferences motivates a lot of the discussion about how we ought to deal with the
Breezy/RiRi collaborations. The issue is presented in totalizing terms, as though the only two options were
loving it or leaving it. But here I wan tto argue for a complex liking. We can take aesthetic pleasure in works
by people we find distasteful. This is different than saying we can take aesthetic pleasure in works whose
politics we find distasteful. I would still argue that such complex pleasure is possible and ethically/aesthetically
permissible, BUT, its a slightly different philosophical problem, and one I wont address here. Im limiting my
argument to the claim that it is ethically, politically, and aesthetically permissible to enjoy works by artists
whose personalpolitics, comportment, etc., we find distasteful. The only source of distaste here would be at the

artist, not in the work itself (which we find pleasurable). Ultimately, we need to be able to find use or value in
(parts/aspects of) works by artists, writers, and other intellectuals whose personal views or behaviors we dislike,
because nobody is perfectly, purely good. Adorno was a raving misogynist. Kant was a rabid racist. And lets
not even talk about pop musicians: The Stones? Sexist, and racist. Elvis? At least somewhat racially
problematic, in the Love & Theft way. Pretty much every 18th and 19th c opera? Full of misogyny, racism, and
Eurocentrism. Should we just throw everything out? No. Sometimes we will have to throw everything out
because nothing can be salvaged after you take the problematic stuff out (e.g., Kants moral theory is, in my
relatively expert opinion, unsalvageablebut, uh, I still read and teach his work, if only to point out the
limitations). If we only appreciated the work of purely good people, then, uh, wed have little art, literature, or
philosophy (to say nothing of science & technology) to appreciate. More importantly, however, we need to allow
ourselves to appreciate works by morally/politically imperfect creatorsand even morally and politically
problematic worksbecause this lack of tolerance for ethically problematic aesthetic tastes is really a way to
scapegoat others for our own moral/political compromises. We demand this purity in our aesthetic liking
because it allows us to disavow and avoid admitting our own complicity in systems of oppression, like
patriarchy. I was raised in and acculturated to patriarchy, and aesthetic norms grounded in patriarchial
structures. People would rather disavow their complicity (and renounce pleasure) than admit both their
complicity and some enjoyment. In this instance, it is more morally and politically advantageous to bathe the
baby in dirty bathwater, so to speak, because if you throw both out you loose the ability to confront the reason
why the bathwater is dirty, and why the baby needs a bath.
5.

How do we handle the relationship between an artists life and an artists work?

This is a tough one. In the early 20th century, Walter Benjamin argued that in industrial mass culture, the aura
that formerly belonged to artworks had been transferred to artists, i.e., celebrities. So we tend to overlook
artworks and focus solely on the artist, because thats what seems authentic and original. But, of course,
authenticity and originality are very 19th c European aesthetic ideals, and its possible to have aesthetics that
dont prize or prioritize authenticity and originality. For example, rock aesthetics are rather 19thc Romantic in
nature, and they do value authenticity and originality, but American pop aesthetics tend to give these factors
less weight, especially relative to things like sensationality, groove, pleasure, accessibility, etc. So theres a
tension here between (a) the empirical fact that artists works are not reducible to their lives; and (b) the mass
culture aesthetics that invest in celebrity over art object. Pop stars are performers: Breezy is not the same as
the private person Chris Brown, just as Rihanna is not Robyn. Its difficult to tell where the line between Robyn
and Rihanna is drawn; I think its best to assume that everything released under the name Rihanna is the
performance, by Robyn, of a character, and not the intimate confessions of her own innermost life. Why do I err
on the side of work rather than life?
The reduction-to-biography problem: As Adrian Piper noted, we tend to reduce work by women artists of color
to the artists biographies. That is: we act as though women of color are incapable of creating art, and are
limited to narrating/confessing truths about their lives. This follows from the assumption that women of color
cant think abstractly enough to do anything than directly report facts. Obviously, this reduction-to-biography is
racist and sexist, because it implies that women of color cant be artists. So, in trying to reduce Rihannas (and
Breezys) performances to their biographies plays into this longstanding racist/misogynist habit.
In spite of all this, we both must and must not separate the public persona of the artist and his/her work from
the private individual. We are morally and politically obligated to both consider the work itself, and, given the
current state of pop music production/aesthetics, to consider the life of the artist (both as the artist, and as the
private individual).

Which returns me to my original point: theres no neat, clean answer to any of these questions. This issue
demands complexity and compromise. Theres no moral high ground here.

RIHANNAS UNAPOLOGETIC SHADOW FEMINISM,

PT. 1
by Robin James in art, black feminism, Chris Brown, domestic
violence, feminism, feminist, goth,Halberstam, neoliberal, pitchfork, race, racis
m, Rihanna, shadow, unapologetic
mistaking anti-social surrealism for social realism (Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun).
People keep accusing Rihanna of this, that, and the other, when really shes doing us such a favor that the least
we could do is maybe buy her lunch. Yes Im comparing Rihannas Unapologeticto Platos Apology. In Platos
context, apology means defenseSocrates was defending himself against two sets of accusers. In Rihannas
case, shes not asking our forgiveness for her apparent transgressions of normative femininity and black female
pop stardom. With this comparison to Platos Apology, Im not so much offering a defense of Rihannas album
against its many critics as I am trying to re-frame the entire approach to itwhich is actually what Socrates was
doing in apologia to the Athenian senate.
Though Unapologeticis not exactly getting tons of praise, its generally RIHANNA who is the target of most of
the album-related criticism. People are faulting Rihanna (who, remember, is a character played by Robyn
Fenty) for not sufficiently rejecting her abusive ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown. Rihanna expresses ambivalent
feelings toward her former abuser, and many people have a huge problem with this. Ive written extensively
about the RiRi/Breezy controversy here. Much of the concern-trolling over RIhannas feelings for and
collaboration with Brown come off as good ol saving brown women from brown men racist paternalism. This
racist paternalism ends up being more about our disavowal of our own complicities in racist misogyny, and less
about serious engagement with works of art.
In this post, I want to focus on Jessica Hoppers Pitchfork review because it brings in to focus some of the more
nuanced ways racist misogyny informs and results from overly-simplistic criticisms of Rihannas work with and
supposed feelings for/toward Brown.
Art or Confession
The Pitchfork review suggests that the album plays with the ambiguity of narrative voice: is this
Rihanna or Robyn Fenty? But why even assume Fenty is speaking personally here, that these are even
potentially her real feelings or thoughts? She could be using the Rihanna character to explore aspects of the
experience of relationship violence that Robyn Fenty doesnt actually feel or encounter. Maybe Fentys
experience with domestic violence has led her, as an artist, to want to explore it more fully, to push her
artwork beyond her own personal experience? Why not assume that Fenty, as Rihanna, is choosing this artistic
medium to explore the very, very complicated nature of domestic violence, abusive relationships, and
stereotypes about the supposedly always-already-dysfunctional nature of black heterosexuality? Maybe what
Rihanna has produced is a complicated, deep, difficult work of art, a work that not only transcends the personal
experiences of its creator, but that also deals with heavy issues in ways that refuse to reduce these issues to a
simplicity that they just dont have?
I would suggest that we dont first treat Rihannas songs about relationship violence as art, i.e., as
transcending Fentys personal experience, because of racist/misogynist implicit biases. These biases lead us to
implicity (and sometimes explicitly) assume that women cannot create beyond what they have personally
experienced. People leveled this criticism against Beauvoirs novels, and Adrian Pipers analysis and critique of
the reduction-to-biography problem for WOC artists is not to be missed (see her essay The Triple Negation of
Colored Women Artists). You can see this implicit bias play out in the Pitchfork review, which faults the album
for being both too dark and not pop enough to balance out the darkness:
Would it fare better if the topics were the same, but set to songs as combustible as Dont Stop the

Music? If her pain and shame and cant-quit-you-babe motif was delivered with some humor? If she kept her
personal drama to herself and sang about rolling fat joints on her bodyguards head and did more duetting with
the dude from Coldplay?
So Rihanna has given us a really hard to digest artwork, and we complain that its not fun enough?[i]Black
female performers have a both/and traditionsuperficially, a work is bubbly pop, but analyzed more carefully,
theres layers of depth and complexity. This is a long-established critical practice; does the Pitchfork review
indicate that white audiences expect black female artists to use this practice? In other words, white audiences
will only tolerate artby black women if the artist allows audiences to ignore the artistic dimensions and
interactonly with the superficial, fun ones?
On another level, you could talk about gendered societal demands that women confess (in the
Foucaultian sense); maybe women have an obligation to confess in ways that men dont? The confessionimperative actually compounds the reduction-to-biography (i.e., youre too dumb to speak in any mode other
than the literal) problem
Shadow Feminism
The Pitchfork review actually gets the following claim right; the problem is that it doesnt critique or
problematize the fact it accurately states. It says:
Its narrative, about a womans miserable obsession with a man we know to be her abuser, flouts
expectation of the traditional survivors tale; we want to see a woman learn from that pain and leave it,
not rut in it.
Yes, EXACTLY. Rihanna refuses neoliberal norms for feminine subjectivity. Autumn talks about this
over atThe Beheld. She argues that the therapeutic narrative of overcoming is one mode or logic of
contemporary normative (white, bourgeois) femininity:
The narrative of body imagewith its triumphant tale of overcoming obstacles such as self-loathing,
mass media, and the collateral damage of girlhoodis inscribed upon us, particularly among
consumers of womens media, to the point where we forget other bodily narratives may exist.
We expect women to be survivors; to have overcome difficultieslike body-hatred, eating disorders,
etc. This imperative to overcome is neoliberal because it demands one capitalize on ones (perceived)
flaws: turn your deficiency into an opportunity. The look, I overcame! narrative is one form that human
capital takesperhaps its even a specifically feminine form, or maybe there are specifically feminine
forms of this narrative (what would masculine ones be? Certainly the wrong body trans narrative is
one version of the LIO logic.) There are so many contemporary Top-40 songs of this sort by female
vocalists: theyre Kelly Clarksons bread and butter, but Taylor Swift and P!nk have had recent look, I
overcame! hits. Rihannas not giving us a Clarkson-style Look, I overcame! narrative. This is not
what doesnt kill you makes you stronger. This is, instead, a more gothic shadow feminism, a
feminism that complicates mainstream notions of agency, resistance, and critique.
Im taking this language of shadow feminism from J. Jack Halberstams book The Queer Art of
Failure. As he explains:
shadow feminismshave long haunted the more acceptable forms of feminism that are oriented to positivity,
reform, and accommodation rather than negativity, rejection, and transformation. (4)
As I read it, Halberstams theory of shadow feminism is basically a critique and alternative to the LIO imperative
neoliberalism puts on (white) women. They are gothy practices that revel in and intensify the damage rather
than seek to capitalize on it. Pushing Halberstam a bit (and just a bit; he practically goes all the way there
himself), we could argue that neoliberalism makes feminists willfully blind to forms of agency that do not take
the form of resistance (128) or overcoming. The neoliberal LOI imperative is a humanistic investment in both
the female subject and the fantasy of an active, autonomous, and self-activating individualism (129); only selfcapitalization (overcoming) registers as legitimate liberation or self-care. As a critique of and alternative to the

LOI model, shadow feminism

does not speak the language of action and momentum but instead articulates itself in terms of evacuation,
refusal, passivity, unbecoming, unbeing. This could be called an anti-social feminism, a form of feminism
preoccupied with negativity and negation. (Halberstam 129)
Shadow feminism is anti-social because it does not capitalize on personal damage in ways that produce literal
and metaphorical surplus value for corporate and hegemonic institutions. She does not accede to the neoliberal
demand that she narrate her overcoming in a public and publicized confession. She does not apologize for her
transgressions, because such apologies are precisely what hegemony wants.[ii]This behavior is anti-social
because does not contribute to the reproduction of this particular configuration (i.e., the white
heteropatriarchal/homonational one) of the social. In this way, Rihannas shadow feminism participates in the
Afrofuturist tradition of meeting hegemonys demand for social realism with anti-social surrealism (as Eshun
says in the epigraph cited above). Ill address Unapologetisc Afrofuturism in the next section; here I want to
stick to the shadowy/gothy aspect of Rihannas feminism, because its bad-girl refusal of the LOI imperative
actually sets up my Afrofuturism argument.
As I have argued elsewhere, Rihanna identifies with the black bad girl side of a racialized virgin/whore
dichotomy, the other side of which is the white good girl. Mainstream feminist ideals are normatively white.
The LOI narrative is a narrative for white women. Or maybe: it is a narrative thatwhitenswomen; insofar as
WOC participate in it, they are perceived to be more socially white, more model minority (think about
mainstream media stories about gender disparities among African-americans in higher ed, for example). In the
same way that homonationalism normalizes formerly marginal populations (gays and lesbians, blacks), this
LOI narrative normalizes WOC and femininities of color. In a society that stereotypes black female sexuality as
always-already pathological, Rihanna inhabits this supposed pathology; she refuses to overcome it. By
rejecting this narrative, Rihanna rejects the neoliberal tendency to conditionally include blacks, especially black
women, in privilege, to use them as a border population that intensifies the marginalization of more abnormal
groups (working-class black men, Muslims, etc.).
So Rihanna does things that, from a mainstream feminist perspective, make her a bad girl. This is an
established black feminist strategy. For example, the Pitchfork review argues that Rihannas duet with Chris
Brown, is a bubbly pop tune that conjures up historical memory of women defending men who have hurt them.
I dont think any white person who has read Kimberle Crenshaws analysis of race, racism, and domestic
violence in Mapping the Margins would write this sentence. Black women have had very good reasons to
defend men who have hurt them, especially when the accusations come from the white establishment. Because
black women face racistmisogyny, their resistance to patriarchy often looks, from the perspective of white
feminism, irrational or un-feminist. And, as Angela Davis repeatedly demonstrates in her book on the blues,
black female singers often use lyrics that superficially portray their victimization to critique the very racist
misogyny that would victimize them. Why arent people at least granting the possibility that Rihanna is
participating in this tradition? Is it ignorance of this tradition combined with the above-analyzed tendency to
deny the artistry of Rihannas work? (in other words: its the racist-misogynist view that black women arent
smart enough to make art art, so RiRis work cant participate in a black feminist art practice, because such a
thing is impossible, both now and in the past.)
Bad girls are anti-social: they refuse to be what white heteropatriarchy demands they be. Rihannas
sexuality may appear abnormal, but its not broken in the ways white heteropatriachy relies on. So its not that
shes broken that mattersits that shes not broken in what white hegemony construes as the average or
regular ways, the ways it anticipates and controls for (think about how the prison-industrial complex relies on
and encourages the pathological criminality of men of color).Rihanna is not a helpless victim, a brown woman
in need of rescue from her brown man. Thats why shes unapologetic. Shes well aware of the complex shit that
shes talking about, and shes dealing in the way she chooses. This might not be the way that best supports

hegemony. And maybe thats why people are so upset.

Im working on a second part to this post. I talk about melancholia and gaga feminism, and the
difference between neoliberal, post-goth gaga feminism, and melancholic goth shadow feminism, on the other.
Basically, I push both Halberstams concepts (and his ambivalence about gaga feminism) to explain how and
why goth feminism, by intensifying damage, is the opposite of Look, I overcame! gaga feminism. I also talk
about Rihannas use of Afrofuturism on Unapologetic, and argue that there are some Afrofuturist feminisms that
similarly intensify damage. If neoliberalism counts on bare life dying in regularized, normally abnormal ways,
then dying in the wrong way, or living an abnormally bare life screws up biopolitcal hegemonies. I hope I can
get the second part of this post finished after finals (which are next week), so be on the lookout for it.

[i] Kanye Wests 808s & Heartbreak album was similar: it mixed the same sort of emotional weight (grief and
guilt over his mothers death) with a lot of not-very-poppy musical weirdness. When Yeezy does it, its avantgarde and hes a (weird) genius; when RiRi does it, its indulgent and/or lazy? That, my friends, is some
seriously gendered double-standard.

[ii] If speaking for a subject of feminism offers up choices that weare bound to question and refuse, then
maybe a homeopathic refusal to speak serves the project of feminism better (Halberstam 130).

RIHANNAS UNAPOLOGETIC SHADOW FEMINISM,

PART 2
by Robin James in black, feminism, gaga, gaga
feminism, goth, Halberstam, LIO, neoliberalism,post-goth, race, Rihanna, shado
w, unapologetic

As always, this is pretty raw, first-draft stage material. I welcome your feedback
Thanks to everyone who has read and given feedback on part 1 of this series! The continued outcry
and worry about Rihanna and her album clearly show that shes hit a fracking nerve. And this means shes
doing exactly the sort of cutting-edge art we should expect of our best artists. As I tell my philosophy students,
the most interesting philosophical projects begin by finding what everyone thinks is obviously and irrefutably
true (or false), and questioning that assumption: if everyone thinks X is obviously true, then it likely is
absolutely not the case, and our work as philosophers is to uncover how X can pass as obvious, and what
function the obviousness of X serves (as in: who benefits from the assumption that X is obviously the case?).
(Yeah, so, those are my Nietzschean and Foucaltian cards, on the table) Rihanna has done something
similarshes called into question something everyone thinks is obviously true/good, namely, this LIO (look-Iovercame!) narrative that requires her to repudiate her abusive black male partner and tell everyone about it in
ways that neoliberalism can profit from (For example, white supremacy profits from the sociopolitical work
accomplished by the saving-brown-women-from-brown-men logic). I want to emphasize the distinction Im
drawing between actual recovery and LIO-style therapeutic labor. It is possible to work through psychic
trauma in ways that neoliberalism doesnt profit from, or in ways that make it hard for hegemony to efficiently
extract surplus value (i.e., human capital) from it. The LIO narrative is a stock script; it frames health in a

specific way because the process of becoming healthy is the most efficient, profitable means of extracting
human capital from our psychic lives. So just because one refuses the LIO definition and process of recovery
doesnt mean that one renounces self-determination, well-being, or a bearable psychic life. It just means that
youre evaluating these things according to an alternative script. (At a certain level this makes sense: what is
perhaps most helpful for many WOC is precisely not the therapy hegemonic scripts prescribe) Rihanna is
using art to philosophically trouble the politics of neoliberal female/feminine subjectivity.
But before I get back to Rihanna, I need to address Gaga. I have to go through Gaga not just because
Stefani Germanotta has in many ways set the tone or script for postmillennial female pop stars, but also
because the most prominent, recent academic work on female pop stars and feminism, Jack
HalberstamsGaga Feminism, begins from her, and not, say, Rihanna or Beyonce (and we can and perhaps
should question why Gaga gets all the love, even from the academy, when shes out-earned by Britney &
Taylor, and less prolific and popular than Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Beyonce). I read Rihannas
darkness as fundamentally different than Gagas post-goth monstrosity. Gagas post-goth monstrosity is one
version of LIO narratives; Rihannas unapologetic bad girl damage (what I will later call her
melancholy refusal to show us she has overcome) frustrates neoliberal attempts at human
capitalization; it never generates the right sort of surplus value. Even though it definitely generates
capital capital for the music industry (and for Fenty herself), Rihannas gothy damage does not produce the
right forms and or amounts of social/soft capital.[i] Whatever social or soft capital Rihannas damage does
produce, it does not optimize neoliberal hegemony (rather, it under- or over-drives it). (And, its important to
remember that African-American female singers have a centuries-old tradition of critiquing capitalism from
(somewhat) within, of producing work that works both with and against white heteropatriarchal institutions.
Rihanna participates in this tradition that rejecting the politics of purity that would demand black women pursue
radical/critical political work only in non-capitalist venues.) So, Rihannas work on this album is designed to be
plugged into neoliberal circuits of intensification (more and better life for the privileged!); however, once
uploaded, it bends these circuits, introducing detours and other effects that inhibit them from functioning at the
levels required to optimize the balance required to reproduce/maintain white heteropatriarchy. Rihannas
damage feels like signal but works like noise.
Perhaps one reason why people are vehemently rejecting Unapologetic is because investing in it feels
like a disinvestment in themselves? Maybe audiences sense that any investments in this album would not
produce the sorts of returns that the would be able to transform into social capital? Maybe its this implicit
noise that turns so many people so strongly off this album? And maybe it precisely these uneasy and negative
responses that are the hard evidence of Rihannas critique of neoliberal hegemonies?
Gaga Feminism & Post-Goth Monstrosity
Jack Halberstams concept of gaga feminism is the most prominent attempt to account for Gagas
quasi-gothy feminist style.[ii]It is very helpful in identifying and explaining what is distinctive about Gagas work,
but its political analysis needs to be pushed beyond what Halberstam has offered thus far. Understanding how
Gagas post-goth feminism supports neoliberal hegemony will clarify how Rihannas gothy melancholy
undermines it.
I actually want to distinguish between two ideas that Halberstam tends to conflate: gaga feminism and
shadow feminism. Following Halberstams own understanding of these concepts, shadow feminism is the
opposite of gaga feminism. Shadow feminism undoes the neoliberal entrepreneurial subject; if privilege =

winning, then shadow feminism is the practice of losing or failing, of intensifying goth damage. Gaga feminism
is post-goth; it finds and mines the silver in the lining of every shadow-producing cloud. Post-goth practice
celebrates the monstrosity in us all, and follows the neoliberal imperative to capitalizing on ever-narrower and
more-exotic differences. You could think of it as a sort of domestic xenomania, sort of like the
rednecksploitation TV programming all over basic cable in 2012 (e.g., Honey Boo-Boo, Hillbilly Hand Fishing,
etc.), except it targets ever-more-exotic types of queerness. Gaga feminism normalizes certain types of
monstrosity; the imperative is to be an especially fabulousmonster (this is what Shannon Winnubst calls the
biopolitics of coolone must capitalize on ones flaws, turn them into markers of idiosyncratic fabulousness).
Little monsters monstrosity always supports the reproduction of hegemony; in the same way that individuals
capitalize on their monstrosities, institutions extract surplus value from this monstrosity. The surplus value might
not come in the form of capital; it might come in the form of homonationalist soft power. (For example: unlike
primitive theocratic Muslim regimes, we foster and celebrate our little monsters (code for: bourgeois gay
and lesbian youth).) It is in this way that Gaga is, as Halberstam argues in his IASPM-US website article,
situated very self consciously at the heart of new forms of consumer capitalism. Gaga feminism is not a type
of shadow feminism; they might look the same, and the former might be the co-optation of the latter, but they
offer very distinct approaches to goth damage, with opposed political effects.
(a) OG Goth Monstrosity
Traditionally, goth presents itself as an oppositional subculture. It views mainstream norms and values
as oppressive, empty forms of false consciousness. Goths subvert and resist mainstream norms by performing
their identities and their everyday tasks in a highly stylized alternative aesthetic. While goths posthuman
queerness was definitely an alternative to classically liberal humanism, neoliberalism has co-opted and
normalized some types or styles of goth damageHot Topic (the retail store) and Lady Gaga are two prominent
examples of this co-optation.
In goth subcultures there are various traditions of adopting monstrous identities as a means of refusing
hegemonic constructions of gender and sexuality. Trans theorist Susan Stryker affirms monstrous identity in
order to critique humanisms privileging of supposedly natural and binary gender. Michael Du Pleiss explicitly
connects Susan Strykers trans politics with goths posthuman politics of monstrosity:
Stryker appropriates for herself as a transsexual womana kind of alien sex fiendthe full powers of
monstrosity. Though we forego the privilege of naturalness, we are not deterred, for we ally ourselves
instead with the chaos and blackness from which Nature itself spills forth.goth subculture articulates
modes of empowering monstrosity like that described by Stryker. Like Strykers creature, goths see no
need to mourn the passing of the categories of gender and sexuality as they crumble into decay (Du
Plessis, 166; emphasis mine).
In classically liberal heteropatriarchy, queers and goths register as monsters. Both Lady Gaga and gaga
feminism play on the commutability between the goth and the queer; Gagas little monsters are implicitly
LGBT youth, for example.
(b) Gagas Queer Little Monsters
Lady Gagas aesthetics appropriate traditional goth musics and subcultural practices. Her music
draws heavily on both classic gothe.g., Siouxie and the Bansheesand on goth dance genres such as
industrial and EBM. Her combination of heavy electronic dance beats with highly melodic vocals updates a

formula pioneered by Depeche Mode in the early 1980s. However, while goth music has always defined itself in
opposition to mainstream commercial pop (even in the late 1990s, commercially successful acts like Marilyn
Manson took direct aim at more conventionally pop acts like Britney Spears), Gaga intentionally presents her
work as Top-40, radio friendly, chart-busting pop. Gagas goth-pop hybrid is most properly understood as postgoth music. Gagas visual presentation is similarly post-goth. She uses the symbols and imagery of goth
whiteface, bondagewear, lace, Victorian dress/steampunk, etc., but filters them through mainstream highfashion and design.
Goth subcultures privilege oppositional style and consciousness, whereas Gaga is themainstream. It is
this re-centering or mainstreaming of goth that qualifies Gaga as post-goth. Gagas pointand a large part of
her appealis that we are all little monsters: dominant norms governing gender and sexuality are unrealizable
ideals, so rather than produce a mass of perfectly conforming and disciplined normals, heteropatriarchy in fact
creates a proliferation of abnormal specimens whose monstrous deviance is generally in the little details (or,
what Foucault would call the micro-effects of power). She domesticates and normalizes the goth/queer
monsters that used to be on in classically liberal heteropatriarchys margins: they are normally abnormalor
rather, they are abnormal in ways that hegemony can capitalize on. If goth was a critique of classically liberal
hegemony, post-goth gaga feminism is the neoliberal co-optation of it. Gaga post-goth feminisms allow
neoliberal hegemonies to manage and extract surplus value from superficially transgressive
behaviors and identitiesit allows and in fact encourages everyone who is anyone to be
a little monstrous.
Gaga feminism regularizes and normalizes certain flavors of monstrosity. Gaga feminism, Halberstam
explains, is monstrous (xii); it includes performances of excess; crazy, unreadable appearances of wild
genders; and social experimentation (xiii). Gaga feminism undoes classically liberal conceptions of gender and
sexualityit appears excessive and monstrous from the perspective of, for example, identity politics. If you
think gender is a property of bodies (an identity), treating it as a playfully-composed assemblage makes the
gendered individual performing this assemblage appear like Frankensteins monsteran unnatural mishmash
of components. For example, gaga feminists will see multiple genders, finding male/female dichotomies to be
outdated and illogical (26). Gaga feminism is a way of interpellating people to neoliberal logics of gender, race,
sexuality, and (dis)ability. It takes what they might conventionally experience as monstrous, and re-frames it as
a pleasurable, normal experience. Gaga feminism sells this interpellation by making it seem like avant-garde
transgression. As Halberstam explains,

we celebrate variation, mutation, cooperation, transformation, deviance, perversion, and diversion. These
modes of change, many of which carry negative connotations, actually name the way that people take the
risks that are necessary to shove our inert social structures rudely into the path of the oncoming
gagapocalypse. Making change means stepping off the beaten path, making detours around the usual, and
distorting the everyday ideologies that go by the name of truth or common sense (143).
Gaga feminism distorts everyday classical liberal identity politics and classically liberal concepts of gender and
sexuality so that so neoliberal biopolitics can plug right in, no adapter necessary. So-called transgression is
actually the charge neoliberal hegemony runs from. In this way, then, monstrosity is not a critique of or
deviation from neoliberal hegemony, but its very condition of possibility.
How, specifically, is gaga feminism neoliberal? Halberstam gives a numbered list of basic principles
(27), so Ill follow this point by point. FIRST, if wisdom lies in the unexpected and unanticipated (27), it is

because neoliberalisms engine extracts surplus value from transgression, risk-taking, and apparently chance
occurrences. SECOND: if neoliberalism manages populations (or, it targets individuals only as members of
populations), then Halberstams principle dont watch the ball, watch the crowd (27) fits well within this
strategy. While other forms of power monitor and manage individual behavior (through execution or panoptic
discipline, for example), biopolitical administration addresses itself to populations. It maintains the right overall
societal mix or balance necessary for optimizing the reproduction of privilege. THIRD: neoliberal subjects
need to be flexible and adaptable; they must live for the now (YOLO!), and not worry so much about delaying
gratification (acting civilized in Freuds sense) for future payoff. So, if gaga feminism holds that nothing lasts
forever, and common sense needs to twist and turn in the winds of change (28), it is well-suited to the
flexible/YOLO subjectivity neoliberalism requires of us. We need to be able to improvise, to exploit each
unexpected new situation as it arises, to optimize the payoff we get from each moment. Thus, as Halberstam
explains,
it is about shifting, changing, morphing, extemporizing political positions quickly and effectively to keep
up with the multimedia environments in which we all live and to stay apace of what some have called
the coming insurrection. Here and now, our reality is being rescripted, reshot, reimagined, and if you
dont go gaga soon, you may wake up and find that you have missed the future and become the past
(29).
This flexible, improvisatory subjectivity that can capitalize on any and every feature of every moment is exactly
the sort of behavior neoliberalism requires of individuals. Neoliberalism needs privileged folk to individually
go gaga so that society (relations of privilege and oppression) stays the same. This is why FOURTH,
gaga feminism is, according to Halberstam, for the freaks and geeks, the losers and failures, the kinds who
were left out at school, the adults who still dont fit in (29). Gaga feminism is a strategy for capitalizing on ones
flaws. I was/am a freak, and that makes me interesting, special, and valuable! In this way, Gaga feminism is
part of the Look, I Overcame feminism I discussed in Part 1 of my analysis. I used to think my monstrosity
made me a reject, but now I know its what makes me cool.thats little monsters LIO narrative. They turn
their monstrosity into social capital.
Gaga does this pretty explicitly. Shes not selling conventionally-sexualized male gazing. Every time
Gaga performs a traditionally sexualized female body, she does so in a way that emphasizes it as an object of
disgust, not desire. She explains:
Well, yeah, I take my pants off, but does it matter if your pants are off if youve got eight-inch shoulder
pads on, and a hood, and black lipstick and glasses with rocks on them? I dont know. Thats sexy to
me. But I dont really think anybodys dick is hard, looking at that. I think theyre just confused, and
maybe a little scared. Its more [Marilyn] Manson to me than it is sexy.[iii]
Here, Gaga claims that its her monstrous posthuman prostheses that are desirable (sexy to me). It is
significant that she references 90s goth rock star Marilyn Manson on this point. As his stage name indicates,
Manson often plays with gender cross- and dis-identifications. Unlike traditional glam (or even hair metal),
Manson does not appropriate femininity to increase his sexual desirability; rather, he claims to tr[y] my hardest
to be as unappealing, as unattractive as I could be (Manson; 1:32).[iv] Gaga emphasizes the desirability of the
monstrous; she considers it empowering, not damaging. Shes not selling us scopophlic pleasure (in looking at
her body), but the pleasure of winning conveyed in/by LIO narratives. In this way, Gaga flips Mansons
traditional goth script: monsters are exceptional, but in a way that intensifies privilege instead of critiquing

it. Rather than adopting monstrosity as a means of dis-identifying with the mainstream, Gaga domesticates
monstrosity and puts it to work for hegemony. Gagas work is post-goth because it wants us all (well, all of us
who arent otherwise relegated to bare life) to be little monsters.
A feminism on the verge of a social breakdown (xv; emphasis mine), Gaga feminism participates in
neoliberal logics of privilegethe riding the crest of burnout or living life on the edge logics I describe here.
On the verge of a social breakdown, society at large hangs in the balance while hegemony profits from its notquite-yet-diminishing returns. (The edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the
edge, indeed.) Going gaga is a form of individual risk-taking that pays of for privileged people, in the form of
human capital, and for institutions, in the form of surplus value (of soft power, of hard capital, etc.). On the
verge, Gaga feminism maximalizes risk-taking and transgression, carefully monitoring them so they do not ever
slip over the point of diminishing returnsthey never actually diminish or de-intensify hegemonic institutions or
relations. So, when Halberstam says things like Gaga feminism namesa politics of gender for the
postcapitalist world we currently inhabitGaga feminism will not save us from ourselves or from Wall Street
(xv), we should take him seriously! It is not just Gagas feminism, but gaga feminism in general that is
neoliberal. To reiterate: neoliberal hegemony wants privileged people to go gaga, because this
provides the fuel it needs to re-charge systems and institutions supporting white heteropatriarchy.
(c) Gagas Post-Cinematic Post-Goth Aesthetic

it is also a feminism built around stutter steps, hesitation, knowing and unknowing, embracing your
darkness (Halberstam 62).
Not only is gaga feminism neoliberal; Gagas own aesthetic follows neoliberal post-cinematic
conventions. Gagas anarchic sense of time and relation (Halberstam xxiv) is actually a neoliberal arche.
Neoliberalisms post-cinematic logic is a co-optation and domestication of classically liberal black and queer
critical practices. So, for example, narrative cinema and tonal harmony, which privilege wholeness and
resolution, get countered by practices of repetition, looping, and cutting/fragmentation. Neoliberalism
appropriates these practices, neutralizing their critical functions and putting them instead in service of
hegemony.
So, while it is true that gaga feminism isoff-beat and best represented as a sonic form
ofhesitation (5), this stutter step does not disrupt neoliberal logics. For example, vocal stutteringor the postproduction chopping of a vowel soundhas largely replaced melisma in contemporary US/UK radio pop. This
happens on Telephone(the eh-eh-ehs), but we also see it in Rihannas Where Have you Been (li-i-i-i-ife), and
a bazillion other songs. Stuttering and fragmentation are totally normal forms of vocal ornamentation. Think also
about the drop in dubstep, the moment of silence before the wobble bass comes back with a vengeance.
Again, an apparent bug is actually a feature. These soundscapes full of stutters and clicks are anything but
innovative (Halberstam 63). So, Gagas Telephone is not, as Halberstam argues, misleadinglypop in tone
(62; emphasis mine); it exemplifies neoliberal pop quite well, actually. Neoliberal popfrom minimalist ringtone
rap, to maximalist brostephas appropriated the noisy riot of going gaga (138), rerouting the gaga spirit of
anarchy (137) back to hegemonys own fuel cells.[v]
Gaga got her stutter-steps from Afro-diasporic musical, choreographic, and sartporial practices.
Hesitation, cutting, and looping are features of late 20th century black critical aesthetics. Halberstam compares
Gagas excess to the noisy excesses of black and mixed-race performers, and the noisy interruptions theorized

by Fred Moten:
While Moten understands the Black aesthetic to come in the form of unintelligible gestures that
are quickly assimilated by a white supremacist logic into the proof of the irrationality of blackness,
I define gaga feminism as a form of activism that expresses itself as excess, as noise, as
breakdown, drama, spectacle, high femininity, low theory, masochistic refusal, and moments of
musical riot.
Instead of assimilating the formerly unintelligible into newly intelligible material, neoliberalism uploads noise qua
noise. The unruliness of racially/sexually/nationally/gendered subalterns is no longer an impediment to profit
and privilege, but the raw material in the manufacturing of human/soft/social capital.[vi]To ears tuned to
classically liberal political and aesthetic paradigms, this unruliness sounds like noise; however, in neoliberalism,
it works like signal. In fact, neoliberalism cultivates noise (think about how dubstep cultivates acoustic noise).
Generating noise as a power source, neoliberalism plugs it back into its circuits so that it amplifies and
intensifies signal. What Halberstam calls the Gaga core of mayhem that disrupts genres, genders, sense, and
silence (IASPMUS) is just this sort of post-cinematic, neoliberal noise. Post-cinematic noise is actually
signal. It is a cultivated transgression.
The mainstreaming and co-optation of these aesthetic values and practices is part of a broader
project of domesticating and homonationalizing segments of the black/Af-Am population. The quick
version of this is: because of changing geopolitical and economic interests, neoliberalism benefits from
conditionially including in privilegespecific segments of the transnational black middle class. Philosopher
Falguni Sheth describes how blacks get used as a border population: our inclusion of black people in the
nation/state/citizenship is one thing that distinguishes us, the good guys, from various flavors of bad guys who
dont value diversity and human rights, like Islamic fundamentalists, the Chinese government, or even certain
backwards populations of whites within the US. Homosexuality and gay marriage are played to much the
same effect. Moreover, by conditionally including some segments of the black population in privilege, hegemony
can naturalize and disavow all sorts of racist practices. This conditional inclusion allows white supremacist
neoliberal institutions to maximize their racist exploitation of everyone. The mainstreaming of formerly critical
black musical practices is one manifestation of this new way black people and blackness get instrumentalized
by neoliberalism.
Gaga feminism is a post-feminist, homonationalist strategy neoliberalism uses to convince privileged
women (and men) that they are sufficiently progressive and enlightened. It convinces us that were the good
guys, basically, and implicitly constitutes a category of bad guyse.g., Christian and Muslim fundamentalists,
whose pre-modern family-centrism doesnt mesh with neoliberal imperatives to development, capitalization, etc.
Gaga feminism encourages the perception, among its practitioners and ovservesrs, that its innovative and
avant-garde. Halberstam repeatedly argues that gaga feminism exists already in small random acts by gaga
people who are improvising the revolution (29), that gaga feminism is about being unpredictable (141) and
open to randomness. Gaga feminism is supposedly an aleatory feminism, or a feminism of aleatory practices.
However, as John Cages aleatory works so clearly demonstrate, neoliberalism is a system that controls
randomness; it sets up parameters within which superficially random events can occur. Nothing actually random
can happen, only what fits within the predefined parameters. As economist/theorist Jacques Attali argues in a
1983 interview with Fredric Jameson, in neoliberalism the aleatory can perfectly well be conceptualized in a
profoundly systematic way: indeed, in modern times it becomes the fundamental component of all theoretical
systems. So, this superficial randomnessthe gagais actually anticipated, controlled for, and above

all desired by neoliberalism. To twerk Foucaults thesis about repression in The History of Sexuality
v1: neoliberalism incitesprivileged groups to go gaga, because this gaga does not resist hegemony,
but produces it. Gaga may appear to loose control, but hegemony never does (and neither, I would argue,
does she, reallyit takes a highly-trained performer toappear to lose control at just the right moment in just the
right way.) Gaga is not anarchic; it is the very arche of neoliberal white hetero/homonationalist patriarchy.
Interpreted in the most charitable way possible, Jack Halberstams book Gaga Feminism describes
how neoliberalism domesticates certain kinds of monstrosities and queer femme transgressions. Though he
seems to use the concepts gaga feminism and shadow feminism interchangeably, I argue that they are in
fact distinct. Gagafeminism, especially as practiced by Lady Gaga, is a post-goth practice that extracts surplus
value from gothy shadow practices, and pays that forward to neoliberal hegemony. In contrast to Gagas postgoth capitalization on monstrosity, Rihanna performs the more conventionally goth strategy ofintensifying
damage. Rihannas shadowy, melancholic feminism is a goth practice that queers or queerly invests in death,
transforming it into something that, when co-opted, infects biopolitical signal with noise. Sometimes this
noise is overtly cacophonous, sometimes it is less explicitly perceptible as noise. The point is that this noise
corrupts the payoff neoliberal hegemony expects to get from its investments. You can try to capitalize on this
goth damage, but doing so may not return a profit that hegemony recognizes as such. Melancholic gothy
feminism counts on co-optation, but makes the opportunity cost too high to make its practice attractive for
investors.
In part 3, I will argue that Rihannas Unapologeticperforms a neoliberal version of melancholia.
Classical melancholias pathology is indexed to classically liberal models of subjectivity: the melancholic is one
who cant resolve or get over a loss; melancholia is a failure to progress toward and attain a goal (wholeness,
completeness, self-sufficiency). Neoliberalism normalizes ateleological open-endedness. In a context where
normal subjects are flexible (open-ended) and YOLO-oriented, melancholia manifests as a failure of selfcapitalization. Basically, I want to think about melancholia as a critique of LIO narratives.

[i] Some critics of my previous post have questioned Rihannas capacity to critique hegemony
from within capitalism/the major label record industry. If WOC feminisms teach us anything, it is
that a politics of purity only works to naturalize and reinforce privilege. For example,
demanding that one completely reject the record industry and work outside capitalism limits
genuinely revolutionary activity to those with the economic and social advantages to mollify
the negative effects of socially maladaptive behaviors.
[ii] Halberstam attributes Gaga a post-punk lineage and aesthetic; I think this is somewhat
correct, but too broad of an attribution. Musically, goth is one of many post-punk subgenres
(along with new romanticism, new wave, punk funk, noise, etc.). Its not entirely accurate to
say that Gaga is post-punk; shes a specific flavor of it, namely, goth. She acknowledges
debts to 90s goth figures like Marilyn Manson, but theres also a little Sisters of Mercy and
Depeche Mode in her music.
[iii] Quote available here: http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2010/07/god-and-the%E2%80%9Cgaze%E2%80%9D-a-visual-reading-of-lady-gaga/. Accessed 12 November 2010.
My thanks to Doug Tesnow for pointing me to this article.
[iv] Interview available here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgdubZabTdo . Accessed 12
November 2010. My thanks again to Doug Tesnow for sending me this video.

[v] This is tangential to my post here, but important to think about in another context.
In Telephone, why does the cross-racial Thelma & Louise-like alliance between Bey and Gaga
turn on the murder of a black man? As Halberstam argues, heterosexuality itself seems like an
event in a distant past. The video makes violence against men into it signature and its enigma
and it asks, obliquely, what comes next? (64). Bey and Gaga ride off into the sunset as a sort
of quasi-queer interracial feminist couple after they murder Beys ex-lover, who is/was a black
man. The elimination of a thuggish black masculinity creates fourth-wave/homonationalist
feminist subjects. Telephoneactually demonstrates the overlap between homonationalism (the
normalization of certain gay/lesbian subject positions as a white supremacist tactic) and what I
have elsewhere called postmillennial black hipness. 20th century stereotypes of black
masculinity and black masculine coolness are no longer relevant; this is why Beys ex had to
be eliminatedhe, a thug, represented an outmoded race/gender/sexuality politics. The new
neoliberal homonationalist politics of race/gender/sexuality no longer considers thug black
masculinity as radical or avant-garde; the avant-garde is now symbolized by other, more exotic
populations, like third-world women of color, gays and lesbians, etc. Telephonedramatizes this.
[vi] In classical liberalism as in tonality, otherness is an impedement that must be overcome.
To use Susan McClarys example: just as the dialectic of enlightenment begins from Odysseuss
conquest of foreign monsters on his journey back home to Athens, tonal harmony works as a
conquest of secondary keys by the primary key, with resolution back home in a perfect
authentic cadence in the primary key. With this in mind, we see the flaw in Halberstams
question, What is the sound of fugitivity what does it sound like when a voice seeks to
vacate rather than to occupy, to flee perpetually rather than seek safety, to locate spaces of
instability rather than to harmonize? (IASPMUS). Noise/instability is critical only to an
imperative to harmonize. Classical liberalism makes this demand, but neoliberalism does not.

RIHANNAS MELANCHOLIC DAMAGE

by Robin James in black, breezy, Chris
Brown, critique, diamonds, feminist, gaga feminism, gender,look i
overcame, multi racial white
supremacy, music, neoliberalism, noise, race, resilience, review, Rihanna, we
found love
Here is my looong, unedited, still-in-process post on Rihanna, Look, I Overcame! Gaga Feminism, goth
damage, and multi-racial white supremacy. Unlike most people who talk about Rihanna, Breezy, feminism,
& race, I will actually discuss her MUSICchords, compositional and performance strategies, etc. Ill be
talking about this at Wayne State and Luther College, and I look forward to everyones feedback on the blog.

1. Laffaire Breezy
Critics and fans filtered their responses to Rihannas Unapologetic through Robyn Fentys continued
relationship with Chris Brown, who infamously assaulted her outside the 2009 Grammy Awards ceremony. For
example, Spins Caryn Ganz treats Rihannas unapologetic love of Chris Brown[i] as central to the albums interpretation and
cultural significance, LA Timess Randall Roberts opens his review with a discussion, not of the lead single, but of Nobodys

Business, her duet with Brown. Dan Martins NME review reads the album primarily, and almost entirely, through the
lens this collaboration.[ii]To his credit, Martin avoids the egregious, paternalist concern-trolling that motivates
many of his peers.[iii]The New York Timess rock critic John Caramancia comes across particularly
paternalistically, phrasing his critique of the album as a reprimand to Rihanna: To make public art with the
person who physically abused you is immature, pre-feminist, post-ethicsIt doesnt help at all that her songs with Mr.
Brown the new one, and the remix of Birthday Cake, from her 2011 album, Talk That Talk are some of her best (emphasis
mine). MusicOMHs Philip Matusavage takes the saving-brown-women-from-brown-men paternalism even farther:

to argue that the unpleasantness at the albums core doesnt matteris to enable the misogyny which fuels this
record, where an overwhelmingly male group of songwriters play up Rihanna as an alluring cipher, flirting with danger
while staring into the void. Whatever Rihannas role in this album, its to be hoped that she doesnt believe most of what shes
singing here. As a record it is not only misguided, its dangerous. We should not shy away from that (emphasis mine).[iv]
Both reviewers treat Rihanna as too immature, passive, victimized (by Brown, by her management) or
uninformed (pre-feminist) to fully understand the implications of what shes done on this album. Sure, she may
be defiantly flipping a musical bird, as Caramancia suggests, but thats still a very adolescent, unreflective
behavior. These portraits of Rihanna-the-manhandled-victim resonate with the equally racist, misogynist
coverage of Billie Holiday.
Perhaps critics like to paint Rihanna as a victim of Brown and the record industry because they cant
fathom why she would intentionally augment and invest in the damage he symbolizes. Robertss LA
Timesreview is especially revelatory. The album is

a little sickening, because for the first time since the incident, her addressing the complicated issuefeels not like a defense of
love but a marketing maneuver, a way of turning a negative into a positive. (emphasis mine).
Shes turning a negative (damage) into a positive (profit), but this profit does not come in the form of efficiently capitalizable
human capitalit augments and amplifies (so-called) sickness, not (so-called)health (health here is an index of the efficient
functioning of hegemonic institutions, the biopolitically healthy societywhich is a racist, misogynist, ableist society. This sort of health
is actually really pathological.) We listeners cant effectively or efficiently turn her damage in to our own human
capital(except, perhaps, by concern-trolling and treating our attempts to save this brown woman from her brown man as a badge of
our own multi-racial-white-supremacist-patriarchal cred). The album is sickening because it is difficult to capitalize on in any but antisocial ways, in ways that amplify damage rather than amplify surplus value. The anti-sociality of this damage, its diminishment rather
than its augmentation of MRWaSP, is what makes it read/feel like illness. It does not optimize the health of neoliberal, multi-racial white
supremacist patriarchy; or, the opportunity cost to get it to do this is too high. Like a computational or biological virus, this damage
causes its host to run sub-optimally. This capitalizing on anti-social damage is what I will later call melancholy.
Before I talk about Rihannas gothy bad-girl approach to neoliberal melancholy, I want to address the albums
actual music, and critics responses to it. Its important to consider the music not just because Rihanna is, well,
a musician, and we shouldnt fall in to the bad habit of reducing women artists of color to their biographies and
ignoring their work; the music speaks directly to this issue of neoliberal melancholia.
2. Not A Banger
Many critics interpret the music as melancholicthat is, as failing to overcome and capitalize on damage. For
example, Caramancia describes the album as bored, dull, and bland. The song Lost in Paradisebuzzes

and hums but does not take flight (Caramancia; emphasis mine), as though it does not generate enough lift to
rise above the albums affective doldrums, sinking instead, as Alex Macpherson writes, into directionless
drift.[v] The albums lead single, Diamonds, both musically and visually evokes directionless drift, a Bermuda
triangle of melancholic meh.
Musically, the song invokes both tonal and EDM-style compositional devices, but uses them in stunted, underrealized ways.[vi]The song uses some of the language and conventions of tonal harmony without itself being a
tonal piece. There are no cadences, no resolution, no key changes, etc., so its not really tonal. However, it
does have a harmonic structure which is rooted in the semiotics of functional tonality. The song is basically a
loop of G Bb A (Bb) chords. It plays around with the minor-third relationship between G and Bb, and evokes D
as an absent, spectral/hauntological dominant/major fifth (A is the dominant of D, which is the dominant of G).

[vii]The song continually circles around the minor third and the absent/hauntological major fifththe two main
functional relationships in tonal chord structure. This looping can be heard as melancholic in two ways: first, as
a melancholic failure to get over the lost/lacking D/fifth/dominant; second, the circling around the minor third
creates the effect of a harmonic Bermuda triangle. The minor third is strongly associated with sad, depressed,
melancholic affectits sad, whereas the leading-tone interval (i.e., the theme from Jaws) is more scary.
Constantly circulating around and returning to this minor third, the song generates melancholic affects.
Diamonds uses the language and semiotics of tonality to produce harmonicmelancholy.[viii]
But the song isnt really tonal in its background or underlying structure; the chord changes are more middleground effects than fundamental structures. The underlying foundation has more in common with extra-tonal
EDM-pop than with tonal pop. Its a modular song, composed of 16-bar phrases arranged into verses and
choruses, with a failed or mis-fired dubstep-y drop as its not-climax. Heres the structure:
Intro (4 bars)
A (44, or 16-bar verse)
B (44 or 16-bar chorus)
A1 (43, or 12-bar verse)
B regular chorus
1 4-bar phrase (that leftover phrase from A1)
B
Many dubstep and EDM-pop songs use a combination of a soar and a pause-drop to create a musical climax.
Psys infamous Gangnam Style and Baauers even more infamous Harlem Shake both do this: they soar
up to a peak of rhythmic intensity by increasing the rate at which a percussion and/or vocal pattern is repeated;
they then pause by dropping out (most of) the instrumentals for 1 bar before landing hard on the downbeat of
the following measure. The pause delays resolution on that downbeat, thus exacerbating tension and
augmenting the intensity of the hit by creating a harder they come, the harder they fall effect. In Diamonds,
the extra 4-bar phrase between the last two choruses functions like a pause; all but the barest accompaniment
drops out for four bars, after which it drops on the downbeat of the final chorus. However, theres no soar up to
this pause-drop. In the same way that the tonal dominant/fifth (the D chord) is invoked as an absence,
the song is haunted by an absent soar. The song feels directionless because itleaves the out the
climaxes (the soars, the functional harmonic relationship between dominant and tonic) that we expect to find in
the musical/compositional techniques it uses. Diamonds is a conquest narrative that doesnt conquer (no tonal
development and resolution), and an intensification trajectory that never intensifies (a pause-drop without a
soar).

Diamonds fails to fully exploit and optimize the compositional techniques it adopts. In this

way, it is a failed musical investment. In a context where success, optimization, investment, and
capitalization are ethical and aesthetic ideals, melancholy consists in failure, sub-peak performance,
divestment, and not profiting. Unlike Ulysses, who conquers the damage wrought by the Sirens, and (as I will
explain briefly just below) unlike Ludacris, who, in his Rest of My Life video, capitalizes on this damage,
Rihanna fails to overcome and profit from her own damage qua Siren. The video ends with Rihanna floating
not even swimming or treading water, just floating face-upin the water.[ix]She is unlike Ulysses because
never makes it out of that Bermuda triangle of melancholy, never returns to solid Caribbean and/or North
American ground. She is unlike Ludacris because she does not build up to a crest (i.e., a musical soar), as
Ludas video does; instead, she just floats along with the undulating waves. Shes not living life on the edge;
shes just along for the ride.
This intentional failure reflected in her vocal performance. For example, Macpherson accuses Rihanna of failing to
sufficiently invest in her emotional pain and trauma: frequently, Rihanna seems as if she can barely be arsed to connect to the songs
emotionally, opting instead to blare out ragged, aimless vocal performances. (Just going through the motions / I cant even get the
emotions to come out, she intones on What Now: too bloody right). According to these critics, Rihanna fails to sufficiently invest in the
emotional/affective intensity of her record. In a musical economy that values the work hard/play hard ethos (both Ne-Yo and Wiz
Kalifah have songs based on this premise), Rihanna does neither. Her musical performance is just meh.
The musical performanceboth Rihannas vocal delivery, and the songwritingdoesnt overcome damage in a way that amplifies
listeners affective experience of privilege. She doesnt broadcast the overcoming or the winning that we then receive and rehearse as
our own. As Jessia Hopper puts it in herPitchfork review:
On one hand, its tempting to give Rihanna props for broadcasting her all-too-real shortcomings. Shes quite a distance from the tidy
narrative wed like, the one where shes learned from her pain and is back to doing diva triumph club stomp in the shadow of
Beyonc. Unapologeticrubs our faces in the inconvenient, messy truth of Rihannas life which, even if it were done well, would be
hard to celebrate as a success. But the measurable failure is the albums music. On a track-by-track basis,the songs make for dull
labor, not worth our time and not befitting Rihannas talent.
Rihanna does not turn her damage into the best of all possible success stories (she does capitalize on it, as I will argue later, just not in
the right way, i.e., in a way that amplifies listeners experience of privilege)thats the tidy narrative wed like. Crucially, Hopper
connects Rihannas failure to capitalize on her damage to the musics failure to take flight into a triumphant club stomp. Basically,
Hopper wishes Rihanna had made another club banger like her Calvin Harris collaboration We Found Love. This track is built around
two utterly massive soars, and the lyrics and video are about a hopeless placee.g., abject and disgusting council flats, an abusive
relationshipbecomes a place where we found love. We Found Love starts in the same hopeless place that the lead single
from Unapologetic: the opening line to We Found is Yellow diamonds in the sky, while Diamondss lyrics urge us to shine
brightlike diamonds in the sky. The difference between the two tracks is musical: the former is a veritable club banger with a proper
Calvin-Harris-produced soar, the latter is, well, pretty flat and boring. The music in We Found performs the musical overcomingthat
is absent in Diamonds.
This Pitchfork review suggests that we could forget her politics if only she made a banger. She could evoke all
sorts of awful damageher relationship with Brown, domestic abuse, poverty, racism, etc.as long as she
capitalizes on it in the right wayi.e., as long as she overcomes it. This resilience would put her damage in
service of MRWaSP. Rihannas performance on Unapologeticis read as melancholic and insufficiently resilient
because the investments she does make are not profitable enough, not profitable in the right ways. Rihanna
does not evoke or perform her damageher attachment to blackness and black masculinity, for examplein a
way that supports MRWaSP. The album is read as an investment in Chris Brown, i.e., in stereotypical thug-like
black masculinities, masculinities that cannot be leveraged by MRWaSP.

c. Anti-Social Damage
In MRWaSP, blackness is not so much an otherness machine (as Appiah puts it), as an affective amplifier.
Some styles of blackness are included within white supremacys privileged mainstream, so they dont generate
otherness as efficiently as new signifiers of queerly racialized terrorist identities do. So blacknessmiddleclass, homonationalis still instrumental, but its a different type of instrument. It works hard/plays hard,
amplifying the intensity of whites affective comportments; black culture workers are like sous chefs, making
white affective economies work more efficiently for whites/white supremacy. With their work hard/play hard
and living life on the edge tropes, black artists like Ludacris on Rest of My Life amplify whites affective
experience of winningi.e., of privilege.
Unapologetic amplifies the wrong affects: not winning and resilience, but melancholy. Like resilience
discourse, melancholy intensifies damage as a site of pleasure and identity-construction, but amplifies this
damage-capital beyond an efficient, acceptable opportunity cost. If MRWaSP tried to recycle this noise into
signal, it wouldnt return a high enough profit margin. This sub-optimal profitability is what makesUnapologetics
pleasures and identities anti-social. Rihannas Unapologetic might generate surplus value, but it is never the
right kind; her social/soft capital does not optimize neoliberal hegemony (rather, it under- or over-drives it).
When hegemonic sociality is predicated on damage, Rihanna makes anti-social damage. Anti-social pleasures
and identities do not contribute to the optimization of society, i.e., MRWaSP. They are damaged in old-school
goth ways, in ways that induce loss of fidelity, inefficiency, and waste. Melancholy, then, is my term for antisocial damage, damage that is not (sufficiently) capitalizable, or not capitalizable in the right ways/to
the right ends.
Reviewers criticize Rihannas continued attachments to what she ought to overcomenon-bourgeoise black
masculinities. Critics locate this attachment in the albums implicit and explicit evocations of Chris Brown, who,
as I discussed earlier, is read as a symbol of violent, misogynist, unreconstructed and primitive unruliness.
They also, and perhaps more interestingly, locate this attachment in Rihannas own performance of black
masculinity. They attribute Breezy-style (i.e., unprofitable) black masculine unruliness to Rihanna herself. For
example, Caramancia opens his review with the observation that:
The 13th word of the first verse of the first song on Unapologetic, the seventh album by Rihanna, is a curse,
and she relishes it, hitting the syllables hard, spitting them out sharply as if she hoped they might wound
someone. The song, Phresh Out the Runway, is a chaotically dense spray of boasts over a muscular,
scraping beat. Rihanna sounds indignant and impressed with herself, proclaiming,Walk up in this bitch like I
own the ho[x](emphasis mine).
Leading off with the hard macho brutality of her vocal performance, and the brutish and bruised character of
the music, Caramancias review highlights Rihannas kinging on thug/non-bourgeois black masculinity. She
intensifies her attachment to unprofitably unruly black masculinity by adopting, embodying, and performing it
herself.
Rihannas kinging is most evident in Pour It Up, a gothy trap-y song[xi]in which she adopts a really macho persona
(this could easily be a Drake or Kendrick Lamar track); unlike Minajs Zolanski, this macho alter-ego isnt played for laughs. In her
kinging, Rihanna performs entrepreneurialunruliness: shes not talking about gang warfare, getting shot 9 times,
etc., but about profligate spending and investing in her image as a someone who spends a lot of money on
strippers and partying. The identity she crafts in this video is not that different than the one Luda performs in
ROMLher strippers and booze is not that different than his women, weed, and alcohol. However, something
causes her performance to be read as un-resilient and noisy, and his as resilient and profitable.
I think the different interpretations of Rihannas and Ludas performance of black masculinity lie in the perceived

profitability of their respective investment strategies. In Pour It Up, money is everywhere (all I see is signs/all I
see is dolla signs), but it is for spending, not investing. Like every good neoliberal, she sees everything in
terms of an economic rationalitythe fungiblity of signs. And, like any good neoliberal, she uses M-M
intensification (as opposed to M-C-M commodification) to amplify the value of these signs. She uses dolla
signs to invest in her human capital/soft capital as a performer: she makes it rain in a strip clubthat is, she
throws a wad of cash into the air so it flutters down to the floor like precipitation. This is a performance of a
specific type of non-bourgeois black masculinityone that is supposedly ignorant in his regressive misogyny.
This explicit traffic in women (strippers) doesnt square with bourgeois imperatives to respect women, to
desire accomplished, respectable women who are ladies in the street but freaks in the bed, as Luda has
said. Roberts LA Times review directly addresses this image: The opening line Throw it up, watch it all fall
out seems like an ode to getting sick, in fact, until it becomes clear that Rihanna is singing about money,
strip clubs, doing shots of tequila and making it rain with bills. Roberts perceives this gesture as a waste of
capital, and not as an investment in RiRis own human capitalshes investing in the wrong human capital.
The performance of making it rain is an investment in a black masculine hip-hop identitythis is just not the
human capital good white liberals want to see Rihanna invest in, because its not what they want to invest in.
They dont want misogynist rappers who ogle female strippers, they want Frank Oceantheir liking of him
boosts their homonational credor Drakethey can directly identify with his middle-class anxiety and
sometimes not-so-misogynist lyrics. RiRis performance of black masculinity does generate social capital, just
not the kind that integrates seamlessly into the MRWaSP supply chain. Thug black masculinity is unruly/noisy, and this
unruliness/noisiness is recyclable into signal, but at too high an opportunity cost.RIhannas narrator in Pour It Up
performs a too-noisy, too-unruly, perhaps even queerly entrepreneurial subject, one who invests in the wrong
human capital. Thatswhats sickening.her performance renders the MRWaSP entrepreneurial/resilient
subject nauseous (in the Sartrean sense)not b/c of lack of foundation, as in existentialism, but b/c of lack of (sufficient)
return on investmentwhich is the neoliberal equivalent to lack of foundation.
Unapologetic Rihanna is anti-social because she refuses to cut the color line in MRWaSP terms. She
does not abandon thug black masculinity, and she does not capitalize on her overcoming of her attachments
to specific constructs of black masculinity. Her overcoming of once-romanticized, now pass thug life
stereotypes (i.e., violent, misogynist, working-class masculinities as embodied by the angry and
unruly Chris Brown) would, normally, be an amplifier for mainstream societys overcoming of classic
white supremacy by/into post-racial MRWaSP. If anything, she attempts to capitalize on her continued
attachment to what we otherwise demand she overcome. This capitalizing generates a whole hell of a lot of
noise, and is thus not the most efficient way to extract value from this experience/affective orientation. (It
certainly does generate valuethink of all the back-and-forth on social media: somebody profits from thatits
just not the most efficient way to go about this value-production.)
Rihannas investment strategy is anti-socialshe does not invest in blackness in ways that optimize MRWaSPso her performance of
black masculinity gets read in terms of a particularly unruly, anti-social stereotype. The thug is unruly in MRWaSP because his
socioeconomic class (so, both his finances and his habits/attitudes/valueshis culture in the sense of cultural racism) prevents him
from achieving the highest levels of successi.e., ascension to the peak of privilege in MRWaSP. His damage is not fully recuperable;
hes still too noisy, and thus shes too noisy. Because she doesnt broadcast her overcoming/resilience, Rihanna is a bad girl.
d. Bad-Girl Melancholy

Its difficult to understand why Rihanna expects her fans to hang in this dark space with her (and Chris Brown). The album is
unapologetic but its also airless, nearly hookless, and exudes a deep melancholy. Given these qualities, its hard not to wonder
where else the album might have gone. Would it fare better if the topics were the same, but set to songs as combustible as Dont
Stop the Music? If her pain and shame and cant-quit-you-babe motif was delivered with some humor? If she kept her personal
drama to herself and sang about rolling fat joints on her bodyguards head and did more duetting with the dude from Coldplay?[xii]

Resilience is an index of ones moral personhood: good girls overcome, and bad girls give in, like they
always do (e.g., to temptation). As Neocleous argues, good subjects will survive and thrive in any situation, they
willovercome lifes hurdlesand just bounce back from whatever life throws. Racialized good/bad girl dichotomies are cut
on a resilience/overcoming-vs-melancholy axis. Thus, in MRWaSP, resilience distributes racial privilege: black
women who overcome are granted some of the privileges of whiteness, while women who fail to overcome
are racially darkenedthis racial de- or non-whitening is the direct consequence of sub-optimal human
capitalization. In order to maintain white privilege, you have to keep optimizing your human capital. If you cant
keep up, youll fall behind, ever closer to precarity, which is racially non-white. Good girls are resilient
overcomers, and bad girls are melancholics.
Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift have their own brands of good-girl resilience: Clarkson comes off as a bit more bruised and experienced,
probably because she is older and more seasoned (and, notably, reads somewhat less bourgeois than Swift). Her catalog is filled with
resilience narratives: Stronger quotes that infamous Nietzsche line what doesnt kill you makes you stronger, and her biggest recent
hit, Since U Been Gone, is all about her post-breakup resilience. Swift also trades in post-breakup resilience. Her 2012 hit We Are
Never Ever Getting Back Together is a sarcastic middle-finger to an ex-lover. I Knew You Were Trouble details the narrators process
of rationalizing and working through her breakup pain. Its video closes with the line I dont know if you know who you are till you loose
who you are. In order to be a neoliberal good girl, you have to bounce back from loss. Failing to bounce back is a failure in subjectformation. Non- or failed resilience is pathological, and thus, melancholic.
Classical melancholias pathology is indexed to classically liberal models of subjectivity: the melancholic is one who cant resolve or get
over a loss. Melancholia is a failure to progress toward and attain a goal, such as wholeness, completeness, self-sufficiency.
Neoliberalism normalizes ateleological open-endedness. In a context where normal subjects are flexible (open-ended) and YOLOoriented, melancholia manifests as a failure of resilience. There is still a loss involved, but here loss is figured as diminished
capacity (i.e., inefficiency & incomplete optimization) rather than as lack or absence. So, melancholia is like a loss in fidelity, a toonoisy signal. It is a failure in resilience because some noise goes unrecouped and unrecycled into signal; its inefficient. Rihanna is
perceived as a bad girl because her feedback is too noisy and inefficient. Whatever work or capitalization she
might be doing, it isnt legible as resilience: she bounces back, but in a skewed, misdirected way with a signal
that isnt properly tuned. You can try to capitalize on this goth damage, but doing so may not return a profit that
hegemony recognizes as such. It may just produce sub-par if not diminishing returns. This non-resilient
practice of damage is a failure to recoup loss, and, in a way, a generator of diminished signal. The
damage here is not noise, per se, but insufficient/sub-optimal amplification. It is, in this way, a
neoliberal version of melancholia.
I would argue that feminists should perhaps be a little melancholic. If our personal resilience is ultimately about
MRWaSPs resilience, then perhaps its in our own best interests to kill some of that joy, as Sara Ahmed would
say? Maybe we shouldnt act like weve recouped the noise that MRWaSP introduces into our life until, you
know, weve actually overcome multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy? In that way, melancholia would be a
counterposition to post-racial, post-feminist discourse. When resilience means performing culturally racist
feminisms (this is Alia Al-Sajis term), we should reject its imperative to overcome.We should actually amplify
our noisy complicities with MRWaSP, and not pretend that weve overcome racism & sexism.
Repudiating certain types of men of color as irreparably misogynistone might say, riffing on Spivak, savingbrown-women-from-Chris-Brownis a racist scapegoating of our own continued complicity in MRWaSP. The
self-deception here is that we think weve overcome when Breezy hasnt. Lets not act like weve overcome our
damage until weve actually done so.
This melancholic approach to damage likely comes from a place of conditional privilegethis is about
under-shooting the peak, not sinking below the valleys lowest threshold. For the precariat, resilience is more

like endurance, staying one step ahead of the next disaster; for privileged subjects, resilience is about
stockpiling human capital. The precariat is already equalizing a shitload of noise. Privileged subjects are finely
tuning an already mostly noiseless signal.
So, just to clarify: I am neither qualified to nor interested in judging Robyn Fentys personal life. On that score,
Ive got my own damage to keep me busy. Im not arguing that we should see Rihanna as a noble
victim/savage. Im not trying to argue that she ought to stay pathological so that we white people can
appropriate her pain. Im not romanticizing her suffering. I am trying to develop an account of why critics
pathologize her performance, why it gets read as sickening. I am trying to question the presumption that
Rihanna, at least the Rihanna performed on the most melancholic tracks on Unapologetic,is any more
pathological and fucked up than any of the rest of us white music critics and feminists. The demand
that she perform overcoming/resilience (as a structure of subjectivity specific to neoliberal femininity)
is actually an attempt to obscure MRWaSPs own damage/pathologies.And Im not arguing that
Rihanna/Robyn Fenty stay pathological, that she not work through her damageits just that resilience and
overcoming are culturally-specific models of healthy subjectivity, and it is entirely possible to be mentally and
socially functional but yet deviate from these models of health.

[i] http://www.spin.com/reviews/rihanna-unapologetic-def-jam
[ii] her reunion with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown trumps that. Unapologetic not only confirms that the rumours are true, but is a fuck
you to anyone who dares warn her off the 23-year-old after he beat her up in
2009. http://www.nme.com/reviews/rihanna/13899#GW7uXBBaq4TqeeVv.99
[iii] Say what you like about her judgment, but just as Rihanna never asked to be assaulted by Chris Brown, she also never asked for
millions of Twitter followers determined to opine about her every decision. Unapologetic makes a compelling case for Rihanna knowing
what shes doing.
[iv] http://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/rihanna-unapologetic
[v]Alex Macpherson in Fact: http://www.factmag.com/2012/11/23/rihanna-unapologetic/
[vi] Its not minimalism, because this implies an intense focus on a very small sample (e.g., one pitch, as in Rileys In C); these devices
suggest avenues for development and intensification, but then fail to follow through with them.
[vii] For a clear account of all the songs chords and its melody, see: http://www.onlinepianist.com/songs/piano_tutorials/1720/DiamondsRihanna.php
[viii]In a way this song is structured like Ravels Bolero: its one long crescendo over a rhythmic ostinato. But if this were just about
building up tension and releasing it, why doesnt it end where the vocals climax, on the woah-oh-oah-yeah at 4:06-:08? The
denouement or coda of another bar of shine bright like a diamond diminishes the impact of that climax: we dont rise to a peak and
stay there, but start heading back down. The song leaves us on a downward trajectory, not a plateau or a peak.
[ix] The pan-out is preceded by a close-up of Rihanna opening her eyes, which implies that shes both conscious and alive, and gazing at
the camera. This also gives a sort of intentionality, if not authorship (note scare quotes), to her lack fo resilience: shes not drifting
because shes dead or unconscious, but because shes decided not to struggle, not to swim to shore or shout for help. Shes not
maximizing the opportunities this crisis lends her.
[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/arts/music/rihannas-album-unapologetic-makes-most-of-her-talent.html?_r=0
[xi] According to Caramancia, Pour It Up sounds like a track the ambient-goth outfit Salem might make for a strip club.
[xii] http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17369-unapologetic/