Imperial Blues - Glass

It is my first time to read about the Jazz Age from this perspective. In her book that examines the impacts of immigrants from the Caribbean, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific islands had on empire, nation, race, gender and sexuality as intersections, Ngo posits that “the domestic or national organization of race and sex during the Jazz Age, and in New York City as an exemplar of this period’s sensibilities, cannot be understood except in the context of growing ambitions of modern US empire (Ngo 2014: 4). Through her examination of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, Ngo takes her work beyond previous investigations of US empire.

Ngo claims that there is an imperial logic is at play, and “the circulation of [this] imperial logic at home helps to justify, and even make necessary, continuing and new colonial and imperial projects in the West and overseas” (Ngo 2014: 6). Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Ngo’s work, in my opinion, is how she declares Harlem as both “the razor’s edge of illegality and degeneracy” (Ngo 2014: 162) and “as a spot of pleasure and importance (Ibid, 164) ultimately arguing that a transnational turn in studying empire shouldn’t mean only studying American influence abroad. Rather, Ngo’s work investigates how (African) American spaces have been constructed through empire.

I enjoyed Ngo’s perspective of empire and the way that black spaces are essentially a culmination of scientific discourses, novel writing combined with newspaper reporting, vice reports, and policing that draws “uneasy parameters of subjectivity and subjection, resistance and assimilation (Ngo 2014: 6). These spaces do not live in a vacuum, and Ngo’s investigation of the impact of empire on these spaces resonates with me.

I can absolutely see this playing out in my future work with politics of motherhood. The discourses around who achieves “mother” and what is seen as clean, natural, good parenting are impacted by the notions of empire and policing of bodies, sexuality, and race. In fact, in my dissertation work, I would like to examine how mothers use social media as a space to create alternative knowledge and build up what it means to be a natural mother. I want to understand the parameters that make up this space and define natural mother; who is permitted in the space undoubtedly leaves out some parents who have been deemed “other.”  These non-white, usually non-middle to upper class and sometimes even queer mothers are prevented from achieving “good mother” per these discourses an the paremeter of these spaces.

How do public health discourses work as a means of empire? What about public health discourses that are geared specifically toward trying to “fix” and “un-other” non white mothers?