Imperial Blues- Kim The

         In Imperial Blues, Ngô studies empire and imperialism through examining jazz in examining policing of racialized and gendered bodies. Her work takes place in jazz nightclubs during the 1920s and 1930s, a time when interracial interactions were regarded as dangerous and were policed. Ngô utilizes methodologies that include unfixing boundaries between fields and areas of study, disciplinary indiscretion (bringing together interests across fields to think about how colonization and imperialism help form race, sex, and gender), examining imperial logic (examining power structures that give rise to racial and national identity), looking at multiple meanings, and looking at contradiction.

In chapter 1, Ngô studies jazz contact zones in order to argue how ideas of nation and boundaries are racialized, sexualized, and policed within the US. Ngô describes how police entered the jazz nightclubs and made them change the music and dancing from jazz to waltz as a way of policing sexuality. This chapter also describes how the boundaries were policed based on sexuality and race when men of color were painted as dangerous, threatening and hypersexual, and were using their money to draw the attention of white women. They were also painted in a threatening light in that it was told that men of color would try to seduce helpless white women as their victims.

I think that Ngô’s methodologies of disciplinary indiscretion and examining imperial logic would be very interesting approach to take in my work with disability communities, many of whom occupy many other intersections including race, class, sexuality, and gender. For example, I think that it is interesting to think about colonization relates to disabled communities, which can occur through processes such as institutionalization. It is also reminds me of what Tuhiwai Smith discussed in Decolonizing Methodologies, related to how colonization processes take place in research. When we do community-based participatory research, we are constantly trying to be aware of how power operates in our practices. One of the conversations that I’ve found interesting related to decolonization is how many of our participants utilize research studies as a way of earning extra money, due to the Medicaid system, which often locks people with disabilities into poverty. The conversation was related to employment of people with disabilities and whether our work was making change related to this issue or whether we were “just breeding professional research participants” which is its own form of colonization and empire. Additionally I get concerned when we have them fill out demographics forms where they need to check boxes based on their sex, gender, and race. When people become accustomed to these systems, I think that it perpetuates racialization, sexualization, and gendering of oppressed communities. Perhaps, Ngô’s work and methodologies can serve as a good intervention point to critique colonization and empire practices that occur during the research process.

Discussion Questions

1. How is the disciplinary indiscretion methodology different than doing interdisciplinary work? How does Ngo do this? In what ways could this be taken farther in her book?

2. How would the disciplinary indiscretion methodology work within fields that do not as readily examine power or fields that are not as social justice- oriented?