Dressing Masculinity Among Black Men in Paris Since the Mid-1970s.

Abstract

This dissertation argues that clothing shapes black men’s gender and racial identifications and their relation to notions of nationhood and physical space in Paris. I explore black men’s deliberate cultivation of clothing styles to assert their masculinity, meaning social authority, through readings of literature, cultural events, and images featuring clothing, thereby engaging literary and cultural studies, as well as postcolonial theory, ethnography, and history. My conclusions about black men’s use of clothing for identity expression contribute to theoretical discussions of the intersectionality of race and gender performance in gender and masculinity studies and in African and African diaspora studies and offer additional perspectives on race and gender within fashion studies. Moreover, by forming a discussion of blackness and masculinity not only around skin but also clothing, I introduce race emphatically into the critical perspective of French studies. After presenting a theoretical framing of how clothing layered on skin is also read as skin within the colonial gaze (Frantz Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs, Ousmane Sembène’s Le docker noir, Le rire’s “Chochotte prend son chocolat dans son lit,” Simon Njami’s African gigolo) this dissertation focuses on three key sites of black masculinity expression through clothing: the French national football team, hip-hop culture, and Congolese Sape community. An analysis of deliberations over black footballers’ expression of muscular masculinity by way of the maillot bleu in two football scandals (l’affaire Mediapart and l’affaire Le Pen) reveals the linkage between black men’s clothing and notions of race, gender, and Frenchness. An examination of hip-hop enthusiasts’ hypermasculine clothing styles (Lauren Ekué’s Icône urbaine and Insa Sané’s Du plomb dans le crâne) illustrates how clothing reshapes understandings of black and banlieues culture and space, and the significance of both to Parisian culture. Lastly, an investigation of Congolese sapeurs’ motivations for sporting the Sape “Look” (Alain Mabanckou’s Black bazar and Frédéric Ciriez’s Mélo) challenges assumptions of audience for black men’s gender expression through clothing. Bringing these analyses together, I identify clothing as a critical site for thinking through intersectionality and present black men’s clothing as evidence of African culture’s influence on French culture.