DAYOUNG LEE

In Zora Neale Hurston’s essay on “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” she writes about asymmetry, noting “the presence of rhythm and lack of symmetry,” in, for example, African-American dance. While these dances are difficult for white dancers, Black dancers are “accustomed to the break in going from one part to another” and “adjust[ing]…to the new tempo,” portraying some sort of innate understanding of asymmetry. Asymmetry has been significant in Black American experience through experiences with identity, specifically, the absence of privilege to define oneself instead of having others dictate your identity in part or whole. Every individual deals with a disconnect between how they view themselves and how others view them, but this experience is largely distorted and inflated by racism for people of color in the United States. This despotic asymmetry, or the enforced disconnect between one’s own identity and the one pushed upon them, is corroborated by Glenn Ligon’s untitled etchings, which explicitly explore issues of identity.

Recent theorizations on identity have much to do with fluidity through positionality; identity is defined by how we are positioned by others and how we position ourselves. The somewhat free-flowing nature of these definitions, however simplistically I have rendered them in the interest of space, is challenged by Ligon’s etchings, which turns ideas of positionality and relationality into the despotic asymmetry I have begun to outline. The first etching repeats “I do not always feel colored” over and over until it becomes more and more blurred and unreadable, perhaps representing the lack of permanence in the statement with respect to the ever-changing nature of identity. The growing illegibility also suggests the inability for the viewer to truly comprehend the many facets and implications of the position expressed by the text of the etching.

Ligon’s second etching repeats “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background,” and similarly becomes less and less legible as the words continue. The text of these two etchings demonstrate the despotism and asymmetry involved in shifting positionalities of identity. “I do not always feel colored,” the first proclaims, a sentence that seems incomplete on its own, but at the least claims an identity that is not always “colored.” The second then declares, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” The operative words here are “thrown against,” illustrating the lack of agency on the part of the subject to choose their situation or positioning. Thus, the subject moves through different identity positions unwillingly, becoming “colored” as a result of some force, someone, or something throwing them onto a sharp (which also reads as painful) white background.

Finally, the actual act of etching reflects the trauma of Black identity formation. Black letters are created through their prolonged inundation in harsh, biting acid; their formation comes only through this hardship. The relational aspects of diasporic identity may be touted by some as antihierarchical and rhizomatic—a postmodernist’s dream—but Ligon’s etchings demonstrate the pain and trauma inherent in identities that have been forcibly made fluid.