Saturday, August 04, 2007

Theresa Duncan's Mother on the Black Panthers and the Buried Idiom of Slavery and Discrimination

By Alex Constantine

It occurs to one to ask: Was there a reason the FBI would be interested in Theresa Duncan's mother, who was receiving hang-up calls at the time her daughter died" I was unable to download the entire dissertation on the Black Panthers written by Mary Duncan, but this is an abstract.

Mary Duncan examines the language of Black Liberation - a struggle that has seen the FBI and other sectors of the intelligence underground MURDERING every legitimate and uncompromised leader who comes along - and white discrimination - to find that the master-slave relationship is still embedded in American culture:

http://en.scientificcommons.org/9011715
The language of liberation: Emory Douglas and the art of the Black Panther Party (2004)

Duncan, Mary

Abstract

There is a myth in America of a homogeneous citizenry with shared ideals and a common understanding of the dominant white political language. In fact there is a multiplicity of voices and historical narratives among American subgroups. The field of semiotics has provided a model to better understand how political and cultural messages are communicated through the various mediums of popular culture. In this essay I will examine the visual language of symbols and images that go essentially unrecognized and unexamined in political research, a language that affects everyday perceptions of political reality. It is within the context of the use of symbols and images in meaning production that I will explore the incommensurability in political understanding between the dominant white idiom and the black language of liberation that is based in a common history and the experience of slavery and discrimination.

Publication details

Download http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/dissertations/AAI3151779
Publisher Digital Commons@Wayne State University
Repository Digital Commons@Wayne State University (United States)
Keywords AMERICAN STUDIES (0323), POLITICAL SCIENCE, GENERAL (0615)
Type text