This essay analyses skin bleaching among middle-class Tanzanian women as performative practice. It draws on empirical material from interviews with middle-class Tanzanian women as well as from advertisements in Dar es Salaam. Skin bleaching is situated at a ‘site of ambivalence’ (Butler), revolving around ‘light beauty’ as postcolonial regulatory ideal. Thus on the one hand, skin bleaching is analyzed as a practice of ‘passing for light(-skinned), embodying urban ‘modern’ forms of subjectivation. On the other hand, the decolonizing potential of skin bleaching becomes apparent as the interviewed women’s forms of embodiment renegotiate postcolonial Blackness putting forward notions of ‘browning’ (Tate). However, ‘light beauty’ then also appears as norm, according to which forms of embodiment can only ‘fail’. In this regard, skin bleaching challenges essentialized notions of Blackness, embodied in the color of one’s skin, while it also illustrates the performativity of racialized embodiment and its intersections with other structural categories.
AlkemeyerTVillaP-I (2010) Somatischer Eigensinn? Kritische Anmerkungen zu Diskurs- und Gouvernementalitätsforschung aus subjektivationstheoretischer und praxeologischer Perspektive. In: AngermüllerJVan DykS (eds) Diskursanalyse meets Gouvernmentalitätsforschung. Perspektiven auf das Verhältnis von Subjekt, Sprache, Macht und Wissen, Frankfurt/M: Campus, pp. 315–335.
2.
ArndtSEggersMMKilombaGet al. (2005) Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland, Münster: Unrast.
3.
AustinJL (1972) Zur Theorie der Sprechakte, Stuttgart: Reclam.
4.
BhabhaHK (1994) The Location of Culture, New York, NY: Routledge.
5.
BordoS (1999) Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body. In: ShildrickMPriceJ (eds) Feminist Theory and The Body. A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 246–257.
6.
BublitzHBührmannADHankeCet al. (1999) The Proliferation of the Discourses. Perspectives of the Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
7.
BührmannADSchneiderW (2008) Vom Diskurs zum Dispositiv. Eine Einführung in die Dispositivanalyse, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
8.
ButlerJ (1990) Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, NY: Routledge.
9.
ButlerJ (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘sex’, New York, NY: Routledge.
10.
ButlerJ (1997) The Psychic Life of Power, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
11.
ButlerJ (2004) Undoing Gender, New York, NY: Routledge.
12.
BurtonE (2013) ‘…what tribe should we call him?’ The Indian Diaspora, the State and the Nation in Tanzania since ca. 1850. Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien25(13): 1–28.
13.
Castro VarelaMDhawanN (2005) Of Mimicry and (Wo)man: Desiring Whiteness in postcolonialism. In: ArndtSEggersMMGradaKet al. (eds) Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland, Münster: Unrast, pp. 318–337.
14.
Dave-OdigieCP (2010) Albino killings in Tanzania: Implications for security. Peace Studies Journal3(1): 68–75.
15.
DavisK (1995) Reshaping the Female Body. The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery, New York, NY: Routledge.
16.
DavisK (2003) Surgical passing: Or why Michael Jackson’s nose makes’ us’ uneasy. Feminist Theory4(1): 74–92.
17.
DerridaJ (1988) Signatur Ereignis Kontext. In: EngelmannP (eds) Randgänge der Philosophie / Jaques Derrida, Wien: Passagen Verlag, pp. 291–362.
18.
FanonF (1967) Black Skin, White Masks, New York, NY: Grove Press.
19.
FoucaultM (1988) Technologies of the self. In: MartinLHGutmanPH (eds) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, Cambridge, MA: University of Massachussetts Press, pp. 16–49.
20.
FoucaultM (1993) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books.
21.
Foucault M (2005) Analytik der Macht. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
22.
Fritsch K (2011) Enlightening Tanzania. An analysis of power relations using case studies of Tanzanian women bleaching their skin. Diploma Thesis, University of Vienna, Austria.
23.
Habermann F (2005) Economic man – superstar: identities, hegemonies and economic theory. In: International association for feminist economics conference, Oxford, UK, August 2005, pp.1–27.
24.
HackerH (2005) Nicht Weiß Weiß Nicht: Überschneidungen zwischen Critical Whiteness Studies und feministischer Theorie. L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft16(2): 13–27.
25.
HopfC (2003) Qualitative Interviews – ein Überblick. In: FlickUKardoffESteinkeI (eds) Qualitative Forschung. Ein Handbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohl Taschenbuch Verlag, pp. 349–360.
26.
HunterML (2011) Buying racial capital: Skin-bleaching and cosmetic surgery in a globalized world. The Journal of Pan African Studies4(4): 142–164.
27.
KpanakeLMariaTMulletEet al. (2009) Skin bleaching among Togolese: A preliminary inventory of motives. Journal of Black Psychology36(3): 350–368.
28.
LewisKMGaskaKRobkinNet al. (2011) Investigating motivations for women's skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly35(1): 29–37.
29.
LindseyTB (2011) Black no more: Skin bleaching and the emergence of New Negro womanhood beauty culture. Journal of Pan African Studies (JPAS)4(4): 97–116.
30.
McClintockA (1995) Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, New York, NY: Routledge.
31.
MireA (2001) Skin bleaching: Poison, Beauty, Power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research28(3/4): 13–38. Available at: http://search.proquest.com/docview/194908202?accountid=14682, no page numbers (accessed 17 September 2014).
32.
NchimbiRJ (2005) Women‘s beauty in the history of Tanzania, PhD Thesis, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
33.
PierreJ (2008) ‘I like your color!’ Skin bleaching and geographies of race in urban Ghana. Feminist Review90(1): 9–29.
34.
SchichoW (2004) Tanzania. In: Handbuch Afrika – Band. 3: Nordafrika, NO-, Ostafrika und östliches Zentralafrika, Frankfurt/Main, Wien: Brandes&Apsel, Südwind, pp. 311–337.
35.
ShivjiGI (2006) From nationalism to neo-liberalism. Tanzania Reader—IHP7: 55–66.
36.
SpivakGC (1988) Can the subaltern speak? In: NelsonGGrossbergL (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271–313.
37.
TateSA (2005) Black Skins, Black Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism, Performativity, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
TateSA (2010) Not all the women want to be White: Decolonizing beauty studies. In: GutiérrezREBoatcaMCostaS (eds) Decolonizing European Sociology Transdisciplinary Approaches, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Company, pp. 195–201.
40.
ThomasML (2009) Skin lighteners in South Africa. Transnational entanglements and technologies of the self. In: EvelynNG (ed) Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, pp.188–283.
41.
YoderTL (2006) ‘Is use of cosmetics anti-socialist?’: Gendered consumption and the fashioning of urban womanhood in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975–1990, MA Thesis, University of Florida, USA.
