The body as a medium in the medium

<sd:p>This paper explores how socio-political discourses are constructed and developed transmedially in Bernardine Evaristo’s authorship, using the discourse of Black hair politics (Craig 2006; Davis 1994; Hooks 1989, 1995, 2015; Robinson 2011) as an example. Special attention will be paid on the ways in which the body can function as a medium in the development of these discourses. Firstly, it will be explored how the discourse is constructed through the body in the novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) and, secondly, how the same discourse is continued and developed transmedially in other forms of media – in this case, in the Sunday Times UK special issue “BEAM” (2020) edited by Evaristo. To that end, both, Girl, Woman, Other and “BEAM”, will be examined through the lens of Evaristo’s method of ‘showing and informing’– a combination of illustration/portrayal and historical, socio-political contextualization – to build a discourse throughout the explored media units. In the course of exploring the processes in the construction of Evaristo’s transmedial discourses, the different functions that the body assumes in constructing and transmedially developing Evaristo’s Black hair discourse, will be identified through the lens of phenomenology/feminist embodiment (Ahmed 2007; Fanon 1952; Lehtinen 2014) as well as Situated Knowledges (Haraway 1988) and Black feminist standpoint theory (Hill Collins 2000, 2002, 2010). Three identified versions of ‘the body’ will eventually be explored in the context of transmediality and Evaristo’s authorship: the physical body, the body of the community, and the authorial body. Through these three versions of body in their interplay across various forms of media as well as in the course of Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’, the embodied, situated, frequently contradictory, perspectives on Black hair politics are revealed, thus presenting the discourse in its complexity and Evaristo’s authorial figure as central aspect in the development of these discourses.</sd:p>