ABSTRACT
Alcoff's advocacy of race thus emphasizes "the collective structures of identity formation that are necessary to create a positive sense of self—a self that is capable of being loved". The sharing of affect in this rhapsodic, intersubjective manner permits racial identity to escape from the scandal of bodies flattened out into cardboard cutouts, as public ethnographic objects. The sharing of affect in the rhapsodic, intersubjective manner permits racial identity to escape from the scandal of bodies flattened out into cardboard cutouts, as public ethnographic objects. For Alcoff, rhapsody is the means to avoid the scandal of mummification, whereas for Wimsatt and Beardsley rhapsody was the scandal that they used mummification to avoid. Offering specific examples of this positive form of racial identity, Alcoff cites the rhapsodic project of Paul Gilroy, whose "characterization of black Atlantic identity portrays it as working more through an invocation of a shared past and shared present cultural forms".
