Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
slaves and unofficial slaves. Today, poor black women are as much as before unofficial
slaves…. It ain't goin' away, but I'm gonna fight and try to make a club that preserves
the integrity of black culture, black women, and black men.”
Jackie attaches a sense of moral nobility to this notion of protecting “black blues.”
She declares she will not compromise her quest to establish a vital, pleasurable, and
profitable bluesspaceforherselfandothers.Moralnoblenessbecomes onecentral form
ofcultural-moralcapitalcapturedinherclubactions.“Peoplemayputmeoff,ornotun-
derstandme…butI'mgonnastaywithit[clubactions],”shesaystomethisevening….
I like the money, it's not much, but I also like the sense of duty and purpose … I always
think god has directed me to do this [own and operate Beebe's ].” In this sense, Jackie
too (like many others in the club) revels in an ethos of being a kind of battle-scarred
survivor intent on sustaining the club. As she repeatedly noted to me, she constantly
battles difficult and sometimes tawdry circumstances, but can see her personal growth
and strength. Yet, one more time (see next section), epic struggles of personal strength
are only peripherally directed against the forces that structure her difficult life circum-
stances. Instead, she targets most fervently for removal of the feelings that these forces
create. In conversation with me this evening, she continually pits her heroic struggles
to survive against the afflicting feelings that supposedly must be confronted. Forces and
processesthatstructureherhaunts,obliterated frominterrogation, enableanovertlyless
politicized life.
The Demographic Attachment
Jackie also has remarkably strong feelings for the long-term regulars who come into
Beebe's,aloyaltyrootedinyearsofinformalinteractionswiththeseclubbers.Thisisthe
population that flows into the club every Sunday evening just before Tommy and band
begin, and surges in numbers as the music begins. Immediately upon arrival, they too
become central producers of knowledge in the club's flow of activities. Arrivals, often
eye-catching and audacious, provide greetings, hugs, handshakes, and banter across the
club. Visible displays of bodies and ritualized engagements reverberate across Beebe's
for all to digest. Some serve up long, symbolically rich strolls across the club floor, oth-
ers offer brief but semiotically poignant cuts through club space. Less colorful walkers
rely on other body elements—garb, facial expressions, subtle body movements, to do
their communicating. In all cases, modes of social conduct, faces, torsos, hands, arms,
and styles of dress are mobilized, meaning-rich signifiers.
Jackie knows that these club regulars so conduct themselves amid constructing
Beebe's in a dominant way: as an escape from the dull trace of an entrenched, unshak-
able trauma. As she told me in different terms, club interiority and exteriority are in-
tricately linked in their lives, one seamlessly structures the other. At the core of this, a
