To Be a Butterfly on the Wall of This Mansion …: In Place of a Response

Abstract

This paper considers how the range of insights developed in the commentary of this special issue resonate with—rather than merely reflect upon—the ideas Cleonie J. White and I develop in our respective contributions.

Notes

¹ In other words, had Cosby developed a more nuanced appreciation for the relationship between power, prestige, and desire that have defined his own life, he might have also been better prepared to confront, rather than dismiss, the range of issues later raised by his sexual history—including its medical and legal ramifications.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Ralph

Michael Ralph, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Michael’s scholarship centers on race, disability, risk, injury, liability, citizenship and sovereignty in Dakar, Senegal, and New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Michael has published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Souls, Social Text, Public Culture, South Atlantic Quarterly, Journal of the History of Sport, and Transforming Anthropology. He is a member of the Souls Editorial Working Group, the Social Text Editorial Collective and the Editorial Boards of Sport in Society and Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Michael is also the Editor of Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists.