The Aristocrat of Harlem

Abstract

The resurgence of faux speakeasy bars (such as The Raines Law Room in Chelsea) and speakeasy-era entertainments (such as Cynthia von Buhler's immersive theatre piece, Speakeasy Dollhouse) in New York City reproduces a certain ambience of an imagined historical era in which alcohol consumption and intoxication were doubly marked as taboo and on trend. This article illuminates the historically productive relationship between alcohol, performance, and spatiality. As a case study, I analyze the cultural practice of “slumming” during the Harlem Renaissance, wherein white middle- and upper-class patrons would immerse themselves in historically black neighbourhoods. I argue that white slummers built their experiences around a constructed socio-spatial idea of ‘blackness’, which permitted them to engage in excessive alcohol consumption, intoxicated behaviour, and sexual promiscuity. Combining archival research and contemporary theories on spatiality and consumption, I hope to broaden our understanding of immersion and intoxication as sociologically fraught historical practices that have played significant roles in reinscribing inequality of bodies and spaces in the city.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks go to David Savran and Karen Miller at The Graduate Center, CUNY for reading an early version of this text, and to Tal Nadan and the library staff for their generous assistance in the New York Public Library’s Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts.