Mainstreams and subcultures: The hidden histories of female bodybuilding, Muhammad Ali, skateboarding and black divas

This work examines instances where dominant and subordinate cultural formations have struggled over the understandings and rewards connected to the circulation of various innovative but challenging styles. The dissertation extends cultural studies investigations of subcultural styles as evidence of discursive hegemonic struggle. The work utilizes the idea of a persisting economy of exchange to perform interlocking discursive and economic analyses of historical moments involving dominant appropriation of subcultural difference. Co-optation is an ongoing complex process whereby dominant formations falteringly coordinate discourses of racial and artistic authenticity in order to purify and sublimate what are inevitably manufactured, hybrid and contradictory phenomena.