Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital

by Adrienne D. Davis (Editor), Adrienne D. BSE Collective (Editor), Marlon M. Bailey (Contribution by), Lia T. Bascomb (Contribution by), Felice Blake (Contribution by)

Overview

A daring collaboration among scholars, Black Sexual Economies challenges thinking that sees black sexualities as a threat to normative ideas about sexuality, the family, and the nation. The essays highlight alternative and deviant gender and sexual identities, performances, and communities, and spotlights the sexual labor, sexual economy, and sexual agency to black social life. Throughout, the writers reveal the lives, everyday negotiations, and cultural or aesthetic interventions of black gender and sexual minorities while analyzing the systems and beliefs that structure the possibilities that exist for all black sexualities. They also confront the mechanisms of domination and subordination attached to the political and socioeconomic forces, cultural productions, and academic work that interact with the energies at the nexus of sexuality and race. Contributors: Marlon M. Bailey, Lia T. Bascomb, Felice Blake, Darius Bost, Ariane Cruz, Adrienne D. Davis, Pierre Dominguez, David B. Green Jr., Jillian Hernandez, Cheryl D. Hicks, Xavier Livermon, Jeffrey McCune, Mireille Miller-Young, Angelique Nixon, Shana L. Redmond, Matt Richardson, L. H. Stallings, Anya M. Wallace, and Erica Lorraine Williams

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252051494
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	08/30/2019
Series:	New Black Studies Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Adrienne D. Davis is William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and Vice Provost at Washington University in St. Louis. The Black Sexual Economies (BSE) Collective is a working group of scholars that includes: Marlon M. Bailey, Felice Blake, Davis, Xavier Livermon, Jeffrey McCune Jr., Mireille Miller-Young, Matt Richardson, and L. H. Stallings.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Black Sexual Economies: An Introduction The BSE Collective Part I. Sexual Labor and Race Play 1 “Don’t Let Nobody Bother Yo’ Principle”: The Sexual Economy of American Slavery Adrienne D. Davis 2 Black Stud, White Desire: Black Masculinity in Cuckold Pornography and Sex Work Mireille Miller-Y 3 “Hannah Elias Talks Freely”: Interracial Sex and Black Female Subjectivity in Turn-of-the-Century 4 Playin’ Race: Race Play, Black Women, and BDSM Ariane Cruz Part II. Sexual Economies of Sexual Publics 5 No Bodily Rights Worth Protecting: Transnational Circulations of Black Hypersexuality in Brazil E 6 “Will the Real Men Stand Up?”: Regulating Gender and Policing Sexuality through Black Common Sense 7 “Happy at Last”: Carving the White “Closet” Past, Creating an “Out” Future Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. Part III. The Drag of Cultural Dissemblance 8 Gospel Drag: Intimate Labor and the Blues Stage Shana L. Redmond 9 Branded Beautiful: Brand Rihanna Meets Brand Barbados Lia T. Bascomb 10 Framing the Video Vixen: Intraracial Readings of Unruly Desire Felice Blake Part IV. Beyond Black Social Life as Death: The Erotics of Black Lives 11 In the Life: Queering Violence in the Stories of G. Winston James Darius Bost 12 The Dramedy in Queer of Color: Noah’s Arc and the Seriously “Trashy” Pleasure of Critique Pier Do 13 Cheryl Clarke’s Clit Agency, or, An Erotic Reading of Living as a Lesbian David B. Green Jr. Part V. Imagine: Pedagogy, Black Feminist Arts, and Creative Methodologies 14 On Being a Black Sexual Intellectual: Thoughts on Caribbean Sexual Politics and Freedom Angeliqu 15 The Book of Joy: A Creative Archive of Young Queer Black Women’s Pleasures Anya M. Wallace and J 16 The Mist and the Rain: A Trickster Tale L. H. Stallings References Contributors Index Editing

Editorial Reviews

"Black Sexual Economies provides a compelling collection of writing that analyzes the experiences of black gender and sexual minorities and investigates collaborations made by an interdisciplinary team of scholars examining black sexuality in a variety of historical, political, and social contexts." —Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Black Sexual Economies is the first anthology of its kind to mine the deeply rooted vestiges of late capitalism as they relate to black sexuality. Through analyses of slavery, pornography, popular culture, and music, among other topics, each essay in this carefully curated volume enlivens anew our attention to the stakes of theorizing black sexuality—the fact that we can never think about black sexuality without always thinking about the political economic conditions of its making. Indeed, Black Sexual Economies is a welcomed breath of fresh air to the now well-established field of black sexuality studies."—E. Patrick Johnson, editor of No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies

"To represent, to affirm, to understand, and to live black sexualities can be immeasurably difficult. The very foundations of politics, social life—and, as this volume argues, capitalist economies—in the modern world often hinge on pathologizing black people’s sexuality in order to exploit and to destroy black bodies and black lives. Black feminist innovator Adrienne Davis curates here essays that batter down and deftly navigate the thicket of lies that try to render 'black sexuality' unspeakable and unknowable, and point the way forward."—Darieck Scott, author of Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

From the Publisher