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theses

Traditionally, the history of sex-positive feminism has been traced back to white feminists of the late 1970s and 80s such as Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, Ellen Willis, and Gayle Rubin. The discourse on black women that does exist often locates sex-positive expression in the 1990s and the decades after. Sex-Positive Black Feminism: A Literary Tradition explores the long history of sex-positive black feminism through the work of three under explored black feminist writers during the period of 1968-1988—Red Jordan Arobateau, SDiane Bogus, and Ann Allen Shockley. I argue that the work produced by each of these writers has not fit neatly into the black feminist theoretical archive or literary tradition and challenges notions of black literary respectability. To this end, I propose a reading practice that emphasizes effort which, I argue, makes sexual possibility more legible in black feminist literature.

This dissertation also seeks to make a critical intervention in the history of pro-sex feminism in the 1970s and 80s and, to a lesser extent, black feminist engagement with black power ideology. While black women did not have a strong organized presence in the pro-sex (also referred to as sex-positive) movement, I argue that we can locate black women’s engagement with the movement in less organized activities and forms of expression such as fiction and poetry. Although there have been critical studies on black female sexual agency and subjectivity in the areas of music, popular culture, and pornography, few have been done on literature. While this project builds on a growing body of scholarship on black women’s sexuality, it seeks to expand the types of sources we turn to when we think about black women and sex.

Ultimately, as recovery project this dissertation seeks to amplify a virtually unknown body of literature written by black feminists and also affirm the communities with which it resonated. Through this project, I seek to reframe the ways in which we read black feminist literature and think about black women’s pleasure historically.

http://dissertations.umi.com/gsn.newark.rutgers:10091

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-g891-nh53

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