On the weekend of September 18th through the 21st, the College
of Charleston hosted a conference titled Unleashing
the Black Erotic: Gender & Sexuality, Passion, Power & Praxis.
The conference featured a variety of presenters from colleges all across the
nation.
This conference was the first of its kind to me where I saw
and heard academia engage in discussion and research about gender and sexuality
of black people.
The first panel was titled Visionary Poetics: Imag(in)ing
the Black Erotic. This
panel gave us a working definition of the term eroticism as Charlene
Regester of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill defined Eroticism
as hyper sexualized image of women in relation to their body. This first panel
gave a historical definition of the way society began to view black sexuality.
From Jean Toomer's "Cane" to Dorothy Dandridge films and the
poetry of Essex Hemphill, black sexuality began with a negative
connotation.
Joan Morgan's Keynote
address set the tone for the rest of the conference with her lecture
on The Pleasure Principle:
The search for politics of Pleasure in Black Feminist Thought. She begins with the thought
that there is an
absence of language that speaks across boards and that is "If you don't
speak for yourself then other people speak for you". Not telling our own
stories results in a misguided view of the image of black women and we thus
become victims of other people's image of us, particularly those who are
outside of our communities. The solution then for black women is to identify our own desire
and eroticism and tell our stories of pleasure without the trauma and violence
that is often accompanied by it, much like the women in Tyler Perry films. The
final thought is that black women had to and continue
to experience some form of pleasure in order to simply survive.
Whatever is someone's pleasure that brings them happiness or joy then who are
we to judge, especially when we as often as we
can engage in our forms of pleasure.
Day two of the conference focused on the ways
Black women engage in forms of pleasure and display their sexuality.
Conseula Frances of College of Charleston, describes in her paper African American Romance Fiction
and the Pleasures of Vulnerability reasons black women should read
romance literature. In many of the popular stories about black women embracing
their sexuality, they are either seen as prostitutes and sluts or face some
sort of repercussion for enjoying the pleasure of sex. The difference
of romance novels is that the main goal of a Romance novel is to provide
pleasure to women. These novels allow women to be their most vulnerable selves
and enjoy sex with a tall dark and handsome hero and often times, risks his
life to pleasure the woman. As cheesy as these stories might sound,
they however provide a reverse to the degradation of Tyler Perry
films, which seek to curse Black women for enjoying pleasure.
The final panel on Day two explored the roles of Women and
sex in Hip Hop. SaraEllen Strongman of University of Pennsylvania discusses in
her paper, Erotic
Ambiguity: Janelle Monae's Gender Performance as Liberatory Politics, the way Soul singer Janelle
Monae is able to define her own sexuality. By her dress, music and behavior in
interviews, Janelle Monae is able to preserve her erotic power and protect
herself from those who might try to destroy her image. Monae has a new age
and psychedelic soul sound that is
quite different from the rest of her R&B contemporaries, not to
mention her self-defined black and white uniform. She is almost always seen in
a black and white suit ensemble and never wears anything too low or too short.
Monae, quoted in an interview that her music is her work and just like her
parents who everyday went to work and wore uniforms, she does the same. Janelle
Monae is then able to control the image of her sexuality and keep everyone
guessing by choosing not to play into the prescribed images of beauty and
sexuality, a lesson for us all.
The conference was overall
highly engaging and enlightening and I plan to personally to more
writing that brings me pleasure, read some romance novels
and reevaluate my personal wardrobe.
