The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography

In The Black Body in Ecstasy, Jennifer C. Nash rewrites black feminism's theory of representation. Her analysis moves beyond black feminism's preoccupation with injury and recovery to consider how racial fictions can create a space of agency and even pleasure for black female subjects. Nash's innovative readings of hardcore pornographic films from the 1970s and 1980s develop a new method of analyzing racialized pornography that focuses on black women's pleasures in blackness: delights in toying with and subverting blackness, moments of racialized excitement, deliberate enactments of hyperbolic blackness, and humorous performances of blackness that poke fun at the fantastical project of race. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Nash creates a new black feminist interpretative practice, one attentive to the messy contradictions-between delight and discomfort, between desire and degradation-at the heart of black pleasures.

Author: Jennifer C. Nash
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 03/14/2014
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.95h x 6.61w x 0.57d
ISBN13: 9780822356202
ISBN10: 0822356201
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Film | History & Criticism
- Social Science | Gender Studies
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies

About the Author

Jennifer C. Nash is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women's Studies at George Washington University.