Theorizing the Erotic in the Cultural Works and Creative Lives
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Interior Spaces, Spiritual Traces: Theorizing the Erotic in the Cultural Works and Creative Lives of Black Women Writers and Artists, 1930-1970 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies by Loron Melinda Benton 2020 ã Copyright by Loron Melinda Benton 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Interior Spaces, Spiritual Traces: Theorizing the Erotic in the Cultural Works and Creative Lives of Black Women Writers and Artists, 1930-1970 by Loron Melinda Benton Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Aisha Finch, Chair This dissertation engages the theoretical and everyday utility of Audre Lorde’s theory of the erotic on a spiritual plane. I follow Lorde’s imaginative expansion of the erotic by developing a notion of spirituality animated by creativity, activism, and desire. I offer spiritual eroticism as an analytic point of inquiry for examining how Black women writers and artists in the mid- twentieth century—namely, poet and novelist Sarah Wright, journalist and author Ann Petry, and songwriter, pianist, and vocalist Aretha Franklin—create epistemologies and narratives that speak to the interior, social, and hopeful modalities for Black women. I assert that spiritual eroticism is but one way to engage the interiority of the self and the sublimity of the divine in order to imagine, reclaim, and experience a life in which one expresses their deepest knowledges to create within themselves and their communities spaces that are desirous, joyous and free. ii The dissertation of Loron Melinda Benton is approved. Sarah Haley Kyungwon Hong Uri Gervase McMillan Caroline Anne Streeter Aisha Finch, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iii DEDICATION In loving memory of my Grandma Ada —a witty, pioneer woman with faith rooted in Jesus— whose soul now enjoys uncloudy days forevermore. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Vita viii Introduction: Defining Spiritual Eroticism 1 A Genealogy of Audre Lorde’s Theory of the Erotic as Interior and Imaginative Chapter One: Maternal Spiritual Eroticism 36 Black Mothering, Longing, and Desire in Sarah Wright’s This Child’s Gonna Live Chapter Two: Spiritual Eroticism Diffused 79 The Creative Privacies and Political Intimacies of Ann Petry’s Interior Life and Works Chapter Three: Spiritual Politics, Erotic Poetics 111 Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark and the Black Women Poets of the Black Arts Movement Conclusion: Where the Spirit Is So Am I, So Are We 164 Bibliography 174 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of people and entities have been critical in the process of writing this dissertation and I want to thank them for their feedback, guidance, resources, and patience with me. To my committee members, Sarah Haley, Grace Hong, Caroline Streeter, Uri McMillan, and my chair Aisha Finch, I thank you all for your support, patience, and willingness to share your expertise with me, as well as your continued involvement during this dissertating process. To Dr. Finch, I appreciate your ability to reach me where I am and encourage me along the way. To everyone in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA who was a part of my matriculation, especially Jenna, Samantha, Richard, and Van, I thank you. Thank you to my cohort Amanda Apgar, Lina Chhun, and Ariel Hernandez who I started this journey with and with whom I will always have fond memories. I want to also thank the archivists and librarians in Emory University’s Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library for sharing their knowledge and resources. I appreciate the quiet space of the Matheson Reading Room and all of the staff in Emory’s Woodruff Library. I am extremely and forever grateful to my family and friends who gave me encouraging words and spaces to unwind and have fun. To Ashanté Reese, thank you for being my friend, an inspiration and asking “how is writing going?” To my friends Sameerah and Marquis, I thank you both for always being there for me. To my extended family, who are too numerous to name but know exactly who they are, thank you all for giving me the breaks and blessings of family gatherings and looking after your children, as well as lots of laughter and love. To my siblings, James and Leah, somewhere along the way in this journey I added to my list of titles in your lives not only “big sister” and “parent explainer,” but “roommate” and “friend” for which I am so grateful. I love you both so very much and I hope for you good things always. And to my parents—Drs. James and Eleanor Benton—thank you for encouraging me to vi focus and finish, especially in the midst of difficulties. Your love, support, advice, care, and prayers for me have made not only this dissertation possible, but the many, many joys in my life possible as well. I have known love my whole life because of the two of you. I love you and I thank God for you Mom and Dad, and everyone mentioned and not mentioned here who exists in my life in ways that lift me up and make me better. I hope my light shines in your life as brightly as you shine in mine. vii CURRICULUM VITAE EDUCATION University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Gender Studies Dissertation: Interior Spaces, Spiritual Traces: Theorizing the Erotic in the Cultural Works and Creative Lives of Black Women Writers and Artists, 1930-1970 Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA M.A., Women’s Studies, 2011 Thesis: The Women Behind the Moves: A Phenomenological Study of Video (Vixens) Models Emory University, Atlanta, GA B.A., Women’s Studies and English, 2007 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Perimeter College, Georgia State University, Department of Cultural and Behavioral Sciences Part-Time Instructor, Spring 2020 Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Kumon Math and Reading Program, Atlanta, GA Instructor, 2016 – 2018 UCLA, Department of Gender Studies Teaching Associate, with Dr. Kathryn Norberg, Spring 2013 Introduction to Gender Studies UCLA, Department of Gender Studies Teaching Associate, with Dr. Juliet Williams, Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 Introduction to Gender Studies Georgia State University, Women’s Studies Institute Instructor, Spring 2010, Summer 2010, Fall 2010, and Spring 2011 Introduction to Women’s Studies Georgia State University, Women’s Studies Institute Teaching Assistant, with Dr. Amira Jarmakani, Spring 2010 Introduction to Women’s Studies Fulton County School System, Woodland Middle School, Atlanta, GA Teacher, Teach For America, 2007 – 2009 6th Grade Reading viii FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, & AWARDS Regents Registration Fee Grant, $1828, UCLA, Fall 2016 – Present Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (GSRM), $6000, UCLA, Summer 2014 Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, $25,000, UCLA, 2011 – 2012, 2013 – 2014 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the Women’s Studies Institute, Georgia State University, 2011 Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Georgia State University, Spring 2010, Summer 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011 Graduate Research Assistantship, Georgia State University, 2009 – 2011 SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS Conferences “Dripping in Molasses: A Black Feminist Exploration of Kara Walker's A Subtlety,” Just Imagine, Imagining Justice, National Women’s Studies Association Conference (NWSA), Atlanta, Georgia, November 2018. “Let My Children Live!" Black Mothering and Desire in Sarah Wright's This Child’s Gonna Live,” Forty Years After Combahee, National Women’s Studies Association Conference (NWSA), Baltimore, Maryland, November 2017. “Spiritual Eroticism as Political Activism: A Use of the Erotic a la Audre Lorde,” Feminist Transgressions, National Women’s Studies Association Conference (NWSA), San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2014. “Colonial Silences, Everyday Resistance: Black Women’s Sexual Subjectivities as Ground for Contesting Nation,” Decolonizing Future Intellectual Legacies & Activist Practices, Critical Ethnic Studies Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago, September 2013. “Shake What Your Mama Gave You: Representations and Performances of the Silent Female Body in Hip Hop Music Videos,” The Message is in the Music: Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music, and More, Women’s History Month Conference, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, March 2010. Lectures Graduate Guest Lecturer, “Whiteness, Gender, and Sexuality,” in Dr. Eric Avila’s course Understanding Whiteness: Racial Hierarchy and Identity Formation in American Culture, Chicano Studies, UCLA, March 2013 ix Introduction Defining Spiritual Eroticism: A Genealogy of Audre Lorde’s Theory of the Erotic as Interior and Imaginative Some three decades ago, Audre Lorde articulated new ways of conceptualizing the erotic by decentering eroticism away from the pornographic and recentering it as both an epistemological and material bridge between the interior motivational energies and external political engagements of women. Lorde theorizes, “When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.”1 This reclamation of the erotic was part of larger feminist conversations between activists on both sides of the Sex Wars during the 1970s and 1980s. Feminist historians and queer theorists such as Jennifer Nash and Sharon Patricia Holland contend that during this time some feminists of color, particularly lesbian feminists of color, became odd bedfellows with mostly white, male and antifeminist religious and political conservative movements that aimed, in part, to contest and repair what were deemed moral failings in society.2 But Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” did not and has not remained localized in an anti-pornography discourse; rather her pivotal essay and theorizing has been used to reclaim the erotic as a source of power and productive possibility for women’s lives. Black feminists who have come after Lorde have 1 Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 55.