Black womenâs bodies are experienced as a moral dilemma due to the markers of the race and sex that render them as demonized other. Such formulations sanction Americaâs social hierarchies, animate violence and neglect of black womenâs flesh and dispossess them of their bodies. Consequently the experience of black female embodiment is fraught with antagonism, feelings of impotence and rejection, fomenting dysfunction between many black people and their embodiment. These complications, in turn, compromise healthy identity construction and limit their capacity for moral agency.
Given the bodyâs critical role in the denigration of black women, this dissertation considers the relationship between embodiment and personhood for those marginalized by race and sex, and how the bodies of black women, specifically, can be used for their own liberation. Using phenomenological theories of Maurice Merleau Ponty and Robert Sokolowski, it focuses on the bodyâs role in identity construction, pleasure as epistemology and moral agency. Drawing generously from Black feminist Audre Lordeâs seminal essay, âUses of the Eroticâ it posits the erotic as a necessary intervention against the violence of corporeally driven hegemonic formulations of blackness and femaleness. Mining the literary tradition of black women, black Christian practices, black social protest and popular culture, it argues that the erotic is a divine resource that fuels moral agency and a key capacity of black flesh in the disruption of hegemony, the repossession of their physical being and the construction of alternative realities, free of the desecrating powers of racism and sexism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03262018-123213 |
| Date | 10 April 2018 |
| Creators | Bryant Prince, Courtney Alma |
| Contributors | Phillis Sheppard, Phillis Sheppard, Emilie Townes, Emilie Townes, Victor Anderson, Victor Anderson, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Stacey Floyd-Thomas |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03262018-123213/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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