CURVING SPACETIME: ON PERFORMANCE, PLEASURE, AND THE IMAGINARY BLACK GIRLHOOD SEXUAL POLITICS
Open Access
- Author:
- Wallace, Anya Michelle
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 10, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Wanda Knight, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Wanda Knight, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Grace Hampton, Committee Member
Courtney Desiree Morris, Outside Member
Uju Anya, Outside Member
Booker Stephen Carpenter, II, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Black girlhood
Girlhood
Visual Culture
Performance Writing
Art Writing
Popular Culture
Narratology
Translation
Language
black hole theory
Philosophy
Sexuality Studies
Gender Studies
Women's Studies
Art Education
Visual Culture Studies
Undisciplined
Body Politics
Black body
Rage
Freedom Studies
Fantasy
Creative Writing
Youth Culture Studies
Prison Culture Studies
Cultural Studies
Children's Narrative Studies
Fiction Studies
Rememory - Abstract:
- This dissertation is a theoretical study of Black girlhood identity in space and time. While space and time are broad imaginings, this study focuses on Black girlhood identity amidst powerfully constructed layers of space and time, established by whiteness, patriarchy, and respectability. The work investigates how Black girlhood—Black girls performing identity—bend the powerfully constructed layers of space and time constructed to contain them. Performance is most commonly understood as execution of action1. Within this study, Black girlhood and spaces created via Black girlhood identity are envisioned as a black hole where such performance is read through art-making, discussion, the imaginary—the sites of intellectual, physical, and creative production—and play become explosive sites of convergence. Density is one of the things which makes the black hole unique. This study views Black girlhood amidst the backdrop of White supremacy, patriarchy, and respectability as the densest of matter(s). Physicist John Archibald Wheeler’s (1998) summary of Einstein's theory of general relativity coins this extreme point of density wherein “[m]atter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move” (Ford & Wheeler, 2000, p. 235). I reason Black girls’ innate bending is a major element in the black hole make-up as they are not only guided by space and time—the spaces they are moved and bounded to—but simultaneously guide this interest by way of their movements, interactions, aesthetics, performances, and creative production(s). Thus, the study is a reinvestigation of space(s) I created with Black girls, one being, The Vibrator Project. I created The Vibrator Project as an arts-based participatory research site to facilitate a study of pleasure among Black girls ages 14-21. The convergence of space and time I explore takes place as Black girlhood2. My specific interest is in investigating the explosive quality of such a space(s). As any black hole at its farthest limit of density has explosive potential; so, do the interactions of Black girlhood in what feels good, what tastes good, and what sounds good. I understand such reasoning(s) as pleasure; and in this study, seek out how the sexual, physical, and emotional pleasure(s) generated in Black girlhood spaces further steer the convergence of space and time in and beyond Black girlhood spaces, ultimately revealing the fantastic3 potential (i.e. ability(s) by which fanciful interpretations of life experiences are crafted) of Black girlhood on social movement(s), aesthetics, and established systems of order.