Erotic elsewhere: pleasure and fugitive evasion in contemporary Black literature

Williams, Jade Chanel

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130180 Copy

Description

Title

Erotic elsewhere: pleasure and fugitive evasion in contemporary Black literature

Author(s)

Williams, Jade Chanel

Issue Date

2025-07-17

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Jenkins, Candice M.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Jenkins, Candice M

Committee Member(s)

• Freeburg, Christopher C
• Somerville, Siobhan B
• Smalls, Krystal A.

Department of Study

English

Discipline

English

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Black Literature
• Sexuality
• Pleasure

Language

eng

Abstract

This dissertation explores the entanglements of Black sexuality, pleasure, and embodiment under conditions of anti-Black violence, social death, and systemic unfreedom. Focusing on contemporary literature by and about Black femme and queer subjects, it theorizes what I term “pleasure pockets”—ephemeral, somatic eruptions of ecstasy that briefly rupture the dominant order of violence, fungibility, and social negation. Drawing from the intersecting frameworks of Afropessimism, Black Feminist Thought, and Black Queer Studies, this project interrogates the possibilities and limitations of embodied pleasure as a site of disruptive feeling and temporal transcendence. Attending to literary texts as theoretical interventions in their own right, this dissertation reads across genre and generation—from more canonical texts like Corregidora and Jazz to contemporary works such as Luster, Magical Negro, The Prophets, An Unkindness of Ghosts, Nightcrawling, and Slave Play. Across these texts, I argue sexual pleasure and intimacy emerge not as redemptive solutions or liberal counter-narratives to anti-Blackness, but as messy, affectively rich disruptions that reside within and exceed the logics of domination. These moments of pleasure, often unmoored from political legibility or utility, constitute brief yet powerful alternatives to the “sacred timeline” of normative violence. Through close literary analysis and theoretical engagement, this study foregrounds the interior worlds and felt experiences of Black femme and queer subjects who, despite being structurally disavowed, claim moments of ecstasy and fleshly knowing as a mode of world-making. Ultimately, this dissertation contends that the radical potential of Black sexual pleasure lies not in its oppositional stance to violence, but in its capacity to momentarily disorganize time, coherence, and control through embodied sensation.

Graduation Semester

2025-08

Type of Resource

Text

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130180

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 Jade Williams

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