Suturing the (W)holes: Erotic Freedom and Reflections on Black Female Sexuality

In: Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, Volume 35, Issue 2, p. 89-108

Abstract

This article reflects on the impact of Evelynn Hammonds's seminal essay "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality" to theorize how suturing might present an apt method for considering the complexities and contradictions of Black female sexuality. This essay takes up Hammonds's charge to develop a "politics of articulation" to reveal how Black and Latinx transwomen in the Emmy-award-winning series Pose (as represented by Angel Evangelista, Elektra Abundance, and Blanca Evangelista) and Black motherhood in P-Valley (as represented by the relationship between Mercedes and her daughter Terricka) expose the embodied complexities and contradictions of Black female sexuality. The author aims to demonstrate how suturing these two seemingly antagonistic ways of understanding Black female sexuality remains key to a politics of articulation because they conjure idiosyncratic visions of erotic freedom not reliant on negation.