Duke University Press The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies)

In The Black Body in Ecstasy, Jennifer C. Nash rewrites black feminism's theory of representation. Her analysis moves beyond black feminism's preoccupation with injury and recovery to consider how racial fictions can create a space of agency and even pleasure for black female subjects. Nash's innovative readings of hardcore pornographic films from the 1970s and 1980s develop a new method of analyzing racialized pornography that focuses on black women's pleasures in blackness: delights in toying with and subverting blackness, moments of racialized excitement, deliberate enactments of hyperbolic blackness, and humorous performances of blackness that poke fun at the fantastical project of race. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Nash creates a new black feminist interpretative practice, one attentive to the messy contradictions—between delight and discomfort, between desire and degradation—at the heart of black pleasures. Review "In The Black Body in Ecstasy, Jennifer C. Nash abandons a long-standing framework in black feminist criticism: that pornography is bad to and for black women. She boldly reads pornography for black women's ecstasy. Through careful analysis of key films from porn's golden era, Nash develops an argument that is innovative, fearless, and, ultimately, affirming of possibilities for black women's bodies, fantasies, and sexual lives." Author: Nicole R. Fleetwood, author of Source: Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness "This is an important book and its readers will know it. The first chapter on black feminist theories of representation brilliantly contextualizes the political stakes of the book's commitment to black women's pleasure. I predict that The Black Body in Ecstasy will be considered the most definitive statement to date on black feminist theory's engagement with visual representation." Author: Robyn Wiegman, author of Source: Object Lessons “ The Black Body in Ecstasy is an excellent example of a ‘loving critique’ of a tense field...Nash’s intentional, clear structuring and synthesis, and her fascinating interventions provide a solid basis for future scholars in this field.” Author: Laura Abbasi-Lemmon Source: Journal of Gender Studies "[E]ssential reading for anyone seeking to understand new work on feminism, critical race studies, pornography, and film history." Author: Svati P. Shah Source: Women's Review of Books "...[Nash's] alternative readings do give readers insight into the tropes within pornography, and into how certain films upset racist and sexist industry practices, as well as upsetting the Black feminist theoretical archive’s theories of representation and resistance in favor of a Black feminist theory of sexual subjectivities of pleasure and ecstasy. Nash has earned her place among a new generation of Black feminist scholars"  Author: Sherri L. Barnes Source: Feminist Collections " The Black Body in Ecstasy poses a fresh set of questions as it forwards a groundbreaking black feminist approach to contending with representations of black women’s ecstatic corporeality." Author: Jennifer DeClue Source: GLQ " The Black Body in Ecstasy makes an important contribution, and is essential reading for anyone interested in how black women are depicted within hard-core visual pornography." Author: Fiona Proudfoot Source: Media International Australia "[T]his work is a significant contribution to feminist porn studies and to the analysis of representations and images of black bodies and black female desire and sexuality. The Black Body in Ecstasy starts a new conversation within feminist porn studies, an original, provocative discussion of the multiple identities and ecstasies that can be located in instances of rupture in pornographic films." Author: Siobahn Stiles Source: Hypatia From the Author Jennifer C. Nash is Assistant Professor of American Studies