Description
Book SynopsisIn
Black, Quare, and Then to Where jennifer susanne leath explores the relationship between Afrodiasporic theories of justice and Black sexual ethics through a womanist engagement with Maât the ancient Egyptian deity of justice and truth. Maât took into account the historical and cultural context of each human’s life, thus encompassing nuances of politics, race, gender, and sexuality. Arguing that Maât should serve as a foundation for reconfiguring Black sexual ethics, leath applies ancient Egyptian moral codes to quare ethics of the erotic, expanding what relationships and democratic practices might look like from a contemporary Maâtian perspective. She also draws on Pan-Africanism and examines the work of Alice Walker, E. Patrick Johnson, Cheikh Anta Diop, Sylvia Wynter, Sun Ra, and others. She shows that together these thinkers and traditions inform and expand the possibilities of Maâtian justice with respect to Black sexual experiences. As
Trade Review“Shaped by a quare-womanist-vindicationist lens, jennifer susanne leath gives us a vision of justice—both old and new—centered in a deep, complex, and genre-shattering Black sexual ethics that is seething with justices that affirm our being and personhood. This exciting must-read offers us a new and more inclusive vision of a future for all.” -- Emilie M. Townes, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter University Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society and Gender and Sexuality Studies, Vanderbilt University
“Carving out a new pathway for grappling with the Du Boisian Negro problem and the perennial crisis of American democracy,
Black, Quare, and Then to Where offers a creative, compelling, and stunning exploration into how Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism lay the epistemic groundwork for building a new Black sexual ethics. I don’t know of any other womanists, feminists, or ethicists since Black Power who frame justice as broadly as jennifer susanne leath does in this powerful book.” -- Terrence L. Johnson, author of * We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Introducing Maât 1
Part I. quare-womanist-vidicationist movement
1. A Prolegomenon to Justice Hermeneutics and Black Sexual Ethics 17
2. Naming (and Transforming) Justice: (Re)Imagining Black Sexual Ethics 35
Part II. justices
3. Flying Justice: Sun Ra’s Sexuality and Other Afrofutures 71
4. Heterexpectations: Jumping the Broom, Marriage, Democracy, and Entanglement Theory 101
5. Dancing Justice: Just Black HomoSexualities 137
6. Ancient Mixologies: Joel Augustus Rogers and Puzzling Interracial Intimacies 167
7. Black Web: Disrupting Transnational Pornographies for Post(trans)national Humanalities 205
Conclusion. Re-covering Maât 245
Notes 255
Bibliography 293
Index 313
