Erotic elsewhere: pleasure and fugitive evasion in contemporary Black literature

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Jade Chanel

Contributors dc:contributor

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

• Black Literature
• Sexuality
• Pleasure

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Jade Williams

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

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

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F130180