Funk the Erotic

Funk, this book exclaims, is a multisensory and multidimensional philosophy used in conjunction with the erotic, eroticism, and black erotica. It is the affect that shapes film, performance, sound, food, technology, drugs, energy, time, and the seeds of revolutionary ideas for black movements. But funk is also an experience to feel, to hear, to touch and taste, and this book uses funk in all its iterations as an innovation in black studies. The book uses funk to highlight the importance of the erotic and eroticism in black cultural and political movements, debunking “the truth of sex” and its histories. Brandishing funk as a theoretical tool, the book argues that Western theories of the erotic fail as universally applicable terms or philosophies, and thus lack utility in discussions of black bodies, subjects, and culture. In considering the Victorian concept of freak in black funk, the book proposes that black artists across all media have fashioned a tradition that embraces the superfreak, sexual guerrilla, sexual magic, mama's porn, black trans narratives, and sex work in a post-human subject position. Their goal: to ensure survival and evolution in a world that exploits black bodies in capitalist endeavors, imperialism, and colonization. Revitalizing and wide-ranging, the book offers a needed examination of black sexual cultures, a discursive evolution of black ideas about eroticism, a critique of work society, a re-examination of love, and an articulation of the body in black movements.