being-in-blackfeminineflesh

Abstract

In the Dirty Southern vernacular medium of the twerk video, performances of eroticized Black femininity by digital performance artist BeTTy BuTT and others knead into traumas of ecological dispossession, sexual vulnerability, and patriarchal violence. As an aesthetic survival strategy forged in the Black sexual economies of the contemporary Dirty South, being-in-blackfeminineflesh occasions a critical reappraisal of the performative labors of contemporary Black feminine figures, how our bodyminds witness them, and how we write about them.