Black Feminist Theory on the Question of Racialized Pornography

Jennifer C. Nash engages in dialogue with black feminist theory revolving around pornography in her book The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography. More specifically, Nash joins into the discussion with these black feminist groups that have argued against racialized pornography since pornography is often a center of exploitation of black female bodies. However, Nash argues that the visual space is a site for women to claim this space. The author addresses the injury that has been done to black women and their bodies in respect to the historical perspective. The writer brings in the past through the example of Saartjie Baartman, a Kohikhoi woman who was an object of caged display at exhibitions in London and Paris in the 19th Century. This original depiction of black women was done to marginalize this group of people as the ultimate “other.” However, Nash asserts that recovery work can be done by taking the visual field as a space where historical racial-sexual traumas are both inflicted and where they can be undone through exposure by black women claiming their own sexuality. Unfortunately, this precedent has led to black women being fetishisized into oppressed roles based on racial inequality that are largely reminiscent of slave culture and the exposed display of women against their will, but black women are able to claim this visual space as their own for the sake of her own pleasure and autonomy. The author teaches her reader about reading and understanding racialized sex on screen, but also highlights the pleasure that black women experience in this field. The Golden Age of pornography during the 1970s was a time in which African Americans were becoming a target audience for pornographers due to the rise in popularity of Blaxploitation films. Nash pushes the boundaries of racialized pornography by bringing attention to race humor and its role in pornography and on the viewer. The writer speculates on the actual distinction, or lack thereof, between black female bodies versus other female bodies. Nash justifies her stance on visual space as a site of repossession for black women to heal and extends this platform into a space of pleasure and ecstasy incongruent to the performance of race. Although The Black Body in Ecstasy was a provocative text, I am critical of some components of Nash’s argument. Throughout her book, Nash fails to include how the audience of black women respond to pornography. I pose the question, what are the statistics of black women actually watching racialized pornograpy? Furthermore, I am weary of perpetuating and condoning sexual violence in pornography being translated into pleasure and consent in the name of performing race. Moreover, how is one to recover from this trauma that is played off in these films in the real world?