sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies
Abstract
This essay wields trans methods to trace the trans cultural production of Black feminist thought, specifically by asking the following question: what is trans about Janelle Monáe’s Black feminist theorizing in “Pynk?” Thinking of Black feminist studies astrans studies allows us to disorient the white, which is to say anti-Black, disposition of trans studies. In this analysis, I describe the trans utopian performance of Black feminist sociality, inhabitation, and fugitivity. Moreover, I delineate the trans critiques of sex/gender essentialism, individualism, the State, and the body embedded in Monáe’s film and suggest the radical potential of a Black feminist theory of interdependence, what Monáe calls the “holes of your heart.” I conclude “Pynk” is a Black transfeminist manifesto rooted in abolitionism and in search of ecologies of emancipation from colonial aspirations to an asocial, “self-possessed” body.
Publication Date
5-31-2019
Recommended Citation
gómez, carlos j.
(2019)
"(W)holes of Your Heart: Trans Utopian Performance in Janelle Monáe’s “Pynk”,"
sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies: Vol. 12, Article 13.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/sprinkle/vol12/iss1/13
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons