“(HO)LY Ontologies: Black Visual Cultural Geographies of the Sexually Illicit": A Reading List By Zalika U. Ibaorimi
Zalika U. Ibaorimi’s teach-in on “(HO)LY Ontology” is a part of Black Women Radicals’ School For Black Feminist Politics.
A teach-in led by Zalika U. Ibaorimi, “(HO)LY Ontologies: Black Visual Cultural Geographies of the Sexually Illicit” engages an examination of the ontology of the Black deviant figure, the “ho.” The “ho” is often rendered excessive/hypervisible/invisible within the context of this figure’s iconography. However, we will use Black queer feminist methods of visual and sonic analysis to excavate the “ho” beyond their conceptualization, by engaging the “ho” on the basis of their being. We will tether their beingness to gestures of shame, desire, and pleasure. As a Black study, we will read materials from video vixens, Black Porn/Sex Work Studies scholars, performance theorists, sex workers, Black literary writers, art historians, sonic theorists, and Black visual culture theorists. Ibaorimi’s teach-in is a part of Black Women Radicals’ School for Black Feminist Politics. You can watch the teach-in here.
Photo of Zalika U. Ibaorimi. Photo courtesy of Zalika U. Ibaorimi.
About the Curator of The Teach-In
Zalika U. Ibaorimi is a multidisciplinary artist and doctoral candidate of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She engages Black material and digital publics as the landscape to trace the human sexual geographies between the relation of the Black femme and spectator. Their relationality is tethered to the logics of shame, desire and pleasure. She uses Black gender and sexuality analytics to engage Visual Culture Studies through the logics of Black Porn/Sex Work Studies. Ibaorimi specializes in haunting, Black queerness, horror, flesh, the human & deviant Blackness. As a scholar, sex worker and performance-based photographer, she uses the experimental approaches of research-creation to engage Black Study. You can follow Zalika on Twitter.
Reading List for “(HO)LY Ontologies: Black Visual Cultural Geographies of the Sexually Illicit”
View Zalika’s reading list below. You can also access the PDF of the reading list by clicking “Reading List.”
