It has been a challenge to have my open-ended investment in what scholar LaMonda Horton Stallings calls “sacredly profane sexuality” taken seriously by family and friends I choose to discuss this project with because this kind of music references sexualities that are conventionally alienated and disparaged. Stallings describes the “sacredly profane sexuality” as that which “...ritualizes and makes sacred what is libidinous and blasphemous in Western humanism so as to unseat and criticize the inherent imperialistic aims within its social mores and sexual morality” (10-11). These rituals effectively interrupt the universalizing impulse of an ideal self, with the indigestible parts of the human experience—because a critique of race or mere inclusion of women into any conversation is not as forward thinking as we are often led to believe. However, I am working away from this project being labelled as exceptional because I do not want to be seduced into making broad claims about blackness for institutional acceptance that looks like an all-white classroom of peers who do not reflect the audience I am trying to reach. In “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics,” Cathy Cohen examines how the “exceptional” label serves as a deterrent from understanding the lessons of radical politics from within black communities. She interrogated a trend in African American Studies that inherently politicized deviance from the margins of black communities instead of first understanding “the struggle of those most marginal to maintain or regain some agency in their lives as they try to secure such human rewards as pleasure, fun, and autonomy” (38). Rather, she wanted black studies to be more invested in marginalized communities that choose defiance using their already “restricted agency available to them to create autonomous space absent the continuous stream of power from outside authorities or normative structure” (40). Exceptionalism privileges intent where people are otherwise trying to, in my case, explore their own desirability and identity while generating community.
NPR Editor and Producer, Sidney Madden, does exactly this work of exceptionalizing performance. Specifically, she describes Peet’s Tiny Desk performance as not just one of her first times performing with a live band in public, but her first time using a different skill-set: that is, her “impeccable timing and lung capacity” as opposed to her usual twerking. Platforms such as NPR seem to be comfortable with participating in this kind of objectification because they have done the scant work of inviting her onto their stage and amplifying a trending movement of people finding joy in themselves and their friends. But because she chooses to write raunchy lyrics does not grant permission to turn a paternalistic gaze to her performance. NPR is lauded as a prime example of journalistic high culture because it exemplifies what news should do in an era of misinformation: “Our journalism is as accurate, fair and complete as possible. Our journalists conduct their work with honesty and respect, and they strive to be both independent and impartial in their efforts. Our methods are transparent and we will be accountable for all we do.” But in this obligation to be impartial is a disregard for how their language results in wayward scrutiny for the people that are subjects of their news.
Nevertheless, Peet exudes in her performance a lack of concern with external criticisms but a strong will and comfort that she shares with her audience, “I'm gonna get real comfortable with y'all, so I'm need y'all to get real comfortable with me.” For Stallings, women’s bodies and sexualities are tools that must be considered beyond the realm of colonial, imperialist, or capitalist projects and as opening up the possibilities of “improving the material realities of everyday living.” She argues for sexuality to be seen as a site of memory for people to reconstruct their lives, in doing so, she draws a distinction between history and memory using Pierre Nora’s insights. “‘Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events’” (151). Memory deals with the imagination and the affective and using this paradigm, she believes, allows people to consider the nonreproductive uses and possibilities of sexual expression. That can look like a digital community where you can convene with folks about similar interests and root yourself into issues that derive from it. It may sound like hearing someone else’s laugh in your own, or look like the awkward ways you try to dance or choose to speak because a way of exploring a different side of yourself is to put yourself in the shoes of someone you admire.
Quashie’s discussion of Celie’s relationship with Shug and Sofia parallels this feeling, “...Celie’s achievement of self is the result of a long series of identifications with and as other women” (22). He explores how Celie transports herself into the arms of Shug, to imagine what Shug would do if she, too, were pinned under her husband. This is foremost a strategy for Celie to survive her abusive relationship with Albert, but the affective dimensions of this strategy results in Celie “...acting like, even becoming, Shug...and, considering that fantasy is a realm of totalized selfness, Celie is also performing a more significant act of self(ish)ness and agency as she puts her arms around the product of her imagination” (22). This model can also be the foundation of finding solidarity with others who may not share most parts of your identity because it also prioritizes similarities in the wake of differences. “In these works subjectivity is a struggle of community, a negotiation of and balance between a subject and the other subjects around her” (16). The works that he is referring to are black feminist narratives about selfhood such as The Color Purple that specifically foreground black women’s friendships and how we find ourselves in each other. The central thesis of his analysis is to explore how subjectivity develops through community. Institutions like NPR are unable to cement themselves in the virtual community Peet has created because their desire to maintain institutional relevance is not reflected in her work but is characterized by participating in the corporatization of her brand.
This is in part what Howard University Professor Gregory Carr was responding to concerning NPR’s promotion of her performance. In November 2019, Carr wrote “Without comment” above an excerpt of Megan’s performance at NPR. Carr had two-fold intentions: to “urge any who care to read some thoughts on steadily increasing mediation of nigger in white sanctioning platform” and to aggregate responses from the corners of Twitter to understand “how socialization and media shape opinion.” Setting aside the similarities of his “without comment” comment to Regina George littering the hallways of North Shore High with slander about her teachers and classmates while, too, pretending to be a victim of the slander, he resurfaced his 2016 article published in Ebony “Did Larry Wilmore Finally Break the N-Word By Using It at the President?” to further clarify his point. This article was inspired by Larry Wilmore referring to Former President Obama as “my nigga” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He made broad stroke arguments about how using the n-word in white spaces like NPR or high-profile dinners is a tool in maintaining black people’s oppression. Sidestepping other arguments about policing sexualities, he makes himself clear that “Nigger will never be defended in my mind or in my speech. I also believe in full equity on that front,” and that in his mind, full equity consists of gaslighting and misogyny.
He is justifiably admonished for inviting unwarranted criticism towards another black woman who is simply having fun and gaining infinite popularity because of her infectious popularity. Carr misses the point of how African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is highly desirable and comes with restrictions on who the dialect is meant for; instead, he recites the historical site of the n-word and its affective dimensions. It is exactly the people who try to rap along with Peet and feel they must come to an abrupt end that were not considered in the making of her work. Carr’s moral argument does not correspond with the lived reality of people who actually hold themselves accountable to the words they use and the spaces they use them in. Instead of taking the cues of scholars like Moya Bailey who sought permission from Janet Mock before researching her #girlslikeus hashtag, Carr, then, invited unnecessary scrutiny to Peet’s artistry, her body, and identity for the sake of classroom discussions and online engagement. In “#transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics,” Bailey discusses the limitations of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) in mitigating harm for marginalized groups that are the subject of someone’s proposed research. Not only did she reach out to Mock about her proposed research, she also asked her about specific questions she would like to be aware of in the course of her research—involving her in the production of her research goals. This is not the sort of grace that Carr nor NPR have given to Peet when putting her up for discussion; ethics posited by the likes of the IRB may be “predicated on benevolence” but the enactment of their respective missions seem to benefit moralist understandings of race and sexuality.
Without an acknowledgement of how the pitfalls of using the language of respectability for benevolent aims can lead to harm, people like Peet who make public their desires or the kind of work they are engaged in will always be at some kind of risk. “Niggas,” the source of Carr’s ire, were not at all the focus, nor was a conversation of racial dynamics because both are incidental to her getting off. Both Jermaine Dupri, Gregory Carr and NPR, highly regarded in their respective fields, make it clear that patriarchy leaves no room for pleasure in cultural and knowledge production. As much as they try to amplify peoples and strategies for inspiring progress, whatever that may mean for black communities, their language fixes women into heretical roles whose bodies and livelihoods are then made answerable to a collective opinion on blackness and womanhood.
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