Flesh

In this episode of Feminist Keywords, host Amber Musser interviews Tiffany King, author of the entry 'Flesh' in the book Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. They discuss the intersection of Black and Indigenous feminisms, the significance of the term 'flesh', and its resonance in the current political moment. They also explore the connection between flesh and cultural texts, as well as the different levels at which flesh can be understood. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding and valuing the experiences of marginalized communities.

Tiffany Lethabo King holds the Barbara and John Glynn Research Professorship in Democracy and Equity and is associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (2020).

Amber Jamilla Musser is professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (2024). 

More Reading: 

• Awkward-Rich, Cameron The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022).
• Harjo, Joy. Remember. Strawberry Press, 1981.
• Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU Press, 2021. (editors: Aren Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Amber Musser, Karma Chavez, Mishuana Goeman and Kyla Wazana Tompkins). 2021
• keywords.nyupress.org
• Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Kitchen Table Press, 1983.
• Morrison, Toni. "Beloved. 1987." New York: Plume 252 (1988).
  Snorton, C. Riley. Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2017.
• Spillers, Hortense J. "Mama's baby, papa's maybe: An American grammar book." diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65-81.