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- Title
"Hurt You into Tenderness Finally": Erotic Masochism and Black Female Subjectivity in Gayl Jones's Corregidora.
- Authors
Ziering, Anna
- Abstract
This article identifies erotic masochism as a tool of pleasure and healing in Gayl Jones's Corregidora (1975), a novel that interrogates the boundaries of trauma and desire. Using sociological work on BDSM and literary scholarship on the blues, it theorizes erotic masochism and offers the first reading of the novel as a coming-out narrative. This first in-depth reading of Ursa as an erotic masochist allows for the recognition of alternative modes of subjectivity and a reconsideration of nontraditional sexualities. Following recent queer-of-color scholarship on masochism and disavowal in African American literature, it also allows for a retheorization of pain as a potential source of pleasure, power, and fulfillment.
- Subjects
CORREGIDORA (Book : Jones); JONES, Gayl, 1949-; SUBJECTIVITY in literature; MASOCHISM in literature; EROTICISM in literature; AFRICAN American women in literature; HUMAN sexuality in literature
- Publication
MELUS, 2019, Vol 44, Issue 1, p87
- ISSN
0163-755X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/melus/mly065