# LaMonda Horton Stallings ( American, contemporary ) ## Description American literary and cultural theorist working in Black feminist and queer studies; author of *Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures* (2015), which theorizes "funk" as a multisensory, multidimensional philosophy running through Black film, performance, sound, and technology. ## Key Tags #black-study #feminist #theorist #queer-theory ## Essential Works - *Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures*. The New Black Studies Series. University of Illinois Press, 2015. - theorizes funk as an erotic, transaesthetic philosophy spanning film, performance, sound, and technology in Black culture ## Details Argues that "funk" — as affect, aesthetic, and erotic philosophy — offers a way of reading Black sexual culture across media (film, performance, sound, food, technology) that resists binary divisions of nature/culture and human/nonhuman; part of a broader lineage of Black feminist and queer theory alongside scholars such as [[Fred Moten]] elsewhere in this vault. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Queer Theory]] - *Funk the Erotic* extends queer and feminist theory into Black erotic and sexual cultures specifically - [[Black Studies]] - theorizes "funk" as a transaesthetic philosophy of Black sexual culture ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Collaborators %% none yet %% ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Horton-Stallings, LaMonda. *Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures*. The New Black Studies Series. University of Illinois Press, 2015. "By the end of Funk the Erotic, I hope to have provided evidence of how funk as a multisensory and multidimensional philosophy has been used in conjunction with the erotic, eroticism, and black erotica. Funk is the affect that shapes film, performance, sound, food, technology, drugs, energy, time, and the seeds of revolutionary ideas for various black movements." (p. 17) "Blossom is a sculptural installation of a tree growing out of a baby grand piano converted into a MIDI system piano with a knocked-over piano bench lying in a circular patch of dirt in which the tree is rooted. The piece refuses either/or binaries of dividing nature from culture, nature from technology, and precolonial natural institutions from modern cultural institutions." (p. 23) ### Secondary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %%