Sex Lives: Erotic Power and The Social Life of Sexuality

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From the Publisher's Marketplace Announcement: 

Sociologist Angela Jones's Erotic Power, an exploration of how sexuality operates in society, arguing that our sex lives are never private; that sex plays an outsized role in the shaping of norms, communities, and politics; and that the pursuit of pleasure can liberate us from the vice grip of sexual stigma and broader forces of oppression, to Brandon Proia at Seal Press, by Margo Beth Fleming at Brockman.  

Sneak Peak:  

The personal is political, and my voice is a weapon—a sharp tongue speaking truth to power. In A Litany for Survival, the poet Audre Lorde wisely told us that the time for marginalized people to speak about our experiences is now, and with full chests, because we were never meant to survive. Speaking publicly about our desires, joys, sexual yearnings, pleasures, pains, and power in a world that would rather see us gagged is a political act. This is but one of many things I’ve gleaned from other Black feminists—just one of many methodological, conceptual, and intellectual innovations that I think of as Black feminist gifts. 

The gifts of Black feminism are integral to what I call in this book the Black Feminist Erotic Imagination. This is a mindset that centers experiential knowledge, eroticism, power, and pleasure. I am a Black feminist sociologist, and I refuse to squander Black feminist gifts. Thus, the Black erotic imagination guides my writing and theorizing throughout this book. I am convinced that everyone, regardless of their identities, can learn so much from a Black feminist politics of eroticism and pleasure, particularly when it comes to sex. 

Mainstream books about sex often let people drown in the depths of their personal failings rather than help them fully understand the social systems that set the stage for all the sexual theatre in their lives. People continue to treat sexuality as a biological, private, and personal matter instead of as a complex social, political, and economic institution. Without a more comprehensive public understanding of sexuality, we will never fully address sexual violence and a wide range of social issues related to sexuality.

Drawing inspiration from key Black feminist sociological insights, I offer everyone a new, dynamic, and multifaceted way to understand sexuality and its economic, political, and social roots. I aim to complement, not replace, the dominant physiological and psychological perspectives. I want everyone to understand sexuality more holistically so that we can all live our best sex lives and rethink how we, as global cultures, regulate and grapple with social issues related to sex in ways that acknowledge dangers but simultaneously prioritize bodily autonomy, social justice, sexual freedom, and pleasure. 

My aspiration for the world developed theoretically throughout each chapter in this book involves cultivating an understanding of erotic power. On one hand, for individuals, this means the agency to make choices concerning our bodies, sex lives, and relationships free from social, political, and economic constraints. Simultaneously, I present erotic power as a theoretical framework, allowing for the analysis of how eroticism shapes social life and how the collective expression of erotic desires brings about change. The erotic serves as a crucial site for resistance, social change, political power, pleasure, and joy.