Erotic Refusal: Samita Sinha and the Sensing of Diasporic Desires

Abstract: This essay theorizes erotic refusal as a diasporic strategy employed by Indian American performance artist Samita Sinha in her multisensorial practice. Through an analysis of sonic encounters in two performances, Tremor and This ember state , I contend that the flesh is a noisy place, one that reorients our listening practices toward minoritarian artists as they erotically refuse colonial, US-centric, and modernist soundscapes. Sinha’s aesthetic choices, specifically her choices in the citation of Baul tradition within US-centric contexts, punctuate the inseparability of diasporic subjectivity and performance traditions in the work of racialized refusal.