Review: L.H. Stallings: Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: When describing his approach toward funk music, one of its most famed contributors, Rick James reflected in a 1981 “Creem” interview, that funk allows him to traverse taboo societal topics that make powerful statements on vice, criminality, and law enforcement (DiMartino). For L.H. Stallings in Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Culture, revolutionary funk is multi-faceted and structurally disruptive. Its revolutionary power radically transforms politics, sexuality, erotica, energy, technology, and artistic expression. Funk’s multi-sensory and multi-dimensionality complements black political consciousness and subsequent activism. Throughout this colorful, unconventional, and lively text, Gender Studies researcher, L.H. Stallings explores how “funk” operates to inform black social movements, culture, and music. Funk is effusive, an effervescent Foucauldian biopolitical energy transfer, a force without being forced. Stallings deconstructs how funk is a manifestation of “African diasporic philosophy about transition, movement, and embodiment that relates to art, work, sex, gender, and national boundaries” (Stallings 6). Funk has a multi-purpose agenda, complicating rigid social constructs, hierarchies, and limitations.