Against the grain: black women and sexuality

The work of Zanele Muholi and Ingrid Masondo, two black South African women photographers, draws attention to the deeply entrenched social codes that inform representations of black women and sexuality. By unsettling the images and conventions that underpin nationalist representations, racist and colonial mythmaking, and pornographic images, their photographs uncover ways of viewing black women's bodies and sexuality in relation to their agency, choice and independence. These photographers' works unsettle two forms of silencing. On one level, they obviously interrogate the suppression of black women's independence and voice through master narratives embedded in scientific categorisation, the mass media, a growing sex industry and heteronormative and patriarchal nationalist myths. On another level, they address the tendency among radical black women to dissimulate or repress discussions of black women's bodies and sexuality: racist legacies that fixate on the sexuality of black women have meant that black women's responses have often involved suppressing or dissembling discussion about bodies and sexuality, this leading to the continued dominance of racist, heteronormative and patriarchal public discourses. The photography of Muholi and Masondo demonstrates the enormous extent to which radical black women artists can open up liberating public discourses about body politics, sexuality and personal and social freedoms.