Chapter 5: Blackness, Love, and Sensuousness as Praxis

According to writer and social critic James Baldwin (1962), “to be sensual”—that is, the act, disposition, practice, and stance of being sensuous, loving, conscious, and committed to human life and varied human experiences—reflects an obligation to being present in every aspect of the world. He explains, “the word sensual is not intended to bring to mind quivering dusky maidens or priapic black studs” (pp. 42–43). Instead, the word is a reference “to something much simpler and much less fanciful. To be sensual, I believe, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread” (p. 43). Being sensual, then, requires that people learn to “respect” life just as much as we learn to “rejoice” in it, that we are purposeful and caring, that we live with intention, and that we love with presence. Yet we are aware that the use of the term, sensual, can never (and should not) erase or make invisible its larger connection and devastating history with respect to racist, sexist, and misogynist behaviors that are rightly attached to it. For the sexualization of girls and women as well as the historical and current-day othering of disenfranchised people in this country alone require humanizing languages and discourses that attend to power, politics, safety, justice, and civil rights. Thus, we understand Baldwin’s use of the term “sensual” as a powerful action-oriented concept that rejects sexualization (e.g., priapic Black studs) and that parallels to sensuousness (e.g., respecting, rejoicing, living, loving).