‘Hell You Talmbout’: Janelle Monáe’s Black Cyberfeminist Sonic Aesthetics

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which Janelle Monáe’s audiovisual performances leverage black female flesh to trouble historically constituted imaginings of ‘the human’. Tracking Monáe’s audiovisual aesthetics across ‘Many moons’ and Dirty Computer, I interrogate acoustic and imagistic resonances that recall the repeating horrors of bondage, and which also constitute performative ‘fabulations’ whereby freedoms that are engendered specifically by and within black female flesh might be imagined. Monáe ‘enfleshes’ the cyborg to critique cyberfeminist and posthumanist theories that advocate for material dissolution as a framework for liberation, as well as to trouble black women’s historical relationships to the category ‘human’. Rather than understand Dirty Computer as a (re)turn to the human Monáe, I contend that the project extends the artist’s longstanding critical engagement with the black female cyborg and black sonic cyberfeminist liberatory potentialities.

Beyond Literature: Toni Morrison’s Musical and Visual Legacy For Black Women Artists

“…Meina Yates-Richard (2021) uses the term «Cybersoul» (p. 36) to define Janelle Monáe's musical blend of neo-soul and synthesized elements with hardcore funk, rock, and pop. Her concept-based albums have garnered both critical acclaim and scholarly attention, especially her use of Afrofuturist aesthetic, sci-fi tropes, and black feminist stances (see Valnes, 2017;Jones, 2018 andYates-Richard, 2021).…”

Sonic Cyberfeminisms: Introduction

“…The relationship between race and different manifestations of sonic cyberfeminism are further addressed in Meina Yates-Richard’s ‘“Hell you talmbout?”: Janelle Monáe’s black cyberfeminist sonic aesthetics’ (2021, this issue), where Janelle Monáe’s audiovisual performances are posited as a critique of cyberfeminist and posthumanist desires to escape from embodiment. Drawing on theorisations of the liminal status of black women under slavery vis-à-vis distinctions of the human and non-human, the author demonstrates how Monáe’s performances as Afrofuturist cyborg and android present ‘genres of human’ and make clear specific modes of oppression that affect black women.…”