A Prolegomenon to Justice Hermeneutics and Black Sexual Ethics

Chapter 1 introduces womanist, quare, vindicationist, Black, Black religion, and physics as coconstitutive terms of discourse in the book. Interlocutors in this chapter include Alice Walker, E. Patrick Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Long, Barbara Holmes, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. The close relationship between womanist and quare (as its heir)—as well as their rootedness in Blackness, religion, and physics—suggests that quare theory and praxis may be an important foundation for contemporary theories of justice dedicated to Black futures. Maât is a critical aspect of vindicationist histories—redactions of which are promising for a fresh perspective on Black sexual ethics. The groundwork is laid for how justice performs and is performed as a wonder of physics, religion, Blackness, sexuality, and gender.