Beyoncé's Black (Ab)Normal: Baaad Insurgency and the Queerness of Slaying

Abstract

This essay advances from Erica Edwards' theorization of "sex after the black normal" to understand the confined insurgency of Beyoncé's racial and gender lyricality. That is, Beyoncé is situated within the "Black normal," but, while amid its tempered normality, she fissures its purported seamlessness. What this essay seeks to do is demonstrate Beyoncé's insurgency within the Black normal. Using her early solo album, Dangerously in Love (2003), as a benchmark for her initial immersion in the tenets and "terms and conditions" of the Black normal, then juxtaposing the Beyoncé of Dangerously in Love to her latest album, Lemonade (2016), which captures her full-fledged insurgency and hostile takeover of the Black normal, this essay will make clear that Beyoncé has utterly fractured the continuity of the Black normal in order to incite revolutionary de- and reconstruction of (valid) racial and gender inhabitation.

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