Performing Black Subjectivity: Enfleshed Feminism in Homecoming and Amazing Grace

This article analyzes Black feminist performance through two recently released live performance films. Set a generation apart, Amazing Grace (recorded 1972, released 2018), featuring Aretha Franklin, and Homecoming (2019), featuring Beyoncé, are artful and personal—both inspired by Black culture and the artists' personal histories, and offer virtuoso performances. The article operates in three modes: scholarly, personal, and remembered. The scholarship draws on the work of Hortense Spillers, bell hooks, Daphne Brooks, and others, while the personal and remembered portions consider significant sites of feminist formation that have shaped the author's perceptions and analyses of Black feminist performance in the present. These, along with close readings of the films, tap into Black women's ways of knowing and performing subjectivity.