Introduction: skin, surface, sensorium

Abstract

This introduction contextualizes this special issue of Women & Performance by examining surface as an object of inquiry across a variety of fields, including psychoanalysis, literary studies, sensation and affect studies, and art history. The editor of this special issue links earlier discussions of the relation between surface and depth to more recent interdisciplinary work in black diaspora studies highlighting the convergence of race, surface, and aesthetics. Through an engagement with the interplay between surface, skin, and the senses; black contemporary art in the United States; and the video work of performer Grace Jones, the editor suggests the sensuous and slippery performance work that surface play enables.