Abstract
When Richard Iton insists that the words “black fantastic” are redundant, he offers a lucid way of breaking the boundaries between the political mobilizations of blackness and the cultural and performative mobilizations of blackness. This article uncovers the role of the black fantastic in the 1960s and '70s Black Arts Movement. I show that the movement's investment in “natural black beauty” was often inseparable from powerful, fantastic performances of the “unnatural.” The article reconsiders the Black Arts Movement's relation to contemporaneous black popular culture entertainers, such as Diana Ross, and the 21st-century performances of Erykah Badu.
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