M. Nicole Horsley explores the metaphysics and materiality of voids—fleshy, digital, ecological, celestial, chronic, and affective. Rooted in Black studies, Black feminist theory, and the sensorial, her research investigates how absences, holes, and ruptures function as both violent erasures and portals of potentiality within Black life. Drawing from phenomenology, speculative theory, and cultural analysis, her scholarship and creative soundscapes reimagine voids not as spaces of lack, but as sites of invention, mourning, refusal, and liberation.
Invoking the sensory dimensions of Black disappearance and survival, she invites us to dwell in the unknown—and to listen closely to what the void has to say. Her forthcoming manuscript traces the politics of the void through Black film, artificial intelligence, diasporic ecologies, sexual wellness, diabetes, and the everyday structures of anti-Blackness, asking: what possibilities emerge when we attend to the spaces where Blackness disappears, floats, resists, or unravels?
“Your silence will not protect you.” –Audre Lorde