Description
Book SynopsisAlex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of utopia and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures linked to racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture.
Trade ReviewFor its recovery of utopian thinking as creatively and politically productive in African American literature, however, Zamalin earns high marks. -- Joel Wendland-Liu, Grand Valley State University * Journal of American Ethnic History *
What makes this book worth examining are the vivid, detailed dreams envisioned — and made concrete — despite oppression, despite years of torture. -- Rochelle Spencer * On the Sewall *
An instructive guide for all those who are interested in deepening their knowledge of American history and thinking critically about American politics. . . Highly recommended. * Choice *
Covering considerable ground with unusual eloquence and depth, Alex Zamalin brilliantly elucidates the contours of a black utopian tradition that poses a forceful challenge to our contemporary modes of political theorizing. Like the utopias and dystopias it delineates,
Black Utopia both inspires and unsettles the reader in critically productive ways. This is first-rate scholarship. -- Simon Stow, John Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies, College of William and Mary
Crisply written and compellingly argued,
Black Utopia traces a remarkable genealogy of black utopian and anti-utopian thought from Martin Delany in the early nineteenth century to Octavia Butler in the early twenty-first. A versatile cultural historian and political theorist, Alex Zamalin reveals that the democratic hope for racial equality and social justice has historically overcome dystopian conditions, ranging from slavery to present-day racism, while animating the African American intellectual imagination. -- Gene Andrew Jarrett, author of
Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American LiteratureAlex Zamalin's focus in this engaging text is the underside of the more familiar modes of African American writing. From this hidden ground, he captures imaginative creations that have been fed by African American doubts, fears, and despair about democracy and racial equality in America. These creations have been both utopian and dystopian as opposed to strategic and reformist. Beginning with Martin Delany and concluding with Octavia Butler,
Black Utopia is an exquisite introduction to this more hidden strain of African American thought. -- Paget Henry, author of
Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean PhilosophyAlex Zamalin balances generosity and critique in a careful yet energetic and buoyant manner. -- Joseph Winters, author of
Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of ProgressTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Utopia and Black American Thought
1. Martin Delany’s Experiment in Escape
2. Turn-of-the-Century Black Literary Utopianism
3. W. E. B. Du Bois’s World of Utopian Intimacy
4. George S. Schuyler, Irony, and Utopia
5. Richard Wright’s
Black Power and Anticolonial Antiutopianism
6. Sun Ra and Cosmic Blackness
7. Samuel Delany and the Ambiguity of Utopia
8. Octavia Butler and the Politics of Utopian Transcendence
Conclusion: Black Utopia and the Contemporary Political Imagination
Notes
Bibliography
Index
