{"product_id":"black-utopias-9781478010548","title":"Black Utopias","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEngaging with the work of Black musicians, writers, and women mystics, Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as an occasion to explore new states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e is replete with flashes of insight, important provocations, and an urgent ethical and political thrust. Jayna Brown models a patient search for intellectual kin adequate to the nightmare world of the present and its dead and deadening ideologies. She reminds us of the extent to which so much Black political thinking begins from a profound negation of the fundamental tenets of Western models of subjectivity. Ambitious, bold, and bracing, \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e forcefully reorients conversations around utopia and Afrofuturism. A field-defining work.” -- Anthony Reed, author of * Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production *\u003cbr\u003e“What does Black speculative practice feel like under the skin? What does it sound like? Where does it take us? Jayna Brown studies centuries of strange Black diviners and offers a map over the universe that is not about the stars but about a Blackness that births and rebirths life in contradicting quantum multiplicity. Where does it get at you (under the skin)? How do you hear it calling you? Let's go.” -- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of * Dub: Finding Ceremony *\u003cbr\u003e\"As the book unfolds, the pleasure Brown finds in her archival encounters with Sojourner Truth and musicians Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane is as palpable as the book’s pressed pages.\" -- K. Avvirin Gray * Women's Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e“Among texts that examine Black embodiment—that examine our existence beyond and transcendence from the horrific bounds of State-sanctioned supremacies—\u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e stands out.... Regardless of your field, this is a must-read about Black existence and alternate states of freedom.” -- Jennifer Brown * College \u0026amp; Research Libraries *\u003cbr\u003e“Jayna Brown’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e is an innovative interdisciplinary text that brilliantly uncovers a rich current of radical otherworldly utopianism within Black life, thought, and expressive culture.... It is absolutely essential reading for students and scholars of sf, utopia, critical humanisms, and posthumanism.” -- Jalondra A. Davis * Science Fiction Studies *\u003cbr\u003e“There are books that captivate you fully, that illuminate you, challenge you, that pierce through you with such clarity and imaginative force, opening mind and soul beyond the definable, the settled.... Jayna Brown’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e is such a book.” -- Kristina J. Kolbe * Ethnic and Racial Studies *\u003cbr\u003e“Throughout \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e, Brown commits to multiplicity and contradiction. We see this in her non-hagiographic approaches to preachers, musicians, writers, and literary figures. . . . It is in this politicization of the vibrational and sonic that we experience the depth of Blackness’s radical potential.” -- Amber Jamilla Musser * Journal of Popular Music Studies *\u003cbr\u003e“Jayna Brown’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias\u003c\/i\u003e . . . is personal and universal, critical and charitable, and continuously creative. . . . Brown succeeds in inviting readers to an imaginal realm of a less constrained ‘reality’ than what many people—and especially academics—presuppose.” -- Daniel Boscaljon * Literature and Theology *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The project of \u003ci\u003eBlack Utopias '\u003c\/i\u003eis a way of residing in spaces of ambiguity' where the line between madness and prophetic vision cannot be confidently drawn. It is very worthwhile to follow her lead into exploring that uncanny space in this innovative, well-researched piece of scholarship.\"\u003c\/p\u003e -- John Rieder * SFRA Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments  vii\u003cbr\u003e Introduction  1\u003cbr\u003e Part I: Ecstasy\u003cbr\u003e 1. Along the Psychic Highway: Black Women Mystics and Utopias of the Ecstatic  23\u003cbr\u003e 2. Lovely Sky Boat: Alice Coltrane and the Metaphysics of Sound  59\u003cbr\u003e Part II: Evolution\u003cbr\u003e 3. Our Place is Among the Stars: Octavia E. Butler and the Preservation of Species  83\u003cbr\u003e 4. Speculative Life: Utopia Without the Human  111\u003cbr\u003e Part III: Sense and Matter\u003cbr\u003e 5. In the Realm of the Senses: Heterotopias of Subjectivity, Desire, and Discourse  137\u003cbr\u003e 6. The Freedom Not to Be: Sun Ra's Alternative Ontology  155\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion  177\u003cbr\u003e Notes  179\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography  195\u003cbr\u003e Index  205","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408988578135,"sku":"9781478010548","price":76.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781478010548.jpg?v=1730504984","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/black-utopias-9781478010548","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}