Description
Book SynopsisIn
Fugitive Time, Matthew Omelsky theorizes the embodied experience of time in twentieth- and twenty-first-century black artforms from across the world. Through the lens of time, he charts the sensations and coursing thoughts that accompany desires for freedom as they appear in the work of artists as varied as Toni Morrison, Yvonne Vera, Aimé Césaire, and Issa Samb. “Fugitive time” names a distinct utopian desire directed at the anticipated moment when the body and mind have been unburdened of the violence that has consumed black life globally for centuries, bringing with it a new form of being. Omelsky shows how fugitive time is not about attaining this transcendent release but is instead about sustaining the idea of it as an ecstatic social gathering. From the desire for ethereal queer worlds in the Black Audio Film Collective’s
Twilight City to Sun Ra’s transformation of nineteenth-century scientific racism into an insurgent fugiti
Trade Review“
Fugitive Time represents the strength of diasporic thinking around a range of black aesthetic production that disrupts the Afro-pessimist/Afro-optimist binary through visions and understanding of time beyond the historical. By positing black aesthetics as the site of black theory and political thought, Matthew Omelsky demonstrates that alternate temporalities are the key to understanding blackness, embodied experience, aesthetics, and history.” -- Samantha Pinto, author of * Infamous Bodies: Early Black Women’s Celebrity and the Afterlives of Rights *
“Bold and nimble,
Fugitive Time follows the fugitive dreams and utopian urges that animate our black radical tradition. This pursuit brings Matthew Omelsky across a sprawling archive of fiction, photography, painting, poetry, plastic arts, music, cinema, and the quotidian—spanning the United States, Martinique, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Britain, Saturn, and uncharted worlds to come. In the process, this book builds its own mighty momentum that will move readers to vivid revelations about the space-times of black life. Full of beauty and urgency,
Fugitive Time is a remarkable contribution to the study and cultivation of black radical imagination.” -- La Marr Jurelle Bruce, author of * How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Black Beyondness 1
1. Toni Morrison’s Anachronic Ease 33
2. Aimé Césaire, Wifredo Lam, and the Aesthetics of Surging Life 62
3. Black Audio’s Archival Flight 99
4. Sun Ra, Issa Samb, and the Drapetomaniacal Avant-Garde 132
5. Yvonne Vera, NoViolet Bulawayo, and the Imminence of Dreaming Air 172
Coda. Fugitive Ether 205
Notes 209
Bibliography 239
Index 259
